The Sounds of Mandarin - by Janet Y Chen (Paperback)

About the Book

This book traces the surprising social history of China's spoken standard, from its creation as the national language of the early Republic in 1913 to its journey into postwar Taiwan to its reconfiguration as the common language of the People's Republic after 1949.

Book Synopsis

Mandarin Chinese is the most widely spoken language in the world today. In China, a country with a vast array of regional and local vernaculars, how was this "common language" forged? How did people learn to speak Mandarin? And what does a focus on speech instead of script reveal about Chinese language and history?

This book traces the surprising social history of China's spoken standard, from its creation as the national language of the early Republic in 1913 to its journey into postwar Taiwan to its reconfiguration as the common language of the People's Republic after 1949. Janet Y. Chen examines the process of linguistic change from multiple perspectives, emphasizing the experiences of ordinary people. After the fall of the Qing dynasty, a chorus of influential elites promoted the goal of a strong China speaking in one unified voice. Chen explores how this vision fared in practice, showing the complexities of transforming an ideological aspiration into spoken reality. She tracks linguistic change in schools, rural areas, and urban life against the backdrop of war and revolution.

The Sounds of Mandarin draws on a novel aural archive of early twentieth-century sound technology, including phonograph recordings, films, and radio broadcasts. Following the uneven trajectory of standard speech, this book sheds new light on the histories of language, nationalism, and identity in China and Taiwan.

Review Quotes

A valuable addition to the growing scholarship on Chinese languages and scripts.-- "China Quarterly"

The Sounds of Mandarin is the definitive study of the modern Chinese quest for a unified spoken language. Janet Y. Chen transports readers into the meeting rooms where linguistic models were debated and the classrooms, movie theaters, and military units where the national language was taught. She captures the elusiveness of crafting a single national standard and the challenge of making it a living language.--Robert Culp, author of The Power of Print in Modern China: Intellectuals and Industrial Publishing from the End of Empire to Maoist State Socialism

For years, scholars mostly assumed that we knew the roughly parallel stories of 'linguistic unification, ' both on the Chinese mainland and in Taiwan: a slow but inexorable triumph of standardization pushed by strong states armed with new technologies. Janet Y. Chen's exciting book shows us something radically different: stop-start cycles of intense campaigns; powerful, multivalent resistance; changing, politically fraught standards; and divergent outcomes.--Kenneth Pomeranz, author of The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy

In The Sounds of Mandarin, Chen explores the complex process by which Chinese nation-builders struggled to define and promulgate a shared national language, to enable the state to talk to its citizens and its citizens to talk to one another. The result is a surprising and fascinating window into the politics of modernizing China.--Michael Szonyi, professor of history and former director of the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, Harvard University

In prose that is as clear as it is elegant, Chen's book introduces the myriad actors--reformists, linguists, educators, and state officials--who negotiated the social stakes, political implications, and pedagogical processes of making the Chinese nation speak, utter, sing, and chant in unity. This is a wonderful read by a masterful historian.--Eugenia Lean, author of Vernacular Industrialism in China: Local Innovation and Translated Technologies in the Making of a Cosmetics Empire, 1900-1940

This absorbing narrative traces efforts to establish a common spoken language across China's national expanse. Ingenious reformers, determined state authorities, and beleaguered teachers were no match for China's cacophonous soundscape. Placing spoken language at the heart of historical explanation, The Sounds of Mandarin is by turns hilarious and sobering.--Gail Hershatter, University of California, Santa Cruz

About the Author

Janet Y. Chen is professor of history and East Asian studies at Princeton University. She is the author of Guilty of Indigence: The Urban Poor in China, 1900-1953 (2012).