Individual agency in language acquisition planning for multi-dialectism: A Shanghai story

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper examines the individual agency exercised by different actors in the process of language planning for multi-dialectism in Shanghai, China. Language acquisition planning is adopted as the analytical framework to identify the multiple roles individual actors have played in promoting the use and learning of the Shanghai dialect. Drawing on in-depth interviews and document analysis, this paper interprets 18 local actors’ roles in relation to preservation of the Shanghai dialect. Qualitative analysis of the data reveals that these actors exercised agency in different aspects of language acquisition planning and thus exerted different influences on the planning process. The paper concludes with a discussion of the need to give individual actors more room to exercise their agency without predefined policy constraints in the language acquisition planning process. The relevant findings have implications for other multilingual/multidialectal contexts with similar constraints where linguistic diversity needs to be sustained by bottom-up efforts. In addition, this study captures various individual actors’ agency to help these actors’ influences on language acquisition planning.