Silencing Shanghai: Language and Identity in Urban China

Yeah, thank you, Melissa, for the introduction.

Actually I remember it was back in 2015; that's the first time- that's when I moved to San

Francisco from New York and that was also the first time I gave a talk at USF and I

think it's a China Studies program Melissa was organizing and that was before my graduation

while I was still writing my dissertation.

And then I'm so glad and I'm grateful for this opportunity to share the work.

The book is based on my doctoral dissertation so it's kind of- at the beginning when we're

still in the process and then here I'm presenting the end product to the USF community.

So let's get started!

'Silencing Shanghai: Language and Identity in Urban China.'

A bit of overview; so Shanghai is a city of 24,000,000 people and then when you think

about "what does it mean to be a person of Shanghai?"

Or, in Mandarin Chinese, 'Shanghairen.'

Is that because someone lived there or they have the legal residency, or if anyone is

in China studies has the household registration status or 'hukou' associated with Shanghai?

Or, is it because these people, they are able to speak the vernacular or the Shanghai dialect,

'Shanghainese'?

There are various terms to call it; here, I call it 'Shanghai dialect' following the

central government's categorization or classification in terms of difference between language and

dialects.

So, my exploration of the definition of Shanghairen is situated in the broader context of state

policies in terms of language or language use, urban redevelopments in Shanghai and

internal migration policies.

The field work that contributed to or ended up in this book has two components.

One is back in 2013; I went back to Shanghai for about half year, did 50 interviews with

native Shanghainese of different gender, socioeconomic status backgrounds, at different educational

level as well, and then I went back in 2017 to do follow-up research, mostly interviews

with highly educated internal migrants because I want to tell the story of a city of, as

I mentioned, 24,000,000 population.

According to the 2020 census, about 8,000,000 are internal migrants so I cannot tell the

story of a city without including the recent internal migrants.

Besides semi-structured qualitative interviews, I also did qualitative observations in public

spaces because I study language; I want to hear which language people use and how they

use it in public space.

So the participant observation led me to places, for example: college campuses, clinics, banks,

or government offices like lobby areas, and public transit hubs, and parks.

Mostly where people will encounter strangers and then make the decision which language

to use, whether it's Mandarin Chinese or Shanghai dialect.

So that's an overview of how- oh, besides that and I also collected 250 survey responses;