Protecting language or promoting dis-citizenship? A poststructural policy analysis of the Shanghainese Heritage Project

Abstract

ABSTRACT Recent language policy studies have adopted an integrated approach to the exploration of language use, educational practice, citizenship, global mobility and so forth. While they enhanced interdisciplinary understanding of language policy, the conventional view of policies that address problems has not been explicitly challenged, especially in China. In our study, we adopt a poststructural framework to examine problem representations in public debates over the Shanghainese Heritage Project (SHP), a policy promoting the use of Shanghainese, the local Chinese variety, in kindergartens. Our dataset consists of 279 news articles, 98 online forum threads and 800 social media postings, covering a period from January 2013 to June 2017. The findings suggest that the problem for SHP was officially represented as the declining vitality of Shanghainese, while in unofficial channels the problem was mainly constructed as the conflicts between ‘locals’ and ‘non-locals.’ As a result, children from migrant families may risk being dis-citizened. It is important for language policymakers and educators to be aware of the limitations associated with SHP so that both Shanghainese and other regional Chinese varieties can be maintained in schools.