Shanghai Speech Community

What is it about?

Massive migration particularly from Mandarin dialect areas changes the Shanghai speech community. The question is what will be the effect in terms of language use of this migration process? Shanghainese is a difficult dialect to acquire, so we cannot expect the majority of migrants to acquire that language variety. They most likely will use Mandarin Chinese for communication with local salespeople, increasing the level of Mandarin Chinese in these locations. And what will the Shanghainese speakers do, will they maintain their way of speaking or also switch to Mandarin? The paper gives a detailes a varied answer, demonstrate the impact of Putonghua and its relation to social stratification.

Featured Image

Why is it important?

Speech community theory established a relation with social stratification (Bloomfield 1933; Labov 2006; Xu 2010). However, language behaviour of migrants in an established speech community was never documented. This paper provides language behaviour details of a stratified sample of the Shanghai population and creates the basis for the formulation of a speech community theory which encompasses heavy migration as a variable..

Perspectives