書評：Language Choice and Identity Politics in Taiwan(Wei, Jennifer M, 2015)

Jennifer Wei's book Language Choice and Identity Politics in Taiwan is a wide-ranging book, but at its core it is a book about the phenomenon of “code-switching” by Taiwanese politicians. Code-switching is the alternation between two or more languages (or language varieties) in the course of a single speech act or conversation. Specifically, Wei looks at code-switching between the country's two main languages, Mandarin and Holo (also known as Tai-yu, Taiwanese, or Hokkien), by Taiwanese politicians. In doing so she relies heavily upon the “markedness model” (or “rational choice model”) of code-switching as developed by Carol Myers-Scotton: the idea that code-switching is often deployed strategically. Relying on close readings of political speeches, Wei demonstrates that Taiwanese politicians use code-switching either “as a vital means for ethnic mobilization” (76) or, conversely, to accommodate “seemingly opposed ideologies” (72) thus avoiding the appearance of aligning themselves too closely with particular group.