後疫情時代的華語文：從華語文教學場域看語言與認同的市場化

In the past decade or so, Mandarin Chinese has emerged as one of the most learned languages in the world. The industry of Chinese teaching has also gone through a subtle shift of focus from teaching Chinese as a heritage language to Chinese as a marketable skill. Yet the COVID-19 pandemic and the Western countries’ recent concerns about the Confucius Institutes supported by the PRC further complicate the picture of Chinese as a global language. Building on the sociolinguistic literature of commodification of language in the globalized new economy, this project seeks to explore the commodifying process of Mandarin Chinese and the related tensions as revealed in the field of Teaching Chinese as a Second/Foreign Language (TCS/FL) in the Taiwanese context. Specifically, this research project explores the following research questions: 1. How is Mandarin Chinese conceptualized, talked about, valued, and marketed by the Taiwanese teachers based overseas and their affiliated institutions? 2. What language attitudes or ideological beliefs about Mandarin Chinese (and Taiwan Mandarin) are involved in the discourse of Mandarin Chinese as a global language? 3. How do the various agents involved position themselves in relation to the above questions? What roles do they play in the commodifying and meaning-making processes? 4. Do COVID-19 and other socio-political events impact on the commodifying and meaning-making processes of Mandarin Chinese as a global language? 5. How can we explore the answers to the above questions in relation to the larger social, political, and economic conditions? The project is an extension of our previous research project entitled “Mandarin Chinese in the Global Age: The Commodification of Language and Identity in Teaching Chinese as a Second/Foreign Language.” Unlike the previous project that focuses on the teacher training and teaching institutes within Taiwan, this project explores views from abroad. As this project intersects with both sociolinguistics and TCS/FL, its significance is at least twofold. From the perspective of sociolinguistics, the focus on Mandarin Chinese as a global language and its connections with Taiwan’s national and cultural identities provides a non-western perspective on the trending topic of language, commodification, and globalization. From the perspective of TCS/FL, research that examines the connection between Mandarin Chinese, identities, and language ideologies in the global age are scarce. This research project, therefore, presents an opportunity to further illuminate how the changing discourses of Mandarin Chinese as a heritage or a global language in the field of TCS/FL is part and parcel of the larger discourses on markets, values, and globalization.