Taiwan's Language Policy Research After World War Ii (1945-2006)

The dissertation focuses on the language policy in Taiwan after the World War II and analyses comprehensively its background, contents, essence and evolution.Taiwan had been a Japanese colony for as long as half a century. As a result, the Taiwanese native language became a language that was spoken only at home. In its place the Japanese language became a general one. After the restoring of the sovereignty, Taiwan launched a lasting national language campaign on a large scale to eliminate the effect of Japanese, and revitalized the native language and made the Mandarin Chinese the new general language. And this national language campaign was, to some degree, a success in the language project. Ever since the 1980s, there have been some significant changes in the language policy and the promoting of the native language and the practice caught the attention of Taiwan and the Mainland. These policies had a great impact on the language life and social life of the Taiwanese. About the policies, different people think differently. And some have used them as a political tool to make some social unrest. As a result, it is necessary for us to look at these policies in an overall and objective way.The choice of the subject of the dissertation is academically significant, too, because it can enrich and test the language program and the theory of language strategies by case study. In practice, its importance is more obvious. Taiwanese national language promoting campaign can be used as reference to our country's. And Taiwan's protective measures and strategies are worth borrowing. Getting an insight into the essence of the language policies is beneficial to the policies about Taiwan.The methods adopted are mainly investigation of the literature review and historical comparison. The research starting from literature analyses the evolution and explores the historical background and analyses the social reasons for the changes.The importance of the dissertation lies in three respects. The dissertation dividesTaiwan's language policies after the World War II into two periods, i.e. the promoting of the national language (1945—1992) and instruction of the mother tongue (1993—2006) , and the latter is consisted of four periods, that is, restoring of the sovereignty, (1945—1948), overall promoting (1949—1965), severe promoting (1966 — 1986), and the steady promoting periods (1987—1992. The dissertation analyses the evolution of the language evolution since the restoring of the sovereignty, compares the different language competence of the different ethnics, revealing the achievements of the campaign and its dynamic process. In addition it made an overall evaluation of the policies and the author expresses his own opinions of the language promoting campaign and the native language policies and measures.Chapter One The Introduction It is about the purpose of the present research home and abroad.Chapter Two Language policies before restoring of the sovereignty. This chapter mainly introduces the different polices when ruled by Holland and Spain, in Ming and Qing Dynasty and when occupied by Japan to give a comprehensive introduction of the different language polices.Chapter Three The background of the language policy of Taiwan after the World War II is introduced in this chapter. It gives a comprehensive account of the Taiwan ethnics, its population, language and its geographical distribution. the background of the promoting of the national language and reason for the rise of the instruction of the native language.Chapter Four It is the most important part of the dissertation, in which the evolution of language ecology after the Second World War is highlighted. The language policy, the contents of the policy and the measures in different periods of the National Language Spreading is one of the focuses analyzed in this chapter. The other focus is a detailed expounding of the various policies of the instruction of the native language.Chapter Five It is about the evolution of language ecology after the Second World War. The language ability, language ecology and language evolution of Han nationality and the Taiwan aborigines are research focuses. Apart from that, the languages in different contexts and the diachronical evolution will be studied.Chapter Six The policies of the instruction of the mother tongue It deals with the implementing of the policies, the contents and the measures, with the focus on the Accreditation of the Aboriginal Languages Proficiency(AALP).Chapter Seven An all-sided evaluation of all the important policies of Taiwanese languages...