De Gruyter, Boston
Author: Alexandra Grey
Publication date: May 2021
ISBN: 9781501512551 (ebook); 9781501517747 (hard back)
https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501512551
The People’s Republic of China has constitutional minority language rights, but what do they mean today, given China’s vast political, social and economic changes since those rights were introduced in 1949? Answering this question with nuance and empirical detail, Dr Grey’s new book examines the rights through a legal and sociolinguistic study of China’s largest minority group, the Zhuangzu. The book uses the governance of linguistic diversity as a springboard into an examination of social, political, legal and geographic reorganisation in China this century.
Overall, this interdisciplinary book questions how minority peoples and languages will continue to fit (or not fit) into the identity and the lived reality of China as the nation continues to change. Rooted in a Bourdieusian approach to language, power and legal discourse, this is the first major publication to integrate contemporary debates in linguistics about mobility, capitalism, urbanization and globalization into a study of China’s language rights, autonomous regions and minority policies.
The analysis traces language policy from the Constitution through national and regional legislation to local government practices, investigating how minority language rights are experienced as opening or restricting socioeconomic opportunities and identities. This illuminates legal and other hurdles relevant to minority languages and their speakers across China. The study finds that language rights do not challenge the ascendant marketised and mobility-focused language ideologies which ascribe low value to Zhuang. However, people still value a Zhuang identity validated by laws and government practices. The book calls attention to the current shift towards the fulfillment of minority language rights through archiving and the nationalization of heritage, while Putonghua language rights are realised through education and promotion.
English language and Zhuang language overviews, and Mandarin excerpts, available here: https://www.languageonthemove.com/language-rights-in-a-changing-china/
Author information: CSAA member, Dr Alexandra Grey, is a Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the UTS Faculty of Law. Her book draws on her research and qualifications in both law and linguistics. She has lived and worked in China, Switzerland and Australia. Alexandra’s book came out in 2021 after almost a decade of doctoral and postdoctoral research. Her doctoral dissertation was recognised as the best dissertation on the sociology of language, internationally, through the 2018 Joshua A. Fishman Award.