The Polyphonic Condition: Sin Wenz, Topolect Writing and the Linguistic Limits of Nation-building in Revolutionary China, 1933–1956

Abstract

ABSTRACT This essay examines the Latinxua Sin Wenz movement, which was launched in China in 1933 by CCP-affiliated activists as a means of promoting topolect writing in a variety of Latin-based alphabets. Seeing the imposition of a national language across polyphonic societies as an integral part of the violence of capitalist developmentalism, the Sin Wenz movement opted instead to promote local linguistic empowerment in Latin-based alphabets. Seen in relation to China’s various attempts at script reform in the early 20th century, the Sin Wenz movement is notable for its pluralist attitude towards the prospect of China’s regional languages gaining discrete orthographies. After 1949, however, the PRC government abandoned topolect writing in favour of the promotion of a standardised Mandarin, which was one element of the regime’s multinational approach to state-building. Sin Wenz sought to produce orthographic empowerment in the interests of linguistic diversity within Han communities, but post-1949 discussions of language reform emphasised linguistic standardisation for the entirety of the Han people. Sin Wenz is thus a spectral presence in the modern Chinese cultural landscape, a discourse that struck out at linguistic centralisation only to see a new discourse of Han linguistic unity assert itself forcefully in the early years of the new regime.