Culture Politics and Linguistic Recognition in Taiwan

This book examines how the interplay of ethnicity, national identity and party politics has shaped current debates on national culture and linguistic recognition in Taiwan. It suggests that the ethnolinguistic distribution of the electorate has led parties to adopt distinctive strategies in an attempt to broaden their ethnic support bases, prompting them to express their antagonistic ideologies of Taiwanese and Chinese nationalism through more liberal conceptions of language rights. By investigating Taiwan's counterintuitive ethnolinguistic situation, the book argues that constraints to cultural and linguistic recognition in Taiwan are shaped by political rather than cultural and sociolinguistic factors.

Jean-François Dupré is SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow at the School of Political Studies, University of Ottawa.

1. Introduction 2. Conceptual and Analytical Framework 3. Culture and Identity Politics in Taiwan: a Historical Overview 4. The Politics of Taiwanization under Chen Shui-bian 5. Linguistic Identities at the Turn of the in 21st Century 6. The Politics of Linguistic Revitalization: Local Language Education and Standardization 7. The Politics of Linguistic Recognition 8. Culture Politics under Ma Ying-jeou's KMT: Re-Sinicizing Taiwanization? 9. Conclusion: Prospects for Culture Politics and Linguistic Recognition after 2016