Vers une société multilingue ?

La renaissance, depuis une vingtaine d’années, de la langue de Taiwan (taiyu) représente un revirement significatif si l’on considère les mesures restrictives prises contre les langues régionales par le passé. Cet article compare le traitement accordé au taiyu par les organismes officiels à l’époque du Kuomintang (KMT) et sous le Parti démocrate progressiste (PDP). Nous mettrons l’accent sur les débats concernant la création d’une forme écrite de taiyu. Nous nous pencherons également sur les activités des groupes non gouvernementaux de revitalisation des langues, et sur la coopération entre les responsables officiels et non officiels

Language Policy in the KMT and DPP eras

The revival of the Taiwanese language (Taiyu) in the past two decades is a significant about-face, after the restrictive measures that the government has adopted for local languages in the past. This article compares the treatment of Taiyu by official language planning agencies during the Kuomintang) KMT and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) eras. It focuses on the debates on the creation of a written norm for Taiyu. Attention is also given to the activities of non-governmental language revival groups and the co-operation between official and unofficial language planners in the implementation of recent language reforms

Imaging and Imagining Taiwan: Identity representation and cultural politics

Since the 1990s the issue of identity has been one of the most prominent and hotly-debated topics in Taiwan Studies. A rich corpus of literature has been produced in various fields in the attempt to address this problematic issue, examining questions of Taiwanese identity from political, social and cultural perspectives. Imaging and Imagining Taiwan takes a fresh approach to this important topic, examining Taiwanese identity from a visual perspective and exploring the ways in which the island is presented and imagined. In contrast to those studies that seek to address the issue of identity from an essentialist position, Imaging and Imagining Taiwan offers a new contextualization of identity, investigating the ways in which Taiwan has been represented in films, fine art, advertising, sport, and social spaces at different periods in history. Covering a diverse range of topics, the book aims to capture the fluidity, changeability, fragmentation and dynamism of Taiwanese identity as an imaginary and encompassing whole. Through seven case studies the book focuses on the ways in which Taiwan is represented, how this relates to identity politics, and how the island is imaged and imagined visually, socially, and symbolically. The essays comprising this collection are grouped into three sections, each of which focuses on a particular approach to the topic of Taiwanese identity. The first of these —Colonial Representation —deals with colonial subjectivity and traumatic experience. The second, entitled Imaging Difference, examines cultural practices in film, TV advertisements and fine art, and explores the boundaries between the inside and the outside, the difference marked by the process of othering, and the anxiety and alienation of the excluded. The third section—Identity and Place—focuses on the relationship between identity and the social construction of place, and examines the role of place-making in the new Taiwanese nation-building process. Interrogating the complex issue of Taiwanese identity from various standpoints, the seven contributors write from a range of disciplinary backgrounds (Literature, History, Film Studies, Linguistics, Anthropology and Cultural Studies) and geographical contexts (Taiwan, Europe and America). This combination of fresh perspectives and a range of disciplinary approaches offers a set of diverse yet complementary insights into how Taiwan has been envisioned and imagined, and how the Taiwanese have positioned and identified themselves at different times. By combining different themes and disciplinary approaches together in one publication, Imaging and Imagining Taiwan brings both nuance and depth to the discussion of the representation of Taiwanese identity. The book articulates and examines the complexity of identity, avoiding essentialist approaches to the topic, instead illustrating identity's multi-faceted nature and dynamic messiness. Thus, the book argues, the politics of identity is not only a politics of representation, but also a politics of positioning, whereby identity is formulated both by the construction of sameness and the inscription of difference. The interdisciplinary approach adopted by this book makes the discussion of Taiwanese identity of interest to those both studying and working in a range of subject disciplines, not limited to Taiwan Studies, but also in History, Film, Linguistics, Literary Studies, Nationalism Studies, and Urban Studies

Vers une société multilingue ? Malgré la promotion récente des langues régionales, le mandarin garde une position privilégiée

Klöter Henning, Jacquet Raphaël. Vers une société multilingue ? Malgré la promotion récente des langues régionales, le mandarin garde une position privilégiée. In: Perspectives chinoises, n°85, 2004. pp. 60-68

Chinese in the grammars of Tagalog and Japanese of the Franciscan Melchor Oyanguren de Santa Inés (1688-1747)

The Franciscan Melchor Oyanguren de Santa Inés of Basque origin was born in 1688. He worked as a missionary in Cochinchina, the Philippines and in Mexico, where he died in 1747. He composes a grammar of Japanese (1738) and Tagalog (1742), containing a considerable number of sections devoted to the teaching of Chinese, the subject of this article. Oyanguren is one of the first scholars who developed a theory which distinguishes suffixation from inflection, comparing a great number of typologically different languages, such as Basque, Tagalog, Japanese, Chinese, Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Náhuatl and Romance vernaculars, antedating the works of Lorenzo Hervás y Panduro (1735-1809) and Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767-1835). With respect to what was already known from sources such as Francisco Varo (1627-1687), the paragraphs dedicated to Chinese do not provide any new insights or innovative analytical approaches. Nevertheless, his cross-linguistic comparisons are unique for the period in question. Particularly his attempts to describe coincidences between two unrelated agglutinative languages, Basque and Japanese, and a language which has prefixes and suffixes as Tagalog, contrasting them with the typological features of an isolating language as Chinese, are to be considered an important contribution in the history of linguistics.Cet article a pour objectif de décrire quelques traits de la grammatisation des langues indigènes au début de l’Amérique latine. L’attention a été centrée non seulement sur les traités écrits par les missionnaires, mais aussi sur un contexte plus large. La grammatisation fut influencée par trois facteurs principaux. Le premier est la croyance dans un langage mental, commun et identique pour toutes les races, source des langues particulières qui se sont développées pour la communication orale. On en trouve les prémices – avec des antécédents dans l’antiquité – chez Thomas d’Aquin, dont les idées philosophiques prédominaient en Espagne à cette époque. Le second facteur est l’opinion largement répandue selon laquelle le latin est un langage logique jouissant d’un haut degré de perfection parce qu’il reflète le langage mental mieux que les autres langues. L’idée que les langues classiques, plus anciennes, apparaissent comme plus naturelles et plus rationnelles a également eu un impact sur l’institution des langues indiennes d’Amérique. Le troisième facteur englobe des considérations politiques, sociales et culturelles : l’acquis éducatif des missionnaires, l’attitude de la couronne d’Espagne et de colonisateurs puissants ont aussi joué leur rôle. Les vues doctrinales, les analyses grammaticales des langues locales et l’assise épistémologique aident à éclairer des points obscurs tels que le type de traités admis par les autorités ecclésiastiques. Il s’agit de révéler la nature et les objectifs de ces premières grammaires dans leurs propres termes, en évitant tout ‘ présentisme’, et en expliquant pourquoi les missionnaires ne pouvaient pas composer cette sorte d’ouvrages que certains critiques des 19e et 20e s. auraient voulu qu’ils écrivent, alors que telle n’était pas leur préoccupation.Klöter Henning, Zwartjes O. Chinese in the grammars of Tagalog and Japanese of the Franciscan Melchor Oyanguren de Santa Inés (1688-1747). In: Histoire Épistémologie Langage, tome 30, fascicule 2, 2008. Découverte des langues à la Renaissance. pp. 177-197