Language Use and Language Attitude of Indonesian Brides in Taipei City.docVIP

Language Use and Language Attitude of Indonesian Brides in Taipei City Xue-hui Zhang National Chengchi University Prof. Huei-chen Chan Abstract This paper investigates the language use and language attitude of Indonesian brides who live in Taipei city. Sociolinguistics studies in Taiwan have emerged as an area of research interest within the past three decades due to the growing awareness of a new Taiwanese identity. However, the language phenomenon of foreign brides is new to most Taiwanese researchers; not much study has been done and it still remains virgin soil for sociolinguists to explore. Currently the total amount of foreign brides is about 300.000, which occupies 1.3 percent of the total population in Taiwan. In order to help foreign brides’ life adaptation, Taiwanese government has issued many counseling policies, which primarily cover literacy education, over the past decade. This paper was the preliminary research that attempted to examine language proficiency, language use and language attitude of the Indonesian brides. It focused on analyzing the relationship between their language proficiency and such variables such as age, years of living in Taipei, ethnicity, and social status. The use of Mandarin and subjects’ attitudes toward Mandarin are also examined in this study. A survey questionnaire method was used to collect language use and language attitude data from 20 Indonesian brides who live in Taipei where Mandarin is spoken dominantly. Some of the respondents have been attending Mandarin language classes. Among them, 5 representative brides of the sample were interviewed. The findings of this study show the impacts of socio cultural factors (age, length of years living in Taipei, ethnicity, and social status) on language proficiency are not significant. Subjects’ language proficiency is the key determinant of their language choices. Mandarin is used predominantly with different kinds of interlocutors. It is also found that