ABSTRACT

In 2010, Guangzhou municipal government in South China made a formal proposal to the public that in order to facilitate communication among the participants in the 16th Asian Games, the use of standard Mandarin (Putonghua) in TV channels should be greatly promoted. The proposal triggered heated debates as soon as it was announced. According to a survey published one month earlier, the majority of interviewees were against such an idea, which amounted to 79.5% of the interviewees.1 The incident reveals a dilemma in language policy: disagreement frequently occurs between language users and policy-makers. What can we do to get out of the dilemma? How can we design language policy with effectiveness and appropriateness? What factors should we take into consideration when arranging language measures? Questions such as these keep emerging when we examine the issue closely.