Vulnerable Mother Tongues in Taiwan: The Past, Present and Future Prospects

Abstract

The oppression of mother tongues in Taiwan had always been accompanied by her colonial experiences since the Japanese era, and extended over the last fifty years of the 20th century, when Kuomintang imposed martial law in Taiwan. During this lengthy period, political and economic structures detrimental to mother tongues were constructed and the use of mother tongues in Taiwan was pushed from public areas to private domains. The revitalization of the mother tongues of different ethnic groups was one of the most important social movements after 1987 and is related to how the Taiwanese people reconstructed their cultural boundaries and self-identities. Many people tried hard to revive mother tongues, and they accomplished some positive outcomes in the past 20 years. However, the achievements have been very limited and people who can speak mother tongues fluently are still declining in number. In this article, definitions of mother tongues and alien languages are given. Important historical events and language policies that are prejudicial to the use of mother tongues are reviewed. Furthermore, an ecological model is introduced to clarify the relationships between mother tongues and alien languages. This model assumes that both kinds of languages have the same niche and vie for the same resource in the social environment, and also intelligibly reveal the difficulties of mother tongue revitalization. Based on this model, some examples of new social movements are given. Future strategies and actions are recommended in the final section of the article.