Multilingualism, multiculturalism, and multiple identities

Abstract

This study aims to explore discursive changes in current Taiwanese society, with a particular focus on code-mixing in newspaper headlines. Data were collected from three major newspapers catering to different readerships during three time periods (i.e. 1985, 1995, and 2005). The language of Taiwanese newspaper is hybrid and heterogeneous in that local dialect (i.e. Southern Min), English, Japanese, Cantonese, and even Zhuyin (Mandarin Phonetic Symbols) are included in Mandarin news headlines. My analysis has found that over the past two decades, there has been an increase of code-mixing in all three newspapers, In addition, a cross-sectional comparison has revealed that soft news texts (e.g. entertainment news) contain more instances of code-mixing than hard news texts (e.g. political and international news). I argue that this increasing linguistic hybridization found in Taiwanese media texts is not only linked with the indigenization, globalization, marketization, and technologization in current Taiwanese society. More importantly, since language use is a kind of identity-constructing devices, this ongoing discursive change also reflects an emerging new Taiwan identity, which can be characterized by multilingualism, multiculturalism, and multiple identities.