Taiwanese Language Research Articles

Harmonizing Languages: The Impact of Multilingual Classroom Dynamics on Teaching Indonesian in Taiwan

This case study investigates the intricate interplay of multilingualism, specifically in Chinese and English, and its consequential impact on the language of instruction in the context of teaching Indonesian as a foreign language in Taiwan. This research delves into the nuances of language pedagogy within a multicultural and multilingual educational setting. This study employs case study methodology, gathering data through classroom observations and openended student questionnaires. Additionally, students' progress, as evidenced by assignments and feedback, serves as a quantitative indicator to measure the influence of multilingualism on their language learning journey. Key objectives include examining student preferences and perceptions on the use of Chinese and English in Indonesian language course instruction. The research explores instances of code-switching and code-mixing, shedding light on the dynamic language choices of instructors and learners. Through an analysis of student progress, the study aims to discern tangible outcomes associated with the multilingual approach. The results show that students found the classroom dynamics positive and motivating, enhancing their learning experience. Local students benefited from using Chinese, while international students appreciated the multilingual approach, though some noted occasional delays in translation. Overall, the study provides insights into the benefits and challenges of multilingualism in Indonesian language instruction in Taiwan, contributing to discussions on effective practices in multilingual education.

Native speakers and syllable structure

Abstract Benjamin Macaulay advises us not to diagnose syllable structure, more specifically the distinction between vowel + vowel clusters and diphthongs in the Taiwanese language Budai Rukai, on the basis of speaker judgements. I fully endorse his approach, since much of current work in phonology unwarrantedly takes syllabification for granted, without arguing for its necessity.

“I am a Unique Student”: Differentiate Instructions Applied in English Classroom in Eastern Taiwan

Student’s diversity and uniqueness should not be the reason for left-behind student in the learning process. Process, content, and product are the main elements of differentiated instruction that bridge the diversity issues in the classroom, including in the process of learning English as a foreign language in Taiwan. Differentiate instruction is believed as the fittest approach that can reach every single student’s profile, uniqueness, readiness, and schemata understanding which is understood as the element of reaching success in the English teaching and learning process. The approach then enhances students’ self-confidence and manages the structural thinking ideas through the variety of activities conducted during the class. The research method was used qualitatively involving English class observation of 22 students which was performed at one of the Junior High Schools in Eastern Taiwan. The research results provided wider information by preparing various media and activities, recognizing students’ competency levels, and activating students’ awareness of the teacher’s instructions.

Conceptual metaphor in areal perspective: time, space, and contact in the Sinosphere

AbstractThis paper discusses spatio-temporal metaphors in three regions in and around China from the perspective of language contact, looking for evidence of areal convergence or transfer of the conceptual metaphors. The approach fits broadly within the framework of Cognitive Contact Linguistics. After a review of spatio-temporal metaphors in the Sinitic languages, I sketch out the relevant metaphors in languages spoken in northwest China (Xinjiang and the Qinghai-Gansu Sprachbund), in and near northeast China, and in south China and Taiwan – many of which have not been discussed previously in the literature on conceptual metaphor. The study reveals evidence for metaphor transfer involving the up-down spatial dimension from Sinitic to Japanese and Korean, contact-facilitated extension of metaphor involving the front-back dimension in Tsou, and possible transfer of front-back metaphor to other languages of Taiwan. Several of the lexical items used in front-back metaphorical expressions in Santa, two Hmong varieties, Japanese, and Korean are borrowed from Sinitic, but these do not clearly represent transfer of the conceptual mapping.

Promoting intracultural understanding and language proficiency through video creation: a schema activation perspective

In a global era where nuanced cross-cultural communications have become essential, mastering English language skills and acquiring cross-cultural competence pose a significant challenge for L2 learners residing in regions where English is not prevalently spoken. The aim of this study was to investigate how Taiwanese language learners’ perceptions, cultural appreciation, and language learning as key component in socio-cultural communication are influenced by engaging in video creation projects designed to present their local culture to a global audience. Participants were 69 students enrolled in an 18-week undergraduate course entitled Multimedia English. Data were collected from the students’ midterm essays and final oral presentations, detailing the process of video production. These data were examined utilizing thematic analysis and Matrix Coding Query. The findings demonstrated that the involvement in this interactive and student-centered video creation project improved students’ comprehension of diverse cultures, understanding of their own cultural context, and boosted their English language proficiency. The research phase was a pivotal juncture in their learning trajectory, as it served to activate their inherent knowledge and understanding of their own culture. This project also encouraged the students to assume greater ownership of their learning, thereby influencing their overall success. The paper concludes by discussing practical implications and other pertinent considerations.

