Organized by Shu-mei Shih (Irving and Jean Stone Chair in the Humanities and Professor of Comparative Literature, Asian Languages and Cultures, and Asian American Studies, UCLA), Alan Dai (Department of Asian Languages and Cultures, UCLA), and Quentin Tan (Department of Asian Languages and Cultures, UCLA), this year's conference on "Tongues of Taiwan: Culture and Identity between Languages and Empires" is presented as part of the UCLA-NTNU Taiwan Studies Initiative, a partnership of UCLA and National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU) that aims to create research synergies to promote cutting-edge research in Taiwan studies.
Taiwan’s rich and turbulent history has made it the home of diverse language communities and the nexus of many translingual encounters. It is the homeland or urheimat of the Austronesian languages, and still home to many Austronesian languages spoken by Indigenous groups on the archipelago today, along with growing populations of migrant workers from Southeast Asia speaking other Austronesian languages. After decades of Dutch colonialism and Spanish occupation in the seventeenth century, the island’s population has come to be dominated by Sinophone communities who have settled on the island over the past four centuries, beginning with Hoklo and Hakka peoples, and then a wave of people speaking various varieties of Mandarin and other Sinitic topolects (as well as Manchu, Mongol, and other non-Sinitic languages) after 1949. Furthermore, during its fifty years of Japanese rule, Taiwan also became the site of colonial Nipponophone discourses and cultural experimentation, connecting it not only with mainland Japan but also with Okinawa, Korea, and Manchuria.
How have vernacular and literary registers of Sinitic and other languages found their way into oral and written forms of expression in Taiwan? What impacts have repeated waves of colonial settlement had on the Austronesian languages indigenous to Taiwan, and how has the arrival of migrant workers speaking other Austronesian languages affected the linguistic landscape of the archipelago? What paths has the Taiwanese Hokkien (or Taigi) movement taken, and where does it stand at present? How did the Japanese colonial and Kuomintang governments each in turn attempt to enact language policies, why did these attempts fail or succeed, and what legacies have they left in Taiwanese society and culture today? And what of the Hakka or the Min languages spoken in the Matsu and Kinmen islands? Has Dutch colonialism and Spanish occupation in the seventeenth century left any linguistic and cultural consequences still discernable today? This conference brings together scholars from diverse disciplines—linguistics, literature, history, media studies, and more—to reflect on the past, present, and future of the tongues of Taiwan. We invite discussions and debate around how linguistic practice has shaped cultural identity and vice versa in Taiwan, as well as explorations of the nuanced negotiations between different languages and cultural traditions undertaken by peoples living in the archipelago.
Download the complete conference program (Coming Soon)
Day 1 | Friday, May 29
Hershey Hall Salon, Rm 158 (1st Floor)
Opening Remarks
Panel Presentations
Welcome Reception
(Details Coming Soon)
Day 2 | Saturday, May 30
Hershey Hall Salon, Rm 158 (1st Floor)
Panel Presentations
Concluding Forum
(Details Coming Soon)