HUAN-WELLS József

Status planning: from "Mandarin‑plus" to "Mandarin‑inclusive"

The first study examines how the legal status of languages in Taiwan changed through three landmark pieces of legislation passed between 2017 and 2019: the Indigenous Languages Development Act, the Hakka Basic Act, and the Development of National Languages Act. The analysis shows that while all national languages are legally equal and protected from discrimination, Mandarin remains the dominant language across most domains of public life. To capture this shift, the study proposes a new term: "Mandarin-inclusive," replacing the earlier characterisation of "Mandarin-plus" that described the post-1990s period of de facto toleration. The distinction matters because the new legislation does not simply add languages alongside Mandarin — it reframes the entire policy discourse around constitutional principles of multiculturalism and creates a legal mandate for the government to act on language endangerment.

A version of this study was published as: Huan‑Wells, J. (2022). Mandarin‑plus to Mandarin‑inclusive: Conceptualising the new pluralistic language policy in Taiwan. Multiethnica, 42, 45–62. https://doi.org/10.33063/diva-505199

Language management: devolved revitalisation

The second study asks how the Taiwanese government actually manages the revitalisation of its national languages once their status has been established in law. Drawing on Spolsky's theories of language management and Ball's notion of policy as discourse, the study traces the network of subsequent policies, guidelines, and institutional arrangements through which the central government devolves language management responsibilities to different bodies: ministries, councils, educational institutions, and local authorities. The analysis identifies two main forms of devolved management: de jure management, where roles are explicitly assigned through legislation or regulation, and de facto management, where entities take on language development roles without formal mandate. Each language group faces distinct challenges, and the study shows how the mechanisms of devolution, including the designation of regional common languages and the use of standardised testing as a policy tool, can produce uneven outcomes. The study connects macro-level policy to micro-level implementation, showing how the ideals of equal status set out in legislation become complicated as they pass through layers of institutional interpretation.

Corpus planning: written Tâi‑gí in digital spaces

The third study is a case study of Tâi‑gí, the most widely spoken non-Mandarin language in Taiwan, focusing on how the language is written and used in online communities. Using digital ethnography and discourse analysis, the study immerses itself in Facebook groups dedicated to the use and promotion of Tâi‑gí, examining what orthographic forms people use, what resources they share, and how they negotiate competing writing norms. Tâi‑gí has a long written history but exists in a state of digraphia. Multiple writing systems exist, including romanisation traditions like Pe̍h‑ōe‑jī and the government-promoted standard that prioritises Hàn‑jī characters while a form of romanisation is used as an auxiliary system. The study uses a framework of "highly regulated texts" to show how the ideologies of resource developers, both government and community-based, are encoded into the design of the tools and materials they produce. The analysis finds that while everyday digital writing remains flexible, with users moving fluidly between orthographic styles, the government's investment in specific standards through the education system positions certain writing norms to become dominant over time. The study argues that digital spaces where minoritised languages are actively used need to be understood as sites where corpus planning is happening in practice, not just in policy.