Classroom Voices: Good Ideas Transcend Time and Space: Whole Language in Taiwan

Classroom Voices: Good Ideas Transcend Time and Space: Whole Language in Taiwan

‘We are Indigenous people, not primitive people.’: the role of popular music in Indigenous language revitalization in Taiwan

ABSTRACT Indigenous languages in Taiwan are experiencing various degrees of language endangerment. Reversing language shift, however, faces difficulties due to the minority status of the languages. This study identifies two Indigenous singer-songwriters who released popular music sung in their endangered Indigenous languages as micro-level language planning actors and investigates their language activism. Drawing on the framework of strategies in language activism, this study analyses their grass-root initiatives in language activism by examining their public discourse about their ideologies and actions. This study finds that through strategic creating and representing, the musicians aimed to encourage Indigenous youth to use their ethnic language, develop their confidence through popular music, and shift the image of Indigenous languages from traditional, inferior, and underprivileged to international, modern, and confident. Moreover, this study found that, unlike previous studies, the Taiwanese musicians employed various connecting strategies to create a sustainable virtuous cycle to motivate Indigenous people to revitalize their languages. Furthermore, their strategies consider language ecology and aim to connect non-Indigenous Taiwanese with their initiatives to create a friendly societal environment for the Indigenous people. The findings contribute to the development of a repertoire of strategies in language activism and have practical implications for Indigenous language revitalization.

Language maintenance and language shift: The Hakka language in Taiwan

Language maintenance and language shift: The Hakka language in Taiwan

Islands, geopolitics and language ideologies: Sociolinguistic differentiation between Taiwanese and Kinmenese Hokkien

Kinmen is an island right next to the People's Republic China but governed by Taiwan. Kinmen was under military rule for more than 40 years. After the military rule ended in 1992, Kinmenese people have been faced with a different set of political ideologies in Taiwan. While Kinmenese young people have been observed shifting to the lifestyles in Taiwan, Kinmenese Hokkien is seen as an important identity marker of Kinmenese people. This article takes a perspective of peripheral multilingualism to examine how the contrast between Taiwanese Hokkien and Kinmenese Hokkien has been ideologized in response to the ongoing peripheralization of Kinmen in the dominant political agenda in Taiwan. By analyzing top-down and bottom-up metalinguistic discourses, this paper argues that Kinmenese people resist peripheralization by engaging with an alternate center – an imagined Chinese spatio-temporal regime – to claim Chinese authenticity of Kinmenese Hokkien and highlight how Taiwanese Hokkien is an unauthentic Hokkien variety, serving as the icon of Taiwanese nationalism which excludes the will of Kinmenese people.

Translation Processes and Cultural Critique in My Annotated Chinese Translation of Huckleberry Finn

My annotated Chinese translation of Huckleberry Finn 《赫克歷險記》, published in 2012 in Taiwan and based on UC Berkeley’s 2002 scholarly edition, is so far the most complete in Chinese, with one hundred and eighty-seven illustrations, three hundred and eighty-six annotated footnotes, plus a critical introduction of the novel’s reception history and research about it. I present my translation process and strategy, my experience of teaching American literature in Taiwan for more than thirty years, my modest contribution to Mark Twain studies, and an interpretation of my translation of the book as a cultural critique or Menippean satire. Since my intended readers are those in Taiwan, I translate the book using a “domestication” rather than a “foreignization” strategy to suit Taiwanese language habits and social culture. My translation includes the restored Raftsmen Passage, because it makes the whole book structurally and thematically consistent, and because most Chinese readers are used to reading the 1885 edition without it. Huckleberry Finn is a book of “double text”: On the surface it is a book about Huck’s adventurous journey down the Mississippi River, while in reality it exposes conflicting value systems and subverts dominant authority. Told through Huck’s eyes, the cultural systems are reevaluated and the taken-for-granted beliefs are challenged.&nbsp

A Cross-Sectional Study of University Nursing Students Construal Level and Core Values in Learning English as Foreign Language in Taiwan

Professional nursing core values are important for nursing education and clinical practice. Among the core values, communication is a crucial one, and learning languages is especially beneficial to this skill. However, core values in learning a language are rarely discussed in the field. This study attempts to explore the core values perceived by university nursing students when learning English as a foreign language. A cross-sectional survey of students’ construal levels and perceptions of their core values was designed. Two instruments of Behavior Identification Form and English Learning Construal Scale were used to collect data. Descriptive statistics and content analysis were conducted to analyze quantitative and qualitative data respectively. In total, 200 participants were randomly recruited from a nursing university in Taiwan. The results show the BIF (M = 15.02; SD = 4.02) corresponded to the previous research, although the scores implied an improvement opportunity. Four themes—career development, university studies, self-responsibly, and personal well-beings—were illustrated, and 13 codes of core values of learning English were further categorized. An alternative perspective of high vs. low construal levels was suggested to view the professional core values. Teaching implications were then discussed.

