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SUMMARY:Writing vernacular languages online: a case study of writing strat
 egies of Taiwanese on social network sites among young generation - Chi-Ch
 eng Tsai 
DTSTART:20151021T161500Z
DTEND:20151021T180000Z
UID:TALK61594@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Afra Pujol i Campeny
DESCRIPTION:Even a standard orthography has been created or reformed by go
 vernment or activists\, it is not guaranteed that it will be used or even 
 recognized by the ordinary speakers\, especially when the language has lon
 g existed as a spoken language in informal context.\nIn the case of Taiwan
 ese\, a variety of Hokkien spoken in Taiwan\, despite the official diction
 ary and other work on standardization made by government\, scholars and ac
 tivists\, the mass of the speakers have low awareness of the standard orth
 ography. Moreover\, many of them hold the misunderstanding that Taiwanese 
 does not have a script and that Chinese characters can solely be used to w
 rite Mandarin. Yet\, the misunderstanding and the limited knowledge of the
  standard orthography do not prevent the speakers from writing Taiwanese w
 hen they want to. Social network sites (SNS)\, for instance\, provide grea
 t opportunity for them to write their vernacular language in a digital env
 ironment\, as code-switching between Mandarin and Taiwanese is very common
  for Taiwanese people in less formal settings.\nThe present study aims to 
 answer three questions: to what extent is the young generation aware of th
 e official Taiwanese orthography? How do they write Taiwanese on the Inter
 net when they need to? How do they choose between different strategies? Th
 e analysis is based on an online survey conducted in December\, 2014 and M
 arch\, 2015 among the young generation (aged <40) in Taiwan. Firstly\, mos
 t of the informants have never used the official dictionary and other lear
 ning materials of the standard Taiwanese orthography. Near half of them sh
 owed no interest in using them. The research also explores how young gener
 ation write Taiwanese by utilizing linguistic knowledge they already have.
  Compared with phonetic alphabets like Zhuyin and Roman alphabets\, Chines
 e characters play a major role in writing Taiwanese\, as borrowing near-ho
 mophonic characters from Mandarin and using (non-)standard Taiwanese chara
 cters are the two main strategies employed by the informants.\nTranslating
  into Mandarin is a common strategy when the informants were asked to tran
 scribe audio that included Mandarin-Taiwanese code-switching\; however\, i
 t is extremely rare in real posts on SNS as no reader would be able to ide
 ntify codeswitching if translation has taken place. Lastly\, the informant
 s’ choice between different strategies is likely to depend on their awar
 eness and knowledge of the Taiwanese characters\, and their purpose of cod
 e-switching.
LOCATION:Faculty of English\, Room GR-05
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