ENGLISH

Multilingualism in China: The Politics of Writing Reforms for Minority Languages 1949-2002

By Minglang Zhou

Book information

Publisher
De Gruyter Mouton
Year
2003
ISBN
9783110924596, 9783110178968
DOI
10.1515/9783110924596
Language
english
Format
PDF
Filesize
13 MB (14091822 bytes)
Series
Contributions to the Sociology of Language [CSL]; 89
Pages
480\484
Library
degruyter.com
Time added
2023-07-21 00:45:10

Description

Minglang 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.

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