JCMC 9 (1) November 2003
Collab-U  CMC Play  E-Commerce Symposium Net Law  InfoSpaces Usenet
  NetStudy VEs VOs O-Journ HigherEd Conversation Cyberspace Web Commerce
Vol. 6 No. 1  Vol. 6 No. 2  Vol. 6 No. 3  Vol. 6 No. 4  Vol. 7 No. 1  Vol. 7 No. 2  Vol. 7 No. 3  Vol. 7 No. 4  Vol. 8 No. 1  Vol. 8 No. 2

The Multilingual and Multi-Orthographic Taiwan-Based Internet: Creative Uses of Writing Systems on College-Affiliated BBSs

Hsi-Yao Su
University of Texas at Austin

Abstract

This study investigates creative uses of writing systems on the electronic bulletin boards (BBSs) of two college student organizations in Taipei, Taiwan. Data were collected from postings on bulletin boards and semi-structured interviews with members of the student organizations, and analyzed using qualitative and ethnographic methods. Four popular creative uses of writing systems are identified and discussed: the rendering in Chinese characters of the sounds of English, Taiwanese, and Taiwanese-accented Mandarin, and the recycling of a transliteration alphabet used in elementary education. It is argued that these practices are enabled by the written nature of the Internet, the orthographic systems available in the society, and the multilingual situation in Taiwan, and that the everyday meanings associated with the writing systems and languages are appropriated and reproduced through online practice, resulting in a unique mode of communication in its own right.

Introduction

Hundreds of millions of people around the globe communicate with each other daily through the Internet, with users appropriating the medium for both instrumental functions and recreational purposes. Along with the growing influence of English as the international language of choice in both online and face-to-face interactions, the seemingly ubiquitous nature of the Internet has created a myth in some parts of the Western world that this Web-based environment is a "global village" that is culturally and linguistically transparent (cf. Hawisher & Selfe, 2000). Contributing to the rise of this myth are the prominent role of English globally, and the fact that the Internet was first created in the United States in the late 1960s and early 1970s (Hafner & Lyon, 1996), and popularized in Western countries where English is used in daily communication. The myth of linguistic transparency is reflected in the relative lack of research on computer-mediated communication in non-English-based Internet environments.

Although the Internet may be accelerating the globalization process, each society or culture tends to have a set of localized linguistic practices on the Internet that distinguishes its members from that of other significant groups (Appadurai, 1996; Hongladarom, 2000). This study is an attempt to investigate the linguistic features of computer-mediated communication in a non-Western context: the Taiwan-based Internet, defined as sites that are frequented by Taiwanese users, and for which servers are housed in Taiwan. Specifically, this study examines creative uses of writing systems in college-affiliated Electronic Bulletin Board Services (hereafter BBSs), including the rendering in Chinese characters of the sounds of English, Taiwanese, and Taiwanese-accented Mandarin, and the recycling of a transliteration alphabet used in elementary education.

The investigation aims to contribute to research on non-Western Internet practices in several ways. First, the primary writing system used on the Taiwan-based Internet is the Chinese writing system. The morphosyllabic, logographic characteristics of this system contrast markedly with the more familiar alphabetic systems examined in the majority of research on computer-mediated communication, and therefore allow us to investigate how the nature of writing systems impacts Internet users' linguistic practices. Second, Taiwan is a multilingual society composed of speakers of various languages and dialects. Examining how Taiwan's multilingual environment and the language attitudes associated with each linguistic variety interact with online language use can provide insights into how Internet users employ the various linguistic and cultural resources at hand in response to changes in their mode of communication. As I explore later in this article, the written nature of the Internet medium, the orthographic systems available in Taiwanese society, and the multilingual situation in Taiwan all contribute to the emergence of linguistic practices unique to the Taiwan-based Internet.

This article is organized as follows: Research questions and methodology are presented first, followed by a brief review of the theoretical frameworks drawn upon in this study, an introduction to the sociolinguistic situation in Taiwan, and a brief overview of writing systems and word-processing there. Four creative uses of writing systems are then introduced and analyzed with respect to their linguistic characteristics and social meanings.

Research Questions and Methodology

This study is part of an ongoing research project that investigates the related issues of language identities and ideologies as manifested in both on-line and face-to-face interactions in Taiwan. In the current study, I seek to examine creative uses of writing systems on two recreational BBSs and a Web-based BBS that belong to two college student organizations at National Taiwan University (NTU) in Taipei, Taiwan. The BBSs and Web-based BBS differ in their interfaces, but function similarly with regard to message posting, the locus of observation in this study. The two student organizations are both alumni organizations from regional high schools. Within each organization the students' regional backgrounds are quite homogeneous: One is composed of students from Taipei, the capital in Northern Taiwan, and the other is for students from Tainan, a historic city in Southern Taiwan. The two organizations were chosen because one goal of the project is to observe how college students construct multiple identities through language use when regionality is highlighted. The current study, however, does not focus on regional differences, nor has any substantial regional difference concerning language use on the BBSs been identified in the on-going research project. Except for the Web BBS, the BBSs in question do not set restrictions on access, but those who post are usually members of the student organizations, and posters usually know each other, at least by their online identities.

This study takes a qualitative and ethnographic approach (Hymes, 1972). A primary set of interactional data was collected between Summer 2002 and Spring 2003. Participant observation and logging of messages serve as the primary methods for data collection. I acquired access to the BBSs of the two student organizations by personally participating in the two online communities. During this period, a total of 235 messages containing the four creative uses of writing systems were collected out of a total of approximately 3500 messages that were posted. Linguistic practices informally observed in portal Websites and chat rooms, along with a set of data collected in 1998 from two Taiwanese campus-based BBSs, are used as supplementary data. A final set of data comes from semi-structured interviews in an informal context, students' lunch gatherings, in which 11 students from the two student organizations were asked to comment on the four forms of play with writing systems and on Internet language use in general. All the interviewees are active on the BBSs in question, and some of their postings are among those analyzed in this study. The interviewees' ages range from 18 to 22. Seven are originally from Tainan, while four are from Taipei; all of them currently reside in Taipei and attend NTU, except for one student who had recently graduated when the interviews were conducted.

The focus of this study is an analysis of four forms of play with writing systems. Specifically, the research questions I pose are:

Key Theoretical Concepts

In this section, I briefly review three theoretical concepts explicitly drawn upon in the analysis.

Indexicality

One of the leading researchers in the field of language socialization, Elinor Ochs, in her work "Indexing gender" (1992), investigates how "gender ideologies are socialized, sustained, and transformed through talk, particularly through verbal practices that recur innumerable times in the lives of members of social groups" (p. 336). The current study does not touch upon gender issues. However, the theory of indexicality developed in Ochs (1992) is helpful in understanding how certain languages, dialects, or forms of language use come to convey various social meanings. Ochs identifies two kinds of indexicality: direct and indirect. An example provided by her illustrates their differences and how ideological connections are made through them. In Japanese, the use of the sentence-final particle wa is often associated with female-like speech, while the use of the sentence-final particle ze is linked with male-like speech. This connection is made through two layers of indexicality, that is, wa directly indexes delicateness, and since delicateness is a preferred social image for women, the particle comes to indirectly index female voice. Similarly, ze is directly linked to coarseness and indirectly indexes male voice. Through indexicality, ideological connections between linguistic forms and gender are made. Through similar processes, the various languages and dialects spoken in Taiwan come to convey certain social meanings, as is discussed later in this article.

