Generational differences in the use of and attitudes towards the Wu fāngyán in China

China, a traditional out-migration country, has undergone rapid internal migration
over the past thirty years, which has created a generation with expanded linguistic
repertoires. While at the societal level China has always been multilingual, at the
individual level there is a tendency for Chinese citizens to be mono-dialectal with
limited mobility. Urbanization and top-down societal, economic and language
policies have served to create a multi-dialectal society. The understanding of
language policy in this study includes management, ideology and practices, which
are reflected in interviews with participants. Thirty-three structured interviews
were conducted with speakers aged between 16-77 years in the Wu dialect region,
about their use and attitudes towards their dialect (fāngyán). Translingual practices
are evident among the younger generation, with Putonghua and English, and
middle generation, with Putonghua and a fāngyán, and perhaps reflect these groups’
mobility. In contrast, the older generation, with less mobility, tend to be restricted
by their linguistic competence in the local fāngyán only. It was evident in the data
that the middle generation tend to be more remorseful of the fāngyáns’ decline and
the potential emergent national monolingualism. The older generation are more
sanguine about the decline of the fāngyáns, and the young generation do not indicate
strong conviction towards language maintenance. Nevertheless, all groups believe
that a fāngyán’s relationship to cultural heritage should be reason enough for its
survival.