Taalgebruik op de Markt

Abstract

Modern standard Chinese (MSC) was introduced in Taiwan after the second world war in 1945, when the island once more became part of the Chinese political system. In 1956 the population consisted for 74 per cent of Minnan and for 13 per cent of Hakka. Both are immigrant groups from the Chinese mainland, who have come to Taiwan since the seventeenth century, and speak mutually unintelligible Chinese dialects. The remaining part of the population was formed by Chinese who came to Taiwan after 1945. In order to be able to determine the extent to which MSC has spread in the society unobtrusive observations of language use were made in five markets in Taipei city. Markets in Taiwan are the main channels for the supply of fresh vegetables, fruits, fish and meat, and for that reason considered as suitable places for the study of language spread. The instrument used was a modified version of that developed by Cooper and Carpenter (1976) and by Rosenbaum ä. . (1977). Apart from time, market, enumerator and commodity, the observation categories were interaction type (business transaction, touting, conversation), role of participants in the speech act (salesperson, customer), their age and sex and the language(s) they used for the interaction. MSC is used by both participants roughly equally for business transactions. The salespeople accommodate their language use to that of the customers. As to touting, this tendency is furthermore reflected by a relatively high proportion of MSC in the utterances of the salespeople. Among the customers males use relatively more MSC than females. The same is true for the oldest age group of both sexes. In the older city districts relatively less MSC is used than in the newer districts.