The entanglement of emotion and reality: an investigation of the Taiwanese people’s attitudes towards Taigi

This study adopted both indirect and direct methods to probe into Taiwanese people’s attitudes towards Taigi. The indirect method involved a verbal guise experiment with four Taigi speakers–Old-H (higher competence), Old-L (lower competence), Young- H, and Young-L. Participants, including old and young, must complete a questionnaire indirectly investigating their attitudes towards these four guises. The direct method involved a direct questionnaire. Results showed both pessimistic and optimistic outlooks of Taigi. Pessimistically, the participants, both the old and young, evaluated H competence Taigi higher. This result suggested that Taigi revitalisation is being confronted with the potential challenge of Taigi purism, since revitalised Taigi can hardly avoid the influences from Mandarin, the dominant language in Taiwan. In addition, Taigi was considered being alienated from the dimension of youthfulness. However, optimistically, within the H speakers, Young-H were preferred than Old-H, who were in fact more native in Taigi than Young-H speakers. This study, based on the results, further offered suggestions towards the Taigi language policy of Taiwan.