Multilingualism in China: The Politics of Writing Reforms for Minority Languages, 1949-2002Minglang Zhou's highly erudite and well-researched volume on the policies concerning writing reforms for China's minorities since 1949 provides an original and well-reasoned summary of a complex process. It documents how different script reforms meet dramatically different fates according to local preferences, history, cross-border ties, and the vitality of previously-used scripts. It convincingly shows that no single variable is decisive in the success of a script, and that language planners' fixation with technical details is doomed to failure, without careful coordination of extra-code factors. It also documents the little-known Sino-Soviet cooperation in the area of writing reforms. In a style accessible to both undergraduate and graduate students, Zhou's book is of interest to language planners, sinologists, applied linguists, writing theorists, and ethnologists. |
Contents
The politics of minority language policy 19492002 | 36 |
Official | 99 |
62 | 113 |
East | 153 |
The politics of vernacular writing systems | 209 |
The politics of traditional and reformed writing | 280 |
The politics and sociolinguistics | 347 |
Conclusion | 389 |
457 | |