Digitization of Bibles in Greater China (1661–1960)

Bible translations in (or for) Greater China may be classified into three categories: Chinese, Han dialects, and indigenous languages. All these language groups witness translation activities by Protestant missionaries. However, in its earliest history, Bible translation was pioneered by missionaries of Eastern Christianity in the seventh century or even earlier, whereas from the Catholic side, clear historical narrative has recorded Bible translation work in the thirteenth century by John of Montecorvino (1247–1328) into a Tatar language. Sadly, this work was not preserved. The earliest extant Bible translation in this vast area was published in 1661 in the Siriya language of Taiwan. This article reports on two major digitization projects: digitization of old Chinese Bibles (1707–1960), including 51 translations in total, and digitization of Bibles in Han dialects/fangyan and indigenous languages (1661–1960)—about 50 languages (including dialects) and 60 translations. These two projects represent the largest and most systematic full-text digitization of the Bible heritage of the area ever undertaken.

Multilingual Lexical Development : A case of Children of Indonesian Immigrants in Taiwan


 The number of immigrants increases tremendously in Taiwan. These recent immigrants originate from a variety of ethnicities; some are Han Chinese from Mainland China, others are mainly from Southeast Asian countries, with Vietnamese as the largest group, followed by Indonesians, Thai, and then Philippines. They brought with them their native languages and cultures (Chen,2010). Kuo (2008) found no difference in the lexical development of 2-6- year-old children of Vietnamese mothers and Taiwanese mothers, but children of Indonesian mothers were found to be slower (Kuo, 2015). This study aim to evaluate the the vocabulary size in Indonesian, Mandarin, and Taiwanese for children of Indonesian immigrants in Taiwan. The researcher investigated whether Indonesian mothers in Taiwan with limited Mandarin proficiency are able to provide the kind of input to facilitate their children’s Indonesian, Mandarin and Taiwanese acquisition or not.This study used Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test to assess their lexical development in Indonesian and Mandarin. The Taiwanese language measure tool is an application developed by Kuo (2017). This study revealed that the vocabulary score of Indonesian score were found to be lower than Mandarin and Taiwanese score and Mandarin score higher than Taiwanese score. The factors related to children’s lexical development were also investigated no correlation between Indonesian mother’s with their children in Indonesian language, because most of them communicate with their limited Mandarin or Taiwanese. Finally, this research should help people to have a better understanding about the phenomenon of multilingual family, where multilingual has become common in the society.
 
 Keyword : Multilingualism, lexical development, immigrant children, vocabulary size

Performative bilingual policy: an analysis of two Taiwanese White Papers on international education

ABSTRACT In 2011, the Taiwanese Ministry of Education issued a policy on the internationalisation of schooling. The policy assumes that being ‘international’ has become necessary in order to maintain economic competitiveness in a globalising world. It was published in two languages: Mandarin, the official language in Taiwan, and English, presupposed as a lingua franca. Treating ‘policy as discourse’, the article analyses internationalism and its performativity through the publication and specific textual construction of this policy. The analysis considers the layout, target readerships, conceptual translation, and spatial representation and construction of ‘Chineseness’ in the two policy texts. This attempt at internationalisation is related to the very specific historical and geopolitical conditions of Taiwan and its liminal position in the globe. The significance of the article rests in expanding ideas of ‘translation’ in education policy studies and in the analysis of the specific geopolitics of East Asia.

Official bilingualism in a multilingual nation: a study of the 2030 bilingual nation policy in Taiwan

ABSTRACT Since the late 1980s, Taiwan has moved away from Mandarin-only language policy in favour of greater recognition of local Taiwanese languages as part of a greater localisation movement. While continuing to implement language policies aimed at promoting local Taiwanese languages, in December 2018, Taiwan announced intent to implement a bilingual language policy to incorporate English by 2030, titled Bilingual Nation. Applying Ball’s (1993) policy as discourse framework, this paper endeavours to investigate the Bilingual Nation policy planning and rhetoric so as to shed light on Taiwan’s official conceptualisation of national identity. The case study finds that English is the primary focus of Bilingual Nation policy documents and is relegated to the discursive arenas of internationalisation and global economic competition. English is rarely discussed in tandem with any other specific language or language category, with little consideration for the interaction of English and Taiwan’s official national languages. In sum, Bilingual Nation acts as an affirmation of the current status quo in Taiwan’s official conception of national identity: muddled, with the assumption of Mandarin at its centre. Questions remain for Bilingual Nation and its ability to push beyond a symbolic state effort for internationalisation or unproductive labours for international status.

