Mediatized Taiwanese Mandarin: Popular Culture, Masculinity, and Social Perceptions

by Chun-Yi Peng

Overview

This book explores how language ideologies have emerged for gangtaiqiang through a combination of indexical and ideological processes in televised media. Gangtaiqiang (Hong Kong-Taiwan accent), a socially recognizable form of mediatized Taiwanese Mandarin, has become a stereotype for many Chinese mainlanders who have little real-life interaction with Taiwanese people. Using both qualitative and quantitative approaches, the author examines how Chinese millennials perceive gangtaiqiang by focusing on the following questions: 1) the role of televised media in the formation of language attitudes, and 2) how shifting gender ideologies are performed and embodied such attitudes. This book presents empirical evidence to argue that gangtaiqiang should, in fact, be conceptualized as a mediatized variety of Mandarin, rather than the actual speech of people in Hong Kong or Taiwan. The analyses in this book point to an emerging realignment among the Chinese towards gangtaiqiang, a variety traditionally associated with chic, urban television celebrities and young cosmopolitan types. In contrast to Beijing Mandarin, Taiwanese Mandarin is now perceived to be pretentious, babyish, and emasculated, mirroring the power dynamics between Taiwan and China.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9789811542244
Publisher:	Springer Nature Singapore
Publication date:	03/11/2021
Series:	Sinophone and Taiwan Studies , #2
Edition description:	1st ed. 2021
Pages:	109
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.25(h) x (d)

About the Author

Chun-Yi Peng is an Associate Professor at Borough of Manhattan Community College, CUNY. His primary research interests are in the fields of sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology. His research examines the ideological perceptions of Taiwanese Mandarin by Chinese Mainlanders, and how televised media and language attitudes play a role in shaping such perceptions. Chun-Yi is also interested in second language acquisition and dialect contact, especially syntactic variation in spoken Mandarin varieties. His work on Taiwanese Mandarin has also been featured in mass media.

Table of Contents

Introduction: gangtai qiang.- Taiwanese Mandarin: a sociolinguistic overview.- Media effects on language perceptions.- Performed cuteness: the mediatization of Taiwanese Mandarin.- New masculinities in online discourse: a text-mining approach.- Changing attitudes and waning prestige.