In this volume, Li Wei brings together contributions from well-known and emerging scholars in socio- and anthropological linguistics working on different linguistic and communicative aspects of the Chinese diaspora. The project examines the Chinese diasporic experience from a global, comparative perspective, with a particular focus on transnational links, and local social and multilingual realities. Contributors address the emergence of new forms of Chinese in multilingual contexts, family language policy and practice, language socialization and identity development, multilingual creativity, linguistic attitudes and ideologies, and heritage language maintenance, loss, learning and re-learning. The studies are based on empirical observations and investigations in Chinese communities across the globe, including well-researched (from a sociolinguistic perspective) areas such as North America, Western Europe and Australia, as well as under-explored and under-represented areas such as Africa, Latin America, Central Asia, and the Middle East; the volume also includes detailed ethnographic accounts representing regions with a high concentration of Chinese migration such as Southeast Asia. This volume not only will allow sociolinguists to investigate the link between linguistic phenomena in specific communities and wider socio-cultural processes, but also invites an open dialogue with researchers from other disciplines who are working on migration, diaspora and identity, and those studying other language-based diasporic communities such as the Russian diaspora, the Spanish diaspora, the Portuguese diaspora, and the Arabic diaspora.

In this volume, Li Wei brings together contributions from well-known and emerging scholars in socio- and anthropological linguistics working on different linguistic and communicative aspects of the Chinese diaspora. The project examines the Chinese diasporic experience from a global, comparative perspective, with a particular focus on transnational links, and local social and multilingual realities. Contributors address the emergence of new forms of Chinese in multilingual contexts, family language policy and practice, language socialization and identity development, multilingual creativity, linguistic attitudes and ideologies, and heritage language maintenance, loss, learning and re-learning. The studies are based on empirical observations and investigations in Chinese communities across the globe, including well-researched (from a sociolinguistic perspective) areas such as North America, Western Europe and Australia, as well as under-explored and under-represented areas such as Africa, Latin America, Central Asia, and the Middle East; the volume also includes detailed ethnographic accounts representing regions with a high concentration of Chinese migration such as Southeast Asia. This volume not only will allow sociolinguists to investigate the link between linguistic phenomena in specific communities and wider socio-cultural processes, but also invites an open dialogue with researchers from other disciplines who are working on migration, diaspora and identity, and those studying other language-based diasporic communities such as the Russian diaspora, the Spanish diaspora, the Portuguese diaspora, and the Arabic diaspora.

Multilingual China explores the dynamics of multilingualism in one of the most multilingual countries in the world. This edited collection comprises frontline empirical research into a range of important issues that arise from the presence of 55 official ethnic minority groups, plus China’s search to modernize and strengthen the nation’s place in the world order. Topics focus on the dynamics of national, ethnic minority and foreign languages in use, policy making and education, inside China and beyond. Micro-studies of language contact and variation are included, as are chapters dealing with multilingual media and linguistic landscapes. The book highlights tensions such as threats to the sustainability of weak languages and dialects, the role and status of foreign languages (especially English) and how Chinese can be presented as a viable regional or international language. Multilingual China will appeal to academics and researchers working in multilingualism and multilingual education, as well as sinologists keen to examine the interplay of languages in this complex multilingual context.

What happens when language wars are not about hurling insults or quibbling over meanings, but are waged in the physical sounds and shapes of language itself? Native and foreign speakers, mother tongues and national languages, have jostled for distinction throughout the modern period. The fight for global dominance between the English and Chinese languages opens into historical battles over the control of the medium through standardization, technology, bilingualism, pronunciation, and literature in the Sinophone world. Encounters between global languages, as well as the internal tensions between Mandarin and other Chinese dialects, present a dynamic, interconnected picture of languages on the move. In Sound and Script in Chinese Diaspora, Jing Tsu explores the new global language trade, arguing that it aims at more sophisticated ways of exerting influence besides simply wielding knuckles of power. Through an analysis of the different relationships between language standardization, technologies of writing, and modern Chinese literature around the world from the nineteenth century to the present, this study transforms how we understand the power of language in migration and how that is changing the terms of cultural dominance. Drawing from an unusual array of archival sources, this study cuts across the usual China-West divide and puts its finger on the pulse of a pending supranational world under “literary governance.”

Globalisation and migration have created a vibrant yet dysphoric world fraught with different, and sometimes competing, practices and discourses. The emergent properties of the modern world inevitably complicate the being, doing, and thinking of Chinese diasporic populations living in predominantly white, English-speaking societies. This raises questions of what 'Chineseness' is. The gradual transfer of power from the West to the East shuffles the relative cultural weights within these societies. How do the global power shifts and local cultural vibrancies come to shape the social dispositions and positions of the Chinese diaspora, and how does the Chinese diaspora respond to these changes? How does primary pedagogic work through family upbringing and secondary pedagogic work through educational socialisation complicate, obfuscate, and enrich Chineseness? Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu’s reflexive sociology on relative and relational sociocultural positions, Mu and Pang assess how historical, contemporary, and ongoing changes across social spaces of family, school, and community come to shape the intergenerational educational, cultural, and social reproduction of Chinese diasporic populations. The two authors engage in an in-depth analysis of the identity work, educational socialisation, and resilience building of young Chinese Australians and Chinese Canadians in the ever-changing lived world. The authors look particularly at the tensions and dynamics around the participants’ life and educational choices; the meaning making out of their Chinese bodies in relation to gender, race, and language; and the sociological process of resilience that enculturates them into a system of dispositions and positions required to bounce back from structural constraints.

China, with the world's largest population, numerous ethnic groups and vast geographical space, is also rich in languages. Since 2006, China's State Language Commission has been publishing annual reports on what is called "language life" in China. These reports cover language policy and planning invitatives at the national, provincial and local levels, new trends in language use in a variety of social domains, and major events concerning languages in mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan. Now for the first time, these reports are available in English for anyone interested in Chinese languge and linguistics, China's languge, education and social policies, as well as everyday language use among the ordinary people in China. The invaluable data contained in these reports provide an essential reference to researchers, professionals, policy makers, and China watchers.

This series brings together original studies and translated work on language, culture, and society in China and across the Chinese diasporas worldwide. Topics include language policy and planning, language standardization and language engineering, language contact and multilingualism, language in education, language and the media, language and the law, language and economy, language and history, and Chinese as a global language.