Filaments in Time and Space: Lien Heng’s Elegant Words and the Linguistic Ecology of Taiwan in the 1930s

Abstract This article revisits the debate which occurred in the early 1930s regarding ‘Taiwanese Language Writing’ to argue that these discussions represented an extended interrogation of the linguistic ecology of the island: how written scripts and spoken sounds functioned in Taiwan to make meaning in relation to a larger environmental, animistic, and social whole. Set against the backdrop of this debate, the 1932 work Elegant Words by the famed intellectual Lien Heng stands out as an important text. Lien Heng’s vision of Minnan as a historically grounded yet broadly cosmopolitan language was a particularly enabling expression of Taiwanese consciousness, which presented an island that could face many directions at once, absorbing the textual signs of a deep Sinographic past while remaining vitally open to a complex and increasingly integrated world. Lien Heng’s cultural criticism presaged many of the debates about language, history, and identity that would take place in subsequent decades in Taiwan, and as such his work continues to have resonance today for thinking critically about Taiwan’s place in the modern world.

Comparative study of game-based learning on preschoolers’ English vocabulary acquisition in Taiwan

ABSTRACT This is a comparative study that explores preschoolers’ English vocabulary acquisition in Taiwan and tries to look for a better pedagogy. After Taiwan’s government announced the policy of developing a “Bilingual Nation,” English is the second language in Taiwan. The reforming of English instruction is in urgent need. Under this background, this research aims to investigate whether English vocabulary acquisition will occur in a variety of GBL. In this study, we grouped participants into four instructional groups. Two groups are designed as instructional groups of “flashcard game” in learning 2 words or 3 words per day. Another two groups are designed as groups of “driving games” in learning 2 words or 3 words per day. Without explicit instruction, the study’s result showed that preschoolers’ English vocabulary acquisition can occur autonomously by GBL, and “2 words per day” is the best and suitable vocabulary size for preschoolers to acquire English in their memory. We found that games can produce children's autonomous learning, and the numbers of children’s vocabulary memory can be taken into consideration. Besides, the appropriate amount of information can train children to enter long-term memory. The above findings will benefit language learning, game-based learning (GBL), and interactive learning.

中華民國華語文政策芻議 Towards a Language Policy on Chinese as an Alternative Language in Taiwan, the Republic of China

中華民國華語文政策芻議 Towards a Language Policy on Chinese as an Alternative Language in Taiwan, the Republic of China

The Taiwan Film and Audiovisual Institute’s Taiwanese-language cinema restoration project

This article presents the forty-year history of the Taiwan Film and Audiovisual Institute’s efforts to save Taiwanese language films, taiyupian, starting from collecting, preserving, and through to digital restoration. The TFAI’s project to restore taiyupian aims to make these films available in this digital era, so that they can be digitally projected, and give Taiwanese-language cinema a new life. These restored films are vibrant, possess modernist aesthetics, and are boldly creative. With the newly restored films, the styles of the important taiyupian directors can be re-examined and given the new recognition they deserve. Furthermore, the TFAI calls for a repositioning of Taiwanese-language cinema in Taiwan film history.

Roles of posterior parietal and dorsal premotor cortices in relative pitch processing: Comparing musical intervals to lexical tones

Humans use time-varying pitch patterns to convey information in music and speech. Recognition of musical melodies and lexical tones relies on relative pitch (RP), the ability to identify intervals between two pitches. RP processing in music is usually more fine-grained than that in tonal languages. In Western music, there are twelve pitch categories within an octave, whereas there are only three level (non-glide) lexical tones in Taiwanese (or Taiwanese Hokkien, a tonal language). The present study aimed at comparing the neural substrates underlying RP processing of musical melodic intervals with that of level lexical tones in Taiwanese. Functional magnetic resonance imaging data from fourteen participants with good RP were analyzed. The results showed that imagining the sounds of visually presented musical intervals was associated with enhanced activity in the central subregion of the right dorsal premotor cortex (dPMC), right posterior parietal cortex (PPC), and right dorsal precuneus compared to auditory imagery of visually presented Taiwanese bi-character words with level lexical tones. During the sound-congruence-judgement task (auditory imagery of musical intervals or bi-character words, and subsequently judging if the imagined sounds were melodically congruent with heard sounds), the contrast of the musical minus linguistic conditions yielded activity in the bilateral dPMC-PPC network and dorsal precuneus, with the dPMC activated in the rostral subregion. The central dPMC and PPC may mediate the attention-based maintenance of pitch intervals, whereas the dorsal precuneus may support attention control and the spatial/sensorimotor processing of the fine-grained pitch structures of music. When judging the congruence between the imagined and heard musical intervals, the bilateral rostral dPMC may play a role in attention control, working memory, evaluation of motor activities, and monitoring mechanisms. Based on the findings of this study and recent studies of amusia, we suggest that higher order cognitive operations are critical to the more fine-grained pitch processing of musical melodies compared to lexical tones.