Introduction -- 1. A Chinese Language: Fangyan before the twentieth century -- 2. Unchangeable Roots: Fangyan and the Creation of the Chinese National Language -- 3. The Sounds of Authenticity: Defining Linguistic Modernity in Republican China -- 4. The People's Language: Fangyan under the CCP -- 5. The Mandarin Revolution: The Great Leap to a Standard Language -- Epilogue -- Works Cited.
Summary:
"Taking aim at the conventional narrative that standard, national languages transform "peasants" into citizens, Gina Anne Tam centers the history of the Chinese nation and national identity on fangyan - languages like Shanghainese, Cantonese, and dozens of others that are categorically different from the Chinese national language, Mandarin. She traces how, on the one hand, linguists, policy-makers, bureaucrats and workaday educators framed fangyan as non-standard "variants" of the Chinese language, subsidiary in symbolic importance to standard Mandarin"-- Provided by publisher.
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