Symbolic Markets and Alternative Markets

Another useful theoretical concept is Pierre Bourdieu's notion of symbolic markets and alternative markets. In Bourdieu (1977, 1994), each linguistic utterance can be understood as having a certain value in relation to a specific linguistic market. Part of a speaker's competence is knowing how price is formed and how to produce highly valued linguistic products. However, such knowledge and ability are not evenly distributed: Dominant individuals have the capacity to impose the law of price formation on the dominated and profit from the symbolic market. For example, the designation of an official, legitimate language is an attempt by the dominant group to create a unified linguistic market during state formation. However, alternative markets exist as well, governed by their own laws of price formation, in which the dominant laws of price formation are temporarily suspended. As is shown later, Mandarin, English, Taiwanese, and Taiwanese-accented Mandarin all convey multiple, and at times contradictory, social meanings because they are valued differently in relation to different linguistic markets.

Playfulness

The term "playful" connotes "a mood of frolicsomeness, lightheartedness, and wit" (Sutton-Smith, 1997, p. 147). Of three components of playfulness-spontaneity, manifest joy, and a sense of humor (Lieberman, 1977, p. 6), it is humor that is most in evidence in this study, although fun or joy are also involved. Generally, the humor derives from the incongruous discrepancy between literal and intended meanings (Palmer, 1994). Regarding language play, Crystal (1998) notes:
We play with language when we manipulate it as a source of enjoyment, either for ourselves or for the benefit of others.....We take some linguistic feature-such as a word, a phrase, a sentence,...a group of sounds, a series of letters-and make it do things it does not normally do....we do it...for fun. (p. 1)
A number of researchers have noted a tendency toward playfulness in online communication. Werry (1996) suggests that computer-mediated communication places physical constraints on the display of contextualization cues (Gumperz, 1982), such as prosody, gesture, and addressivity. As the link between speakers and listeners is weakened, speakers must add variety in written discourse to compete for attention. Herring (1999) proposes that the loose coherence and disrupted adjacency in both synchronous and asynchronous forms of computer-mediated communication invite greater instances of humorous play. Danet (2001) identifies four major factors that fostered playfulness in the Internet medium in the mid- to late-1990s:
Objective features of the medium itself, and particularly its interactive, dynamic, immersive nature; hacker culture with its valorization of wit and play with symbols and typography, and a predilection for various forms of subversiveness; the "Wild West" quality of cyberspace as a new and relatively unsettled social and cultural frontier governed by few norms; and the masking of identity - the lack of cues to physical appearance, ethnic identity, gender, etc. (pp. 362-363)
The present study examines four forms of play with writing systems and factors that foster playfulness on the Taiwanese BBSs.

Taiwan's Sociolinguistic Background

An introduction to the historical development and sociolinguistic situation in Taiwan is necessary to facilitate understanding of the various linguistic practices on the Taiwan-based Internet. The better-known part of Taiwanese history begins with the Chinese settlement established by immigrants from the coastal areas of mainland China in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The majority of immigrants came from Fujian province and spoke various dialects of Southern Min, a Southern Chinese language from mainland China, which eventually became the predominant language in Taiwan. The dialect of Southern Min spoken in Taiwan today is referred to as Taiwanese. In 1949 the mainland China-derived Nationalist Government lost the civil war against the Chinese Communist Party, and subsequently retreated to Taiwan, which created another wave of immigration to the island. The immigrants who moved to Taiwan during this period and their descendants are called Mainlanders. The central government of the Nationalist Party was reestablished in Taipei, and Mainlanders became the dominant group in terms of political power. Mandarin Chinese was later promoted by the Nationalist government as the only legitimate language in Taiwan and literally became known as the "national language" or guoyu.

Since the mid-twentieth century, the influence of Taiwanese has gradually declined, despite being the native language of up to 70 percent of Taiwanese people (Huang, 1993). However, a dramatic political change took place in the mid-1980s, which in turn contributed to the emergence of Taiwanization in political, cultural, and social arenas and a Taiwanese language movement in the 1990s (Hsiau, 1997). The governmental ban on ethnic languages other than Mandarin has been lifted. In a related development, an increasing number of politicians who speak Taiwanese as their first language have risen to power, including the current president, Chen Shui-Bian. However, although the sociolinguistic status of Taiwanese has improved, Mandarin continues to be considered a more prestigious language.

To understand language use in Taiwan today, one must appreciate two salient factors, namely, generational language shift and differences in language use between rural and urban areas (Huang, 1993; Su, 2000; Young, 1989). In rural areas, the use of Taiwanese prevails. It is the language of daily life, spoken within the family and among friends; moreover, it is used in local institutions. Although members of the younger generation learn and use Mandarin at school, they remain fluent in Taiwanese. In contrast, in urban areas where the majority of Mainlanders reside, the use of Mandarin penetrates even informal settings. Generational language shift is particularly salient in cities like Taipei, as many members of younger generations who have Southern Min heritage exhibit limited ability in their parents' native language, and consequently, mainly speak Mandarin in both formal and informal settings (Hsu, 1999).

Recent sociopolitical developments in Taiwan foreground competing language ideologies in the country, including social meanings associated with being Taiwanese, and also highlight disparate and sometimes contradictory attitudes toward the Taiwanese language. On the one hand, the use of Taiwanese may directly index age and rurality, and may further be indirectly linked to undesired qualities such as backwardness, or inversely, to positive qualities such as congeniality (cf. Ochs, 1992). On the other hand, Taiwanese is promoted by some native activists as a valuable, sophisticated, and, to a certain degree, "purer" language than Mandarin, in that its sound structure is closer to that of Middle Chinese, the Chinese language spoken during the sixth to the tenth centuries. It is also valued as a symbol of Taiwanese independence in certain contexts (Hsiau, 1997). However, although gaining in prestige, the Taiwanese language is still more of a spoken than a written language, and it lacks a standardized writing system. Various writing systems have been proposed, ranging from character-based to alphabetic (Chiung, 1999; Hsiau, 1997; Huang, 1993), yet an agreement has not been reached among either the public or scholars, and the ability to read and write a Taiwanese text is generally restricted to a small circle of scholars and political activists.

The co-existence of Mandarin and Taiwanese in Taiwan inevitably leads to mutual influences resulting from contact between the two languages. Among the many examples is Taiwanese-accented Mandarin (Taiwan guoyu), which refers to Mandarin as spoken by speakers who have a strong Taiwanese accent, and is stereotypically associated with members of older generations and less educated rural residents. Note that the Taiwanese-accented Mandarin discussed here is a cultural stereotype of the non-standard Mandarin spoken by native speakers of Taiwanese. It does not refer to the national dialect of Mandarin spoken in Taiwan, which is termed "Taiwan Mandarin" in linguistic research such as that by Cheng (1997), as contrasted with the Mandarin spoken in mainland China or Singapore and elsewhere.1

Taiwanese-accented Mandarin shares with Taiwanese the sociolinguistic meanings of backwardness and congeniality, but lacks the purist value Taiwanese holds and thus is a highly stigmatized variety among Taiwanese speakers. In sum, these three linguistic varieties-Mandarin, Taiwanese, and Taiwanese-accented Mandarin-enjoy different overt prestige: In formal contexts, Mandarin holds the highest prestige, while Taiwanese-accented Mandarin is generally the most stigmatized. Taiwanese seems to be located in between, although, in Bourdieu's (1977, 1991) terms, it sometimes represents an alternative market.

In addition to Mandarin and Taiwanese, English plays an increasingly important role in Taiwan. Although not spoken as a native language, with its global importance, English is emphasized in Taiwanese education, and, moreover, is considered highly prestigious. Nonetheless, it is not used in everyday speech. Only a very small portion of the population (usually people who have lived in English-speaking countries) has a fluent command of English. In daily interactions, educated Taiwanese speakers may use English words or insert common phrases (such as "Oh, my god") into their Chinese language conversations, but the opposite does not tend to occur. There are several other linguistic varieties spoken in Taiwan (e.g., Hakka and the aboriginal languages), but their use is not as widespread as those mentioned above, nor are they relevant to this discussion.

