Abstract

In the dissertation is a guiding sociolingustic principle, which is appropriate to postwar Taiwan: In theory, the legitimate use of language, or the symbolic power/violence of one legitimate, thus dominant, language, is effected through institutions or via ideological state apparatuses. In postwar Taiwan’s case, both Chinese(Mandarin/Huâ-gi, HG) ‘imported’ as an exclusively official language, and ‘Sino-Taiwan literature’ which is written in it, are reconized/misreconized by native Formosans as a nativized(naturalized) language/genre. In this connection, the dissertation is bound to study pre-movement relations between Chinese literature and Taiwanese(Tâi-gi, TG) literature in terms of symbolic power. This dissertation is motivated by the reconsiderations of and reflections on two approaches to this topic: 1) If one fails to perceive the effects of linguistic, cultural and literary policies on native Formosans, on Mainlanders and their decendants, namely the resisting or complying agency of the subjects, one inevitably falls into the errors and insufficiency of sheer institutions study or monotonous policy study out of political logic. 2) Considering literay nativists’ assimilation into the dominant field of Chinese re/production, the prevailing discourse of resistance – the contention that Taiwan literature brims over with resistance mitifs and Formosan writers are all the time ready to fight out, is a bone of contention and is overstated. Doing away with the conventional approaches and perspectives as such, this dissertation gets into an arguement over Formosan writers’ so-called subjectivity in terms of freedom-necessity opposition, in the following chapters: The discourses of resistance and subject/agent’s ‘freedom’ are ‘discoursed’ and confronted with an epistemological paradigm – revised objectivism; so-called subjectivity is virtually constructed by social ‘structure/s’ (Necessity).(Ch.1) In this epistemological context, the first and second generation of Formosan poets are re/misread from the standpoint of TG literature movement launched since 1986/89. (Ch.2) In the dissertation are two case studies in terms of linguistic style and ideology respectively: Ong Tsing-ho, a novelist(Ch.3); O Bin-siong, a TG writer(Ch.4). In Ch.5, The Center for the Study and Promotion of the Taiwanese Languages(TTT) in New York, and its official mouthpiece(1977/5-1979/1) published in TG – Taiwan Linguistic & Cultural Monthly and Taiwan Tribune, exemplify a classic case of ‘freedom’ from Necessity. Chapter 6 is an inquiry into the lingustic and cultural discourses of TG published in non-KMT periodicals in the 1980s. Chapter 7 is the conclusion, recapitulating the main points of the dissertation: a conflict/power theory of pre-movement relations between Chinese literature and Taiwanese in postwar Taiwan, and the strategies of the TG literature movement as well.

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