Mediatized Taiwanese Mandarin

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-x

   PDF

2. Introduction: Gangtaiqiang

   • Chun-Yi Peng

   Pages 1-12

3. Taiwanese Mandarin: A Sociolinguistic Overview

   • Chun-Yi Peng

   Pages 13-34

4. Media Effects on Language Perceptions

   • Chun-Yi Peng

   Pages 35-60

5. Performed Cuteness: The Mediatization of Taiwanese Mandarin

   • Chun-Yi Peng

   Pages 61-80

6. New Masculinities in Online Discourse: A Text-Mining Approach

   • Chun-Yi Peng

   Pages 81-99

7. Changing Attitudes and Waning Prestige

   • Chun-Yi Peng

   Pages 101-106

8. Back Matter

   Pages 107-109

   PDF

This book explores how language ideologies have emerged for gangtaiqiang through a combination of indexical and ideological processes in televised media. Gangtaiqiang (Hong Kong-Taiwan accent), a socially recognizable form of mediatized Taiwanese Mandarin, has become a stereotype for many Chinese mainlanders who have little real-life interaction with Taiwanese people. Using both qualitative and quantitative approaches, the author examines how Chinese millennials perceive gangtaiqiang by focusing on the following questions: 1) the role of televised media in the formation of language attitudes, and 2) how shifting gender ideologies are performed and embodied such attitudes. This book presents empirical evidence to argue that gangtaiqiang should, in fact, be conceptualized as a mediatized variety of Mandarin, rather than the actual speech of people in Hong Kong or Taiwan. The analyses in this book point to an emerging realignment among the Chinese towards gangtaiqiang, a variety traditionally associated with chic, urban television celebrities and young cosmopolitan types. In contrast to Beijing Mandarin, Taiwanese Mandarin is now perceived to be pretentious, babyish, and emasculated, mirroring the power dynamics between Taiwan and China.

• Taiwan Mandarin
• Language Attitudes
• Language Ideologies
• Media Effects on Language
• Gendered Perceptions of Language
• Soft Masculinity
• Online Discourse
• Styling and Stylization
• Mandarin Varieties
• Gangtai Qiang
• discourse analysis

• Modern Languages Department, Borough of Manhattan Community College, City University of New York, New York, USA

  Chun-Yi Peng

Chun-Yi Peng is an Associate Professor at Borough of Manhattan Community College, CUNY. His primary research interests are in the fields of sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology. His research examines the ideological perceptions of Taiwanese Mandarin by Chinese Mainlanders, and how televised media and language attitudes play a role in shaping such perceptions. Chun-Yi is also interested in second language acquisition and dialect contact, especially syntactic variation in spoken Mandarin varieties. His work on Taiwanese Mandarin has also been featured in mass media.

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