Writing in Taiwan

A brief explanation of the relationship between the Taiwanese language and Chinese characters is necessary to facilitate understanding of the examples analyzed below. As mentioned earlier, Taiwanese derives from a dialect of Southern Min, a Chinese language from southern China. Taiwanese and Mandarin, a Chinese language from northern China, belong to the same language family, Sino-Tibetan, but are mutually unintelligible. In many introductory linguistics books, this unique relationship between Chinese languages is often cited. Despite differences as vast as those between Dutch and English (Chao, 1976), Chinese languages are often reported as sharing a common writing system that renders texts mutually intelligible (e.g., Wardhaugh, 1992).

While this simplified explanation of the relationship between Chinese languages is informative, it creates an imprecise impression that the Chinese languages spoken today-such as Southern Min, Cantonese, and Mandarin-can be written with a shared set of Chinese characters. Instead of claiming that Chinese languages share a common writing system, it is probably more appropriate to say that many Chinese languages make use of Chinese characters as part of their writing system. Historically, Chinese characters were developed to write Classical Chinese (also called literary Chinese), a written language functionally different from the vernacular languages spoken in different areas in China. Until as recently as the beginning of the twentieth century, Chinese characters were still used only for Classical Chinese.

However, in the 1920s, a movement advocating a colloquial writing system emerged in China. This movement managed to reform classical Chinese writing practices and to develop a new form of writing based on colloquial Mandarin, China's national language at that time. Since then, a misconception which equates Chinese characters with Mandarin has become increasingly prevalent among the Taiwanese in general. The Taiwanese government's promotion of Mandarin and the lack of standardized writing systems for other Chinese languages further reinforce this impression. Today, an educated Taiwanese speaker may find it relatively easy to read a Classical Chinese text aloud in Taiwanese, but to write colloquial Taiwanese poses a major problem. We can find associations between some Taiwanese words and Chinese characters, and according to Hsiau (1997), approximately 70 percent of Taiwanese can be codified through Chinese characters, but the other 30 percent of Taiwanese words cannot be written with the characters in current use. Moreover, Taiwan's populace is not adequately educated about the relationship between the Taiwanese language and Chinese characters (Cheng, 1989; Chiung, 1999; DeFrancis, 1984; Hsu, 1992; Huang, 1993; Norman, 1988).

The Chinese writing system is morphosyllabic (DeFrancis, 1984): Each character has an inherent meaning and is associated with a single-syllable pronunciation. The inherent meaning usually stays constant across Chinese languages, while the phonological realizations of each character may vary among these languages. However, for social and historical reasons, it is the Mandarin pronunciation that is the most salient both in print texts and in the online environment in Taiwan. In this article, all indications of the pronunciations of Chinese characters refer to Mandarin pronunciations, in which case the above description that each character is associated with a single-syllable pronunciation mostly holds true.

Word-Processing in Taiwan

Since Chinese characters are totally different from the Roman alphabet and are far greater in number, keyboard entry of Chinese requires special software programs that map each character onto two to five keys on the keyboard, typically based on either the shape or the pronunciation of the character. Various input methods have been proposed. A Website dedicated to Chinese word-processing (http://input.foruto.com; unfortunately, only in Chinese) lists over sixty input methods, among which the most popular in Taiwan are the Zhuyin input method, the Cangjie method, and the Wuxiami method. Zhuyin inputs by sound, while Cangjie and Wuxiami input by shape. Readers of this paper who do not read Chinese may want to visit http://www.honco.net/japanese/05/page4.html, a page that offers brief explanations and animated demonstrations of how several methods work (in Taiwan, as well as Japan, mainland China and Korea). Animations are available for both Zhuyin and Cangjie.

Zhuyin, or Mandarin Phonetic Symbols, is an alphabetic writing system used exclusively in Taiwan to aid in the acquisition of Chinese characters during elementary education. The Zhuyin alphabet is comprised of 37 symbols, each of which is part of a Chinese character. Thus, Zhuyin symbols resemble characters to a certain degree, but are easily differentiated by literate Chinese readers. Each symbol represents either a vowel or a consonant in Mandarin. On a typical Taiwanese keyboard (Figure 1), the Zhuyin symbols appear in the lower-right corner of the keys. For example, the "A" key also represents "", the third symbol of the Zhuyin alphabet, which is pronounced approximately as "mo" or "m" in English. To enter a character such as (rice, pronounced as "mi"), a user of the Zhuyin method switches from the default Roman alphabet to the Zhuyin alphabet and then carries out four steps: (1) first, he or she keys in ""; (2) next, he or she inserts"" (which reads as "yi," looks something like a dash, and shares a key with the Roman letter "U"); then (3) a tone marker which shares a key with the numeral "3" is entered "". This produces a list of homonyms from which a user must choose (step 4). Figure 2 shows the windows appearing immediately after the Zhuyin sumbols are entered. The left window indicates the Zhuyin symbols that have been keyed in, while the right window displays a list of characters that are pronounced as "mi" with the intended tone. The last step is to select the intended character from the list, which is number 1 in this case.



Figure 1. A Taiwanese computer keyboard



Figure 2. The last step in the Zhuyin input method: A list of homonyms

The Cangjie input method, on the other hand, is shape-based. It assigns keys to twenty four radicals, or character roots. The radicals appear in the lower-left corner of the keys (see Figure 1). The first step when inputting is to divide each character in one's mind into one to five parts, depending on how complex the character is. Each part is mapped onto a radical. Inputting the correct sequence of radicals produces the intended character. For example, the character ("bright") can be divided into two parts, left and right. The left part is mapped onto the "A" key, which also represents the radical ("sun"), while the right part is mapped onto the "B" key, representing the radical ("moon"). Striking the sequence A, B outputs the intended character (Juni'chiro, 1999-2001; Friends of Cangjie, n.d.). Wuxiami, an input method gaining popularity among professional typists, is similar to Cangjie in its shaped-based principle, but differs significantly in details.

Among the three, the Zhuyin input method is probably the most accessible to the public, since the acquisition of the Zhuyin alphabet is fundamental in elementary education in Taiwan. Mastery of Cangjie or Wuxiami, on the other hand, requires memorization of the mapping principles for character parts, radicals, and keys at the initial stage. However, once the principles are memorized, these methods input much more speedily and accurately than the Zhuyin method, mainly because the number of keys involved in inputting a character is usually smaller in Cangjie and Wuxiami. Cangjie and Wuxiami are therefore preferred choices among professional typists, or those whose life involves a large amount of Chinese word-processing. They also require a slightly higher level of literacy in Chinese. That is, one has to know the shape of the character, not simply the pronunciation of a word, to be able to make use of such an input method.

Language Use on the Taiwan-based Internet

In this section, I analyze patterns of language use on Taiwan-based BBSs, focusing on three creative uses of writing systems which I call Stylized English, Stylized Taiwanese-accented Mandarin, and Stylized Taiwanese, notions that are based upon Rampton's (1995) and Coupland's (2001) concepts of stylization. A comparison between the three stylized uses is followed by a discussion of Zhuyin Wen, writing involving the alphabetic transliteration system used in elementary education. Among the 235 messages collected for this study, 34 contain switching between Chinese characters and English (figure 3, below); 17 contain Stylized English (figure 4, below); 44 contain Stylized Taiwanese-accented Mandarin (figure 5, below); 39 contain Stylized Taiwanese (example 4 below); 87 contain Zhuyin Wen (figure 7, below); and 14 contain more than one of the aforementioned patterns of writing.

