Negotiating Differential Belonging via the Linguistic Landscape of Taipei

Abstract

This chapter investigates ways in which linguistic landscaping (LL) practices have been an important site in negotiating ‘boundaries of in-/ex-clusion’ for both the Taiwanese peoples and the island itself — including ethnolin-guistic, cultural, socioeconomic, (geo)political and/or other types of belonging. Importantly, current LL practices are considered in relation to broader social and political discourses that have shaped Taiwanese identifications over time, from the period of Japanese colonization (1895–1945; a time of ‘Japanization’), to the martial law era imposed by the Chinese Nationalist Government or Kuo Ming Tang (KMT; 1949–1987; a period of ‘re-Sinicization’), to the current chapter of democratization (late 1980s to present; the season of ‘Taiwanization’). Throughout Taiwan’s modern history, then, ‘languages and language choice have come to be invested with remarkable symbolic power’ in shaping Taiwanese identities and in vying for political allegiances (Simpson, 2007, p. 236). As argued here, the symbolic power of language in Taiwan is especially salient in the LL of the capital city, Taipei, where both the referential content and the visuality of language and script continue to play prominent roles in indexing different identities and alliances.

In sum, social inclusion is a fuzzy concept, as varied as the contexts in which it is enacted and as the politics which inform them. … The challenge for us is to account for both the complexity of social inclusion as well as its complex intersections with language.

Piller and Takahashi, 2011, p. 374