Doctoral Dissertation Research: Language Styling and Switching in Speech and On-Line Contexts: Identity and Language Ideologies in Taiwan

在华德士博士和张青博士的指导下，苏希瑶女士将为她的博士论文进行实地考察。她将比较台湾标准普通话和台湾口音普通话之间的口音转换，以及在面对面互动和在线环境中普通话和台湾口音之间的语言转换。她将学习台北和台南两所大学的学生，一所在台湾北部，另一所在台湾南部。她将记录他们的在线和面对面互动，访谈他们，并收集在线问卷数据，看看他们的语言实践如何与他们的身份、语言态度和当代台湾的社会政治背景联系在一起。对于身份和语言意识形态的研究来说，台湾的背景特别有趣，因为它在国际政治中的国家地位尚未确定，而且它与中国的关系在政治上敌对，但在经济上是有利的。因此，本研究关注地域认同、族群认同、精英认同和国家认同之间的复杂关系。这项研究在两个方面具有重要意义。首先，它触及了社会语言学和语言人类学中的重要主题，如身份的构建。它还纳入了对互联网上语言互动的分析，互联网是一种交流媒介，极大地塑造了人类的体验，但并未被用作数据来源。其次，这项研究将有助于更好地了解台湾的语言态度和身份。这对关心促进台湾双语教育或台语标准化的教育工作者和政策制定者应该是有用的。这项研究也将有助于揭示台湾精英在中国事件中的定位，并增加公众对台湾与中国政治僵局所涉及的复杂性的了解。

Under the direction of Drs. Keith Walters and Qing Zhang, Ms. His-Yao Su will conduct fieldwork for her doctoral dissertation. She will compare accent shifting between standard Mandarin in Taiwan and Taiwan-accented Mandarin, on the one hand, and language switching between Mandarin and Taiwanese, on the other, in face-to-face interactions and in on-line environments. She will study students from colleges in Taipei and Tainan, one in northern and the other in southern Taiwan. She will record their on-line and face-to-face interactions, interview them, and collect on-line questionnaire data to see how their linguistic practices are connected with their identities, language attitudes, and the sociopolitical context of contemporary Taiwan. The Taiwanese context is especially interesting for study of identity and language ideologies because of its unsettled national status in international politics and its politically hostile, yet economically beneficial, relation with China. This research thus concerns the complex relations among regional identity, ethnic identity, elite identity, and national identity. This research is significant in two ways. First, it touches on important themes in sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology like the construction of identity. It also incorporates analysis of language interaction on the internet, a communication medium that has shaped human experiences tremendously but has not been much used as a source of data. Second, this research will contribute to better understanding of language attitudes and identities in Taiwan. This should prove useful to educators and policy makers concerned with the promotion of bilingual education in Taiwan or the standardization of Taiwanese. This research will also shed light on how the Taiwanese elite position themselves in relation to China and increase the general public's understanding of the complexity involved in the political stalemate between Taiwan and China.