Stylized Representations (Use of Chinese Characters to Represent Linguistic Varieties Other than Mandarin)

In addition to being used in everyday interactions, the languages spoken in Taiwan also serve as linguistic resources for a variety of discursive practices on the Taiwan-based Internet. The main language on Taiwanese BBSs is Mandarin, which users write in standardized traditional Chinese characters.2 Occasionally, English words or expressions written in the Roman alphabet appear in this otherwise Chinese-dominant environment. An example of an English word embedded in a Chinese sentence is given in figure 3.


Figure 3.

This pattern of language use is reminiscent of the spoken Mandarin-English code-switching that occasionally occurs between educated speakers in Taiwan. In contrast to the linguistic practices discussed later in this section, this pattern does not seem to involve playfulness, though it does represent the construction of complex multilingual identities (Myers-Scotton, 1993).

In addition to Mandarin and occasional English code-switching, other languages and dialects-such as Taiwanese, Taiwanese-accented Mandarin, English, Hakka-accented Mandarin, or even Japanese-are also playfully written with Chinese characters in BBS postings. The most popular creative uses of writing systems involve the stylized use of Chinese characters to mimic Taiwanese, Taiwanese-accented Mandarin, and English.

The use of the term "stylized" to describe the representation of other languages in Chinese characters is based on Rampton's and Coupland's concepts of stylization. In his study of cross-ethnic interaction among adolescents in a multi-ethnic neighborhood in England, Rampton (1995) reports a phenomenon in which young people put on an "Asian" accent to project a comic persona, which he terms "stylized Asian English." Coupland (2001) later explicitly defines stylization as "the knowing deployment of culturally familiar styles and identities that are marked as deviating from those predictably associated with the current speaking context" (p. 345). He further emphasizes that "stylization operates in a specific mode of social action, PERFORMANCE in the strong, theatrical, and quasi-theatrical sense of that term" (p. 346, emphasis his). In the current study, the terms Stylized English, Stylized Taiwanese-accented Mandarin, and Stylized Taiwanese are so named, first, because such practices are marked choices on the Taiwan-based Internet, and their use carries a strong sense of playfulness and performs an online persona. Second, the online practices they denote carry with them the social meanings of English, Taiwanese-accented Mandarin, and Taiwanese from more familiar daily contexts. The everyday meanings of these languages and dialects are appropriated and reproduced through these practices, resulting in a unique mode of communication.

In these playful linguistic practices, characters are adopted that represent sounds similar to the phonology of the target languages or accents, regardless of their original meanings. While the string of characters may not be readily transparent, to the initiated user the characters are easily recognized as representing sounds that humorously mimic their English, Taiwanese, or Taiwanese-accented Mandarin counterparts.

Two examples of Stylized English are given in Figure 4. Each example presents a case of this form of language play and its intended meaning. The actual production of Stylized English is indicated by an arrow. Hanyu Pinyin (hereafter Pinyin), a Mandarin Romanization system, is also provided to indicate the sound structure of the two phrases.4 In Figure 4a, for example, the phrase in Chinese characters reads as "ou-mai-ga," which is close to the pronunciation of the common English phrase, "Oh, my god." Yet the literal meaning of each character tells a different story.


Figure 4a. Stylized English, first example


Figure 4b. Stylized English, second example

In addition to the creative use of the morphosyllabic nature of Chinese orthography, the tonal characteristics of Mandarin Chinese are often employed in stylized English. In Figure 4a, the high-low-high-falling tone contour of the three characters vividly mimics the intonation often associated with the familiar English expression, "Oh, my god." The missing "d" in the final position of "god" is also reminiscent of the preference in Taiwanese-style English for open syllables, making the phrase sound as though it were uttered by a Taiwanese, rather than a native English, speaker. In Figure 4b, the low-high-falling tone contour resembles the intonation associated with the phrase "good night" as well. Stylized English plays down the stiffness and arrogance often linked in Taiwan with the use of English, a language with international status and overt prestige, lending this alternative linguistic practice a sense of locality and congeniality while simultaneously maintaining a level of sophistication associated with English.

The above examples are a type of "rebus writing," which is also found in English and other languages. Symbols representing one or more words are used to represent another word which is similar in sound, regardless of the original meaning of the symbols (Fromkin & Rodman, 1998; Matthews, 1997). For example, in the English expression "back 2 school," the sound of "2" is borrowed to represent the word "to." The original meaning of the borrowed symbol is ignored, and only its sound is employed as a hint to the intended meaning. Because of the non-alphabetic, morphosyllabic nature of the Chinese writing system, rebus writing is even more productive in Chinese than in English.

Taiwanese-accented Mandarin is often playfully written using Chinese characters as well. Two examples of Stylized Taiwanese-accented Mandarin are given in Figure 5.


Figure 5a. Stylized Taiwanese-accented Mandarin, first example



Figure 5b. Stylized Taiwanese-accented Mandarin, second example

This pattern of writing has been used on the Taiwan-based BBSs for at least half a decade. The chat room data I collected in 1998 already contained a large amount of Taiwanese-accented Mandarin. However, with the passage of time, the novelty and creativity involved in this linguistic practice seem to be declining, and the characters involved are more conventionalized in the 2002 than the 1998 data.

In addition to Taiwanese-accented Mandarin and English, Taiwanese expressions appear on the Taiwan-based Internet as well. When Internet users attempt to write Taiwanese, two strategies are often employed. One strategy involves finding the Chinese character that corresponds exactly with a Taiwanese word. The other is to pick characters whose Mandarin pronunciations resemble that of the intended Taiwanese expression. Since many Taiwanese words do not have corresponding Chinese characters which remain in use-and even if there were, the general public is usually not aware of their existence-the second strategy is much more frequently used. The result of this second strategy is a creative use of writing similar to the Stylized English and Taiwanese-accented Mandarin presented earlier. Two examples of Stylized Taiwanese are given in Figure 6. The characters in bold refer to the exact place where Stylized Taiwanese occurs. The Pinyin provides the Mandarin pronunciation for each character.


Figure 6a. Stylized Taiwanese, first example



Figure 6b. Stylized Taiwanese, second example

The Mandarin pronunciation of pa pa zao and xiong xiong in Figures 6a and 6b represent approximate pronunciations of the intended Taiwanese expressions "running around energetically" and "suddenly," respectively. Although such a strategy seems to be a simple expedient, it has become increasingly popular due to its novelty and the playful incongruity it engenders between literal and intended meanings. In both examples, the repetition of sounds connotes child-like speech, and enhances the playfulness associated with such practices.

The novelty of this linguistic practice arises from two sources. First, it is uncommon to find Taiwanese in written form; and second, even in cases where written Taiwanese is attempted (for example, in serious articles published by advocates of Taiwanese standardization), Taiwanese expressions are rarely represented in this way. Although viewed negatively from a purist's perspective, such unorthodox representations of Taiwanese expressions provide Internet users an opportunity to play creatively with available linguistic resources.

Zhuyin Wen (Recycling of a Transliteration Alphabet Used in Elementary Education)

In addition to the three patterns of writing discussed above, a new linguistic practice is emerging on the Taiwan-based Internet that is being criticized, even as it gains in popularity. Unlike the above three stylistic forms, this newer practice has a widely recognized name: Zhuyin Wen. Specifically, Wen refers to "written language." Zhuyin is the alphabetic writing system used exclusively in Taiwan and discussed above.

Zhuyin Wen refers to an online writing style in which some or all Chinese characters are replaced by Zhuyin. An example is given in Figure 7.



