ABSTRACT
This chapter surveys the development of Tâi-bûn Ūn-tōng, or the “Taiwanese language movement” that has substantially developed since the second half of the 1980s. The KMT regime implemented a monolingual Mandarin Chinese policy after it occupied Taiwan after World War II. The Taiwanese people were forced to learn Mandarin Chinese and to identify themselves as Chinese. Thus, there has been a language shift among Taiwanese toward Mandarin. In response, the promoters of Taiwanese have demanded vernacular education in schools. There are two core issues for the Taiwanese language movement. First, the movement focuses on promoting spoken Taiwanese in order to maintain people’s vernacular speech. Second, the movement aims at promoting and standardizing written Taiwanese in order to develop literature in Taiwanese languages instead of Chinese. Many observers see the supporters of the Taiwanese language movement as core members of Taiwanese national identity. The chapter addresses how the language movement and language issue have become involved in the current development of Taiwanese identity.
