Abstract
As China intensifies its efforts in the promotion of Putonghua in the public arena, Cantonese, the most influential regional dialect in China, is felt to be losing ground to the former. This ignited the Protecting Cantonese Movement (PCM) in 2010, a typical case of language conflict between ideologies of standardization and localization, that has sparked sustained discussions of language policy and multilingual education. Though much has been said about grass roots attitudes and reactions to the debate, research on mass media’s role in representation and manipulation of the issue in light of multilingual education has been scarce. This chapter reports an intertextual analysis of a set of news reports and commentaries that contextualize public discussions focused on educational practices for preservation and promotion of Cantonese linguistic and cultural heritage. It finds that local mass media mainly draw upon two competing discourses, namely, market discourse characterized by laissez faire dogma, and cultural discourse rooted in the country’s long cultural and political traditions. Both discourses are in competition with each other during the pre-PCM and PCM phases, but cultural discourse has become predominant during the post-PCM phase in media reporting of Cantonese language initiatives in local schools. The analysis also reveals a variety of intertextual mechanisms used by mass media and finds the media are keen on building solidarity and affinity rather than constructing independence and difference. As schools become more prominent in debates about protection of vernacular and minority languages, the implications for multilingual education are discussed.
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This study is supported by Humanities and Social Sciences Research Funding of the Chinese Ministry of Education (16YJC740023), and Humanities and Social Sciences Research Funding for Tertiary Institutions of Guangdong Province (16WTSCX033). The author acknowledges the helpful suggestions and comments from the reviewers and editor.
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Xiong, T. (2018). Media Representation of Attitudes to Multilingual Education: Local Language and Culture in Mainland China. In: Liyanage, I. (eds) Multilingual Education Yearbook 2018. Multilingual Education Yearbook. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77655-2_3
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