Figure 7. Zhuyin Wen

In Zhuyin Wen, the complete phonetic representation of a character is reduced to a consonant (or less commonly, a vowel). The recovery of the referential meaning in Zhuyin Wen is not always easy: A reader has to figure out the missing vowels. In addition, tonal information, an important aspect of Chinese languages, is not provided in Zhuyin Wen. Thus, a reader has to infer the intended meaning based on context and partial linguistic clues. Unlike Stylized English, Stylized Taiwanese-accented Mandarin, and Stylized Taiwanese, all of which call the reader's attention to the incompatibility between sound and meaning, the playfulness of (as well as resentment toward) Zhuyin Wen derives from its underspecified quality and the juxtaposition of Chinese characters, the norm of writing, and an alphabet associated with imperfectly-acquired literacy. The use of Zhuyin Wen also conveys a sense of cuteness or naïveté because it is reminiscent of compositions written by elementary school students, which mix Chinese characters and Zhuyin symbols.

One may wonder whether the emergence of Zhuyin Wen is related to the prevalence of the Zhuyin method of word-processing in Taiwan. Since it is easier to type Zhuyin symbols than to use the shape-based Cangjie or Wuxiami methods, their use might encourage the practices of Zhuyin Wen. While the Zhuyin input method has been used since the early 1990's, the prevalence of Zhuyin Wen online is a relatively recent development. There are two possible reasons for its increasing popularity. First, as one interviewee suggests, as the Internet becomes more accessible to the public, the average age of initial contact with the Internet has been lowered. Many young students, who have not yet mastered the Chinese writing system or have not acquired an alternative input method by shape such as Cangjie or Wuxiami, are already frequent Internet users. They may well display a greater tendency than older people to use the Zhuyin input system and to write in Zhuyin Wen. In turn, their language use may influence language practices on the Taiwan-based Internet to a certain degree. This possibility is not addressed in this paper, which focuses exclusively on university students, a homogeneous age group, at one point in time. A second possibility is that the use of Zhuyin Wen, along with other creative writing practices, engenders group solidarity among Taiwanese Internet users, and that this in turn reinforces its use. This possibility is explored in the next section of this paper.

Functions of the Four Creative Writing Practices and Attitudes Toward Their Use

Group Solidarity and Socialization

Having described the four forms of creative play with writing systems, we now turn to analyze their functions and the factors that contribute to their popularization on the Internet. In contrast to the earlier discussion of technological determinants of playfulness online, in this section the focus is on interactional and social factors.

One such factor that seems to be especially important in the Taiwanese BBSs is group solidarity. Baym (1995) observes that humorous performances can be used to create group solidarity among Internet users. The comments of the student interviewees relate creative play with writing systems to an awareness of group practices. Consider, for example, the response of SJJ, a male freshman at NTU from a Southern Min family in Tainan, to the interviewer's question about the functions of the stylized writing patterns. HY refers to the interviewer.
(HY asks SJJ what kind of functions the stylized patterns of writing serve.)
SJJ: hmm, yinggai shuo shi dajia zheyang ni jiu hui zheyang ba.
        Maybe it is because when others do it you'll do it too.
A different interviewee, WL, a graduate student at an American university, gives a more elaborated but similar answer when asked to comment on Stylized Taiwanese-accented Mandarin (Su, in press).
HY: ...Na ni zheyang xie huoshi ni kandao bieren zheyang xie ni juede, ta de gongneng shi shenme? Haishi keyi dadao shenme xiaoguo ma?
       ...when you write like this or when you see someone write like this, what do you think the function is? Or what kind of effect can one get?
WL: Chuncui youqu haowan la.
        It's simply for fun.
HY: Hmhmm.
WL: Dui a. Yinggai ye keyi shuo you yidian, jiusuan shi na zhong, e, jiaozuo, en, zhe ge jiao shenme, liuxing ba.
        Yeah, maybe also a little, uh, I am not sure how to say it, maybe trendy?
HY: Hmhmm.
WL: Jiushi yinwei haoxiang, turan zhijian haoxiang wanglu shang zhe zhong yuyan henduo.
        Because all of a sudden, there are so many such usages on the Internet.
HY: Hmhmm.
WL: Ranhou yeshi gen zhe dajia liuxing, ranhou, ziji ye, ye wei le hao wan ranhou ye gen zhe dajia zheyang yong zhe zhong yuyan zhe yang.
        So I just follow the trend, and I myself follow everyone and use this kind of usage for fun.
As the above comments suggest, there is a socialization process that takes place on the BBSs (and the Internet in general), giving rise to trends and in-group usages. Through a shared history of engagement, BBS users negotiate the meanings of their experiences, and develop routines and styles of communication. Language practices on the BBSs become highly stylized, such that a new user must undergo socialization to learn to be a fully competent participant in the community. On these BBSs the exploration and use of various forms of language play are highly encouraged.

The playful effect of the practices discussed in this paper does not come solely from the form of language itself, but also from negotiated meanings attached to them, and from the group's recognition of them as funny, friendly overtures. The following example contains three excerpts in which interviewees comment specifically on these effects.

Excerpt (a): YQ is a female sophomore from a Southern Min family in Tainan.
HY: Mm, na ni juede xie de ren weishenme hui xiang zheyang xie, huozhe shi, ni juede you shenme xiaoguo ma?
        Zheyang xie youmeiyou shenme xiaoguo?
        Mm. Why do you think people would want to write like this, or do you think there is any kind of effect?
        What kind of effect does this style of writing have?
YQ: Zhuang keai a.
        (They are) trying to look cute.
HY: Zhuang keai, kan qilai bijiao nianqing zheyangzi.
        Trying to look cute, so that they appear younger.
YQ: Dui a. Buran jiushi ta juede zheyang xie qilai, ganjue, bijiao qinqie ba.
        Right. Or he/she might think this style of writing sounds friendlier.

Excerpt (b): FS is a male senior from Taipei
(When FS was asked the same question)
FS: Biru shuo zheyang bijiao qinqie a, huoshi bijiao haowan zheyangzi.
        For example it is friendlier, or funnier.

Excerpt (c): SY is a male from Taipei recently graduated from NTU. HW is a male junior from Taipei.
(When SY and HW were asked the same question)
SY: Biru shuo ni you yi tian xinqing hen hao, ranhou gen renjia liaotian de shihou, keneng you shihou, you shihou jiu yong zhe zhong dongxi.
        For example, suppose one day you are in a good mood. Then when you chat with someone, you might use such things.
HY: Hmhmm.
SY: Dui a. Huo shi ni xiang yao qiaopi de jianghua.
        Right. Or when you want to talk jocularly.
HY: Hmhmm.
SY: Biaoda ziji de xiangfa de shihou=7
        When you try to express yourself=
HW: = Piru gaibian ziji pingchang de fengge.
        =For example, when you try to change your normal style.
SY: (something inaudible)
HY: Gaibian yansu de, pingchang yansu de
        Change the serious, the normally serious (image)
HW: Jiushi pingchang kan bu dao de na mian keyi zai wanglu shang chuxian.
        That is, the side of you that doesn't usually show can appear online.
SY: Pingchang bijiao muna de.
        Those who usually appear introverted (can change their personalities online).
All eleven interviewees agree that the employment of such forms of language play conveys a sense of friendliness, cuteness, or congeniality. In part, this perception originates from the socialization each interviewee undergoes as a member of Taiwanese society and, more specifically, as a member of a Taiwan-based BBS community.

Attitudes, Ideologies and Linguistic Practice

As noted earlier, the three stylized representations create humor through the incongruity between the visual and the auditory at the linguistic level. Sociolinguistically, the humorous effects evoked by the representations can also be traced to the socio-cultural situation in Taiwan and the ideologies and stereotypes associated with the use of each linguistic variety. The three linguistic varieties involved-English, Taiwanese, and Taiwanese-accented Mandarin-enjoy different forms of prestige in various speech contexts: English is the most overtly prestigious, Taiwanese seems to be in the middle, and Taiwanese-accented Mandarin is the most stigmatized. At the same time, this ranking only concerns overt prestige; the social meanings attached to each linguistic variety are usually multiple and sometimes contradictory. A highly respected linguistic variety may not be used in familiar contexts for its lack of warmth or humanity, while a stigmatized linguistic variety may remain popular because of the sense of solidarity and friendliness it conveys (Labov, 1972; Trudgill, 1972).

