Multilingualism in Taiwan

This study investigates the extent to which multilingualism has been practiced in Taiwan and the related factors that contribute to it. Taiwan is composed of various ethnic immigrants who usurped the lands of the existing Austro-Polynesian aboriginal populations. These ethnic languages provided the basis for the way in which multilingualism manifests itself in Taiwan, and were exposed to the impact of various language policies implemented throughout history. However, how those policies affected the development of multilingualism and to what extent is yet to be investigated. This study intends to do precisely this. First, it analyzes the contact situations among the ethnolinguistic groups and concurrent interventions of language policies. This analysis provides the background of the multilingual-make-up of Taiwan. Then, the vitality of languages in the current verbal repertoire is investigated in terms of Taiwanese people's language proficiency, language use in different domains, and language attitudes. The results show that the existing multi-ethnolinguistic community that developed from different waves of immigration in Taiwan has been subject to a high level of intervention by the Government's top-down language policies. The National Language Policy, which favors Mandarin at the expense of all Taiwanese ethnic languages, has led to the rapid shift of Taiwanese ethnic languages, but attempts to reverse language shift via the Mother Tongue Language Policy have not been effectively implemented. Issues of globalization have resulted in revisions to the English Language Policy, with English becoming strongly favored though not widely used. Other (ethnic) languages, although not officially restricted in use, appear to be in the process of rapidly losing capacity at the level of the expression of pragmatic functionality.