Dialect as a social tool, not an identity marker: mediating rural-urban integration in contemporary China

This study focuses on how internal migration affects identity construction in China's urbanising contexts. Specifically, we focus on dialect use and identity construction among rural-to-urban migrants in Wuhan, a central Chinese city. We analyse migrants’ dialect practices, examining how structural constraints (e.g. the hukou system) and individual agency interact in shaping linguistic practices. The framework integrates Bourdieu (1990. The Logic of Practice. Translated R. Nice. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press) theory of habitus with Le Page and Tabouret-Keller (1985. Acts of identity: Creole-based approaches to language and ethnicity. Cambridge University Press) acts of identity, proposing a ‘dual-identity linguistic expression’ model. Our mixed-methods analysis reveals that Wuhan dialect proficiency shows only weak statistical correlation with urban identity recognition (|r| < 0.5), challenging essentialist assumptions that equate language with identity. The findings demonstrate three prototypical identity-constructional positions: (i) migrants as mediators between rural origins and urban destinations; (ii) migrants as generic urban residents; and (iii) migrants as permanent urban settlers, aligning with urban identities while maintaining selective rural linguistic markers. These findings contribute to sociolinguistic theory, dialectology, and urbanisation studies.