On the Taiwanese BBSs, this explicit ranking of overt prestige in speech contexts interacts with multiple social meanings associated with the Chinese writing system. The result is an "averaging" effect; that is, Stylized English, Stylized Taiwanese, and Stylized Taiwanese-accented Mandarin can no longer be distinguished clearly with regard to their functions on the Internet. All three patterns of writing are taken as a way to show congeniality, humor, and an online persona. In other words, the explicit ranking and the functional differentiation among the three in speech contexts becomes much more obscure in online contexts.

Why the averaging effect? One may wish to argue that in online contexts, the social meanings each linguistic variety carries are no longer important, and that, since the production of all three forms of language play involves similar processes, the sources of humor are the same. However, I propose that the averaging effect is related to the interaction between the social meanings attached to each linguistic variety and the multiple connotations associated with the Chinese writing system. Indeed, as we have seen, all three forms of language play involve exploitation of the morphosyllabic nature of the Chinese writing system. Yet their similarity is only superficial: Stylized English, Stylized Taiwanese, and Stylized Taiwanese-accented Mandarin are linked with different language ideologies and stereotypes prevalent in Taiwanese society.

        Stylized representations

A detailed analysis of each pattern of stylized writing is necessary to facilitate our understanding of this point. I first provide an analysis of Stylized Taiwanese-accented Mandarin, followed by a discussion of Stylized English and Stylized Taiwanese. As mentioned earlier, in speech contexts, Taiwanese-accented Mandarin is more common among older generations and among members of younger generations who grew up in rural areas. Hence, in the spirit of Och's theory of indexicality (1992), the heaviness of a speaker's Taiwanese accent when speaking Mandarin directly indexes age and region. Furthermore, since rurality and older age often indicate a lack of adequate educational access or facilities, Taiwanese-accented Mandarin is indirectly linked with undesirable qualities such as ignorance or backwardness. At the same time, like many regional varieties reported in other societies, the accent has local prestige and is associated with friendliness, congeniality, and a local (Taiwanese) persona.

In online contexts, Stylized Taiwanese-accented Mandarin still carries the social connotations of the spoken variety. Yet the transformation from an accent to a playful pattern of language use in a written medium complicates the interpretation of this practice. Competing and conflicting voices co-exist in Stylized Taiwanese-accented Mandarin. On the one hand, the writer's voice is present each time it is used; the sentential meaning expresses the referential content the writer attempts to convey. On the other hand, Stylized Taiwanese-accented Mandarin evokes the voice of a speaker with a Taiwanese accent, albeit in a twisted way. The familiar, congenial persona associated with a Taiwanese accent is integrated into the writing of Stylized Taiwanese-accented Mandarin. On this level, the author aligns him/herself with the indexical values associated with the accent and its local prestige. However, the transformation from a spoken accent to written word play, which implies the ability to manipulate language, filters out the negative connotation of backwardness often linked with a Taiwanese accent. Users' access to computers and modern technology also clearly distinguishes them from speakers of the stigmatized linguistic variety. On this level, the writer positions him/herself away from negative representations of speakers with such an accent. Hence, by using Stylized Taiwanese-accented Mandarin, Internet users simultaneously associate themselves with and dissociate themselves from the various connotative meanings associated with a Taiwanese accent.

As with Stylized Taiwanese-accented Mandarin, each instance of Stylized English conveys multiple and conflicting voices as well. However, in the case of Stylized English, the Chinese writing system plays a quite different role, particularly in terms of its formation and associated social meanings. As previously mentioned, English, with its international prestige, has received great emphasis in Taiwanese education. In addition to the presence of an English curriculum in Taiwan's formal educational institutions, learning English has emerged as a national movement on its own. For instance, parents send their children to expensive bilingual kindergartens; many English radio or TV language programs are broadcast every day; and English classes are offered in many places for learners of different ages and competences. Moreover, English fluency is a highly valuable skill in Taiwan's competitive job market.

However, despite its high prestige, English is still a foreign language and is not welcome in all contexts in Taiwan. The sense of sophistication attached to English use by Taiwanese speakers has a negative side: It is also interpreted as a sign of arrogance and a lack of appreciation for local Taiwanese culture. In daily conversation, the overuse of English vocabulary and phrases is often criticized as showing off. In online contexts, the reaction toward the use of English is less harsh, as English appears to be the default language in the world of computer technology. In addition, although very few Taiwanese Internet users are unable to read and input Chinese characters, some consider keyboarding in English more convenient.

However, this acceptability is often conditional. Chinese is still the predominant language on BBSs and online discussion groups, and postings in English are frequently accompanied by a paragraph justifying its use. I once witnessed a confrontation between two friends who are members of the same online discussion group regarding the use of English. One complained that the other's constant use of English was showing off; the other defended himself, claiming that writing in English was more convenient. This confrontation resulted in the disappearance of English from the board. Since most members of this discussion group have a graduate degree, this reaction has less to do with lack of English competence than with the negative connotations of the use of English.

Stylized English is much more widely accepted than English itself. Like Stylized Taiwanese-accented Mandarin, in addition to conveying the writer's voice and the referential meaning of the sentence, it conveys social meanings associated with both English and the Chinese writing system. However, whereas the sophistication linked with English is evoked in Stylized English too, its negative connotations, such as arrogance and lack of local identification, are mitigated by the use of the Chinese writing system. Through the use of Chinese characters, Stylized English becomes nativized: It no longer represents a foreign product but rather, a combination of the imported and the local. Although this study does not focus upon language ideologies associated with the Chinese orthographic system, it seems that many educated Taiwanese feel pride in the traditional Chinese writing system, and several interviewees implicitly or explicitly expressed positive attitudes toward Chinese orthography.8 To them, Chinese orthography distinguishes Taiwanese/Chinese speakers from the rest of the world. These positive attitudes carry over into the use of Stylized English, making it seem cute and friendly rather than arrogant.

In short, the Chinese writing system plays different roles in Stylized Taiwanese-accented Mandarin and Stylized English. While the use of Chinese characters transforms a stigmatized variety into a form of language play, it also renders Stylized English local. Superficially similar forms of language play carry dramatically different social meanings. At the same time, the functional differentiation between Stylized Taiwanese-accented Mandarin and Stylized English in online interaction is not as sharp as that between English and Taiwanese-accented Mandarin in speech contexts.

The above analyses are supported by comments made by the interviewees. When asked about the functional differences between the three patterns of writing, several interviewees stated that the three are similar in terms of language play and the jocular and friendly effects they produce (cf. excerpts a, b, and c, above). This claim is in line with the view that functional differentiation between the three forms of language play is less salient than between their spoken counterparts. Still other interviewees pointed out subtle differences between Stylized Taiwanese-accented Mandarin and Stylized English. Consider the following example:
DJJ: Ziji jiang taiyu ranhou zheyang xie wo juede hai hao, keshi Taiwan guoyu wo jiu juede youdian song.
        If you speak Taiwanese and then write this way, it's ok. But (Stylized) Taiwanese-accented Mandarin sounds a little outdated.
HY: Youdian song dui bu dui?
        A little outdated, right?
DJJ: Dui a.
        Right.
HY: Na xie yingwen de hua ne?
        How about (Stylized) English?
DJJ: Da yingwen de hua hui bijiao shengying.
        If you type English, it seems stiff.
HY: Hmhmm.
DJJ: Da guowen de hua hui bijiao you qinqie gan.
        If you type Chinese, it sounds friendlier.
HY: Da shenme?
        Type what?
DJJ: Da guowen de hua hui [ bijiao you qinqie gan. 9
        If you type Chinese, it sounds friendlier.
HY:                                      [oh, jiuxiang xiamian xie o-mai-ga ganjue bijiao haowan.
        I see, just like the example below, o-mai-ga ("oh, my god")10 seems funnier.
DJJ: Dui a. Da yingwen de hua you bijiao gaoji yidian de ganjue (laugh)
        Right. English sounds a bit more sophisticated.
HY: Hmhmm.
DJJ: Na da zheyang de hua hui bijiao keai yidian de ganjue.
        Typing like this (referring to Stylized English) gives a cuter impression.
In this excerpt, DJJ offers his impressions of Stylized Taiwanese-accented Mandarin and the localizing effect of Stylized English. He first describes Stylized Taiwanese-accented Mandarin as carrying a sense of outdatedness, and then points out the functional differences between English and Stylized English, thus supporting the above analysis that the two superficially similar forms of writing contain different social meanings.

