‘Cantonese is not a dialect’: Chinese netizens’ defence of Cantonese as a regional lingua franca

This article reports on an inquiry into Chinese netizens’ online discussions related to the ‘Protecting Cantonese Movement’ in Guangzhou, Guangdong Province, on the Chinese mainland. It interprets the ideological discourses used by Chinese netizens in online discussions to protect the status of Cantonese, a regional variety of the Chinese language. These netizens were found to have drawn on the international prestige and traditional heritage of Cantonese in arguing for maintaining its status as a regional lingua franca. Drawing on research on the individualisation of society in China, this article contends that these netizens may be seen to be recontextualising the political establishment's discourses and appropriating them as powerful weapons in defence of their linguistic rights. It was also found in the inquiry that non-Cantonese-speaking migrants were problematised by the netizens as a cause of the predicament of Cantonese, creating a significant challenge for policymakers and language educators in their efforts to create a ‘harmonious’ society on the Chinese mainland. One may argue that harmony can be achieved through respecting individuals’ linguistic rights.