大清帝國統治下臺灣的唐人用語分析

在帆船時代，中國東南沿海居民前往東亞海域各地經商、種植或採礦，會自稱與被稱為「唐人」，此語涉及這些海外唐人的自我認同，而與「唐」有關的用語，如「唐山」、「唐話」亦屬於這種唐人海洋文化的一部分。16、17世紀逐漸從福建、廣東前往臺灣的移民承襲了這些用語；但是1680年代大清帝國統治臺灣後，臺灣文獻大量出現「漢人」的用語來稱呼這些閩粵移民，究竟18、19世紀來臺移民是「唐人」或「漢人」？這是一個值得探討的問題。本文依據「臺灣文獻叢刊資料庫」，分析與「唐人」有關的用語，認為大清帝國統治時期，臺灣文獻中的「唐人」用語呈現高度重覆與刻板化現象，但是具有「使用中」意涵的「唐人」用語也不絕如縷地出現在文獻裡。

Before the 19th century, people from the southeast coast of China who traveled to the East Asian seas for business, farming, or mining would call themselves and be called“Tn̂glâng (唐人) .”This term involves the self-identification of these overseas residents, and terms related to“Tn̂g-lâng,”such as“Tn̂g-suann (唐山)”and“Tn̂g-uē(唐話) ,”were also part of the culture of this maritime community. Immigrants from Fujian and Guangdong to Taiwan in the 16th and 17th centuries should have inherited the terminology of the maritime culture of“Tn̂g-lâng”. However, after Taiwan came under Qing rule in the 1680s, the Taiwanese literature used widely“Hànrén (漢人)”when referring to these Fujian and Guangdong immigrants. So whether the immigrants who came to Taiwan in the 18th and 19th centuries were“Tn̂g-lâng”or“Hànrén”is worth exploring. This paper analyzes the terminology related to“Tn̂g-lâng”using the Taiwan Literature Series Database. It concludes that during the Qing Empire’s reign, the highly repetitive and stereotypical usage of Tn̂g-lâng in Taiwanese literature gradually faded into obscurity due to its lack of practical value, although occasional examples with the meaning“in use”do appear in the literature.