Among the three types of stylized language, Stylized Taiwanese contains the least language play. Four of the interviewees commented that it represents an expedient: Given that Taiwanese lacks a standardized writing system, Stylized Taiwanese is simply the most intuitive way to represent Taiwanese expressions. Indeed, some of the sociolinguistic characteristics of Stylized Taiwanese are different from those of Stylized English and Stylized Taiwanese-accented Mandarin. While English is based on the Roman alphabet, Taiwanese-accented Mandarin is a verbal accent not normally associated with an autonomous orthographic system. Neither English nor Taiwanese-accented Mandarin necessarily requires using the Chinese writing system. Taiwanese, however, is regarded as a language independent from Mandarin, at least by educated speakers in Taiwan, although it lacks a standardized orthography. In comparison, Stylized Taiwanese seems more natural or less playful, perhaps an inevitable consequence of the fact that it is fairly natural to use the Chinese writing system for it, after all. However, the belief that it feels natural for a language, but not an accent or a dialect, to have a system of literary representation is itself an ideology about language and literacy. Linguistically, the element of language play inherent in Stylized Taiwanese is not fundamentally different from that of Stylized English or Stylized Taiwanese-accented Mandarin: All involve incongruity between the intended and literal meanings of characters. However, due to Taiwanese speakers' attitudes towards Stylized Taiwanese and their ideologies about languages, dialects, and literacy, it is considered to be less a form of language play than a "natural" form of writing.

       Zhuyin Wen

Although Zhuyin Wen is the most popular of the four types of creative use of writing systems, it also draws the most explicit criticisms from interviewees. Blunt, negative comments such as Zhuyin Wen hen taoyan ("Zhuyin Wen is annoying"), zhuyin wen shi meiyou shou guo jiaoyu de biaoxian ("Zhuyin Wen is a sign of a lack of education on the part of the writer"), and xiedu wenzi ("it degrades our written language") were made during the interviews (there may be some inconsistency between actual practice and professed attitudes of students interviewed). From a purely linguistic point of view, the production and interpretation of all four strategies requires metalinguistic skill on the part of users. The level of linguistic competence involved in producing and interpreting Zhuyin Wen does not seem to be particularly lower than that required to produce the three other forms of language play. If this is the case, why are attitudes toward Zhuyin Wen so negative?

I propose that the different attitudes are related to the social meanings attached to Chinese orthography and the Zhuyin system. Well-educated Taiwanese take pride in the morphosyllabic Chinese writing system; interviewees' negative reactions toward Zhuyin Wen seem to be another illustration of this attitude. The role of the Zhuyin system as a subsidiary and transitional stage in the acquisition of Chinese characters links Zhuyin indirectly with a lack of education or formality. Furthermore, the alphabetic nature of Zhuyin also differs from the widely cherished morphosyllabic Chinese writing, which partially defines the uniqueness of the Chinese languages.

It is thus understandable that Zhuyin Wen evokes such criticism among my interviewees, who are students at one of the most prestigious universities in Taiwan. The elite in any society is usually those individuals who invest the most social capital in the orthography of their language (Bourdieu, 1991). These attitudes toward Zhuyin Wen are reinforced as more and more college BBSs proscribe the use of Zhuyin Wen, an interesting trend in its own right. During my interviews, criticism of Zhuyin was also linked to the diminishing future of the Chinese language. For many interviewees, Zhuyin Wen was not simply regarded as a creative use of a writing system, but as a sign that users' knowledge of traditional Chinese characters was declining. Consequently, Zhuyin Wen and the other three stylized patterns of writing are assigned different social meanings. While Stylized English, Stylized Taiwanese, and Stylized Taiwanese-accented Mandarin exploit the characteristics of Chinese characters, and thus are compatible with the indexical values associated with the Chinese writing system, Zhuyin Wen represents a lack of either the ability or the willingness to master the use of Chinese characters. Whatever the reason, its use offends my interviewees' positive attitudes toward Chinese orthography.

Conclusion

In this article, I have explored four creative uses of writing on the Taiwan-based Internet. This analysis has demonstrated how Taiwanese college students use the linguistic resources at their disposal to create innovative linguistic styles in response to a new medium. At the same time, this study illustrated how linguistic practices in different media are situated within the larger social context.

A number of technological, linguistic, and social factors collectively contribute to the emergence of these linguistic practices. The written basis and the interactivity of the Internet encourage written forms of language play (cf. Danet, 2001; Herring, 1999; Werry, 1996). Linguistically, the morphosyllabic nature of the Chinese writing system makes it possible to direct one's attention to the incompatibility between the sound structure and the meaning of a word/phrase in these creative uses of writing systems. From a social point of view, Stylized Taiwanese, Stylized Taiwanese-accented Mandarin, and Stylized English all convey multiple and sometimes conflicting social meanings associated with their spoken counterparts. The processes of transforming spoken English, Taiwanese, and Taiwanese-accented Mandarin into forms of online language play involve mitigation of some of the connotations associated with spoken varieties on the one hand, and the addition of some of the social meanings linked to the Chinese writing system, on the other. Similarly, Zhuyin Wen conveys negative stereotypes associated with the use of this alphabetic system. In addition to the social meanings they inherit from their spoken linguistic varieties and associated orthographic systems, various connotations accrue to all four forms as they become more and more widely used on the Internet, and as BBS users interactively negotiate the meaning of their experiences and online practices. Further research is needed to investigate to what extent methods of word-processing in Taiwan affect posters' choices, and how this may be changing over time, as young participants on the Internet gain increased literacy and improve their word-processing skills.

Footnotes

1. A definition of the linguistic features of Taiwanese-accented Mandarin is not provided in this study, since it focuses on Taiwanese-accented Mandarin as a local stereotype rather than as an autonomous linguistic system. For further discussion of the linguistic contrasts between Taiwan Mandarin, Taiwanese-accented Mandarin, and Peking Mandarin spoken in China, see Cheng (1997), Kubler (1979), and Li (1992).

2. There are two systems of Chinese characters in current use in Chinese-speaking communities. Traditional Chinese characters are used mainly in Taiwan and Hong Kong. Simplified Chinese characters are used mainly in China and Singapore.

3.The last symbol is not a Chinese character but a symbol of Zhuyin, which is discussed later in this article.

4. Pinyin is a Mandarin Romanization system created in the 1950s in China (DeFrancis, 1984; Norman, 1988). Until very recently, the Pinyin system remained unknown to the majority of Taiwanese. The Pinyin system, which is employed frequently by linguists in presenting Mandarin Chinese data, is used here as a means of transliteration to aid readers' understanding of the sound structure of Chinese characters. In practice, Pinyin is hardly seen on the Taiwan-based Internet.

5. CL refers to a classifier.

6. ASP refers to an aspectual marker.

7. The transcript of my interview data partially follows the conventions of Conversational Analysis (CA; Sacks, Schegloff, & Jefferson, 1974). The sign = indicates conversational turns that lack a pause between speakers.

8.The general attitude towards the logographic Chinese writing system can be observed clearly in debates surrounding the standardization of Taiwanese. The proposal to write Taiwanese with the Roman alphabet seems to be the most feasible, since there has been a tradition of such a writing system among Christian missionaries in Taiwan. Yet this proposal is not well accepted in Taiwanese society. Chiung (1999) surveyed language attitudes toward a Taiwanese text written in seven different orthographies, and found that the Chinese character-only orthography received the highest rating.

9. According to the conventions of CA, the sign [ refers to overlapping conversational turns between two or more speakers.

10. See Figure 2a, a case of Stylized English.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Brenda Danet, Susan Herring, Keith Walters, and two anonymous reviewers for feedback on earlier versions of this paper, and the National Science Foundation (Project No. 0236473) and The University of Texas at Austin for funding the research project of which the current study is a part.

References

Appadurai, A. (1996). Modernity at large: Cultural dimension of globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Baym, N. (1995). The performance of humor in computer-mediated communication. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 1(2). Retrieved January 14, 2002 from http://www.jcmc.huji.ac.il//vol1//issue2/baym.html.

Bourdieu, P. (1977). Outline of a theory of practice. (R. Nice, Trans.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Bourdieu, P. (1991). Language and symbolic power. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Chao, Y. R. (1976). Aspects of Chinese sociolinguistics. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Cheng, R. L. (1989). Zou xiang biaozhunhua de Taiwan yuwen. [Walking toward a standardized Taiwanese]. Taipei, Taiwan: Zili News.

Cheng, R. L. (1997). A comparison of Taiwanese, Taiwan Mandarin, and Peking Mandarin. In R. L. Cheng (Ed.), Taiwanese and Mandarin structures and their developmental trends in Taiwan II: Contacts between Taiwanese and Mandarin and restructuring of their synonyms (pp. 27-62). Taipei: Yuan-Liou. (Reprinted from Language, 61(2), 1985.)

Chiung, W. T. (1999). Language attitudes toward Taibun, the written Taiwanese. Unpublished Master's thesis. University of Texas at Arlington.

Coupland, N. (2001). Dialect stylization in radio talk. Language in Society, 30(3), 345-375.

Crystal, D. (1998). Language play. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Danet, B. (2001). Cyberpl@y: Communicating online. Oxford: Berg.

Danet, B., Ruedenberg-Wright, L., & Rosenbaum-Tamari, Y. (1996). "Hmmm…Where's that smoke coming from?": Writing, play, and performance on Internet Relay Chat. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 2(4). Retrieved January 14, 2002 from http://www.huji.ac.il/vol2/issue4/danet.html.

DeFrancis, J. (1984). The Chinese language: Fact and fantasy. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.

Friends of Cangjie. (n.d.). Retrived August, 04, 2003 from http://www.chinesecj.com/.

Fromkin, V., & Rodman, R. (1998). An introduction to language (6th ed.). Orlando, FL: Harcourt Brace College.

Gumperz, J. J. (1982). Discourse strategies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Hafner, K., & Lyon, M. (1996). Where wizards stay up late: The origins of the Internet. New York: Simon and Schuster.

Hawisher, G. E., & Selfe, C. L. (2000). Introduction: Testing the claims. In G. E. Hawisher & C. L. Selfe (Eds.), Global literacies and the World-Wide Web (pp. 1-18). London: Routledge.

Herring, S. C. (1999). Interactional coherence in CMC. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 4(4). Retrieved January, 24, 2002 from http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol4/issue4/herring.html.

Hongladarom, S. (2000). Negotiating the global and the local: How Thai culture co-opts the Internet. First Monday 5(8). Retrieved April 15, 2003 from http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue5_8/hongladarom/index.html.

Hsiau, A. (1997). Language ideology in Taiwan: The KMT's language policy, the tai-yu language movement, and ethnic politics. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 18(4), 302-315.

Hsu, H. (1999). Language shift in Taiwan: A case study. In M. Brody, G. Liebscher, & H. Ogren (Eds.), Proceedings of the sixth annual symposium about language and society, 158-172.

Hsu, J. (1992). Taiyu wenzihua de fangxiang [The direction of Taiwanese standardization]. Taipei, Taiwan: Zili News.

Huang, S. (1993). Yuyan, shehui, yu zuqun yishi: Taiwan yuyan shehuixue de yanjiu [Language, society, and ethnic identity: A sociolinguistic study on Taiwan]. Taipei, Taiwan: Crane.

Hymes, D. (1974). Foundations in sociolinguistics: An ethnographic approach. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Kida, J. (1999-2001). Word-processing in the world of kanji. Retrieved August 04, 2003 from http://www.honco.net/japanese/05/page3.html.

Kubler, C. (1979). Some differences between Taiwan Mandarin and textbook Mandarin. Journal of the Chinese Language Teachers Association 14 (3), 27-39.

Labov, W. (1972). Sociolinguistic patterns. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Li, W. (1992). Four mergers in the Mandarin finals of the speech of Taipei. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Oxford University, Oxford, England, UK.

Lieberman, J. N. (1977). Playfulness: Its relation to imagination and creativity. New York: Academic Press.

Matthews, P. H. (1997). Oxford concise dictionary of linguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Myers-Scotton, C. (1993). Social motivations for codeswitching: Evidence from Africa. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Norman, J. (1988). Chinese. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Ochs, E. (1992). Indexing gender. In A. Duranti & C. Goodwin (Eds.), Rethinking context (pp. 335-358). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Palmer, J. (1994). Taking humor seriously. London: Routledge.

Rampton, B. (1995). Crossing: Language and ethnicity among adolescents. London: Longman.

Sacks, H., Schegloff, E., & Jefferson, G. (1974). A simplest systematics for the organization of turn-taking for conversation. Language, (50)4, 696-735.

Su, H. (2000). Code-switching between Mandarin and Taiwanese in Taiwan: Conversational interaction and the political economy of language use. Unpublished Master's thesis. University of Texas at Austin.

Su, H. (In press). Mock Taiwanese-accented Mandarin in the Internet community in Taiwan: The interaction between technology, linguistic practice, and language ideologies. In R. Scollon & P. LeVine (Eds.), Georgetown University round table on languages and linguistics 2002: Discourse and technology: Multimodal discourse analysis. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.

Sutton-Smith, B. (1997). The Ambiguity of play. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Trudgill, P. (1972). Sex, covert prestige and linguistic change in the urban British English of Norwich. Language in Society (1), 179-195.

Wardhaugh, R. (1992). An introduction to sociolinguistics (2nd ed.). Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.

Werry, C. (1996). Linguistic and interactional features of Internet Relay Chat. In S. C. Herring (Ed.), Computer-mediated communication: Linguistic, social, and cross-cultural perspectives (pp. 47-63). New York: John Benjamins.

Young, R. (1989). Language maintenance and language shift among the Chinese in Taiwan. Taipei, Taiwan: Crane.

About the Author

Hsi-Yao Su is a doctoral student in the Department of Linguistics at The University of Texas at Austin. She received her Bachelor of Arts degree in English from National Taiwan University in 1996 and her Master of Arts degree in Linguistics from The University of Texas at Austin in 2000. Her research interests include sociolinguistics, with a regional interest in Taiwan and transnational Chinese communities.
Address: Department of Linguistics, Calhoun Hall 501, The University of Texas, Austin, TX, 78712-1196.


©Copyright 2003 Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication