dc.description.abstract | The change of the choice of usage of language among Hakka people in Zhongli area began as early when a lot of soldiers moved into this area and decreased the ratio of Hakka people here. In this stage, it was also influenced by the policy of the promotion of the so-called “National Language”. The Hakka people here had an extra option of language -- the official language, to use in their daily life. After that, Taiwan had undergone a large scale of industrialization and social transformation due to the development of economy, many Min-nan people from central and south part of Taiwan moved to Zhongli. Min-nan language played a very important role in the choice of daily use language for civilians and gradually changed the frequency of usage of Hakka language in public occasions. Hakka people were originally minority in terms of economy and politics, then they were also minority in terms of population, too. Hence, the options for daily-used languages for Hakka people here were no longer Hakka language only.
In this research, I made a clear analysis of the process of the change of choice of daily-used languages made by Hakka people in Zhongli area. The reason here is not the same with the one that caused invisblization of Hakka people in urban life. In this essay, I will call the invisblization of Hakka people in Zhongli area the type 2 invisiblizaiton of Hakka people. But is the choice of daily-use language related to ethnical recognition? According to my research, the invisiblization of Hakka language does not result in crisis of ethnical recognition. The main reason for Hakka people to make the choice of daily-used language is not ethnical recognition. The main considerations are usually necessity and convenience for communication. I also found that Hakka people need factors other than language to form ethnical recognition since language can’t provide what they need. The emergence of Constructionsim satisfied the need of modern Hakka people. And language itself had been transformed from the core of Essentialism to the core of Constructionism. In Constructionism, language, along with other identifiable features such as culture and common ancestors, help modern Hakka people form their ethnical recognition. Based on that, modern Hakka people strengthen their ethnical recognition through historical, social and psychological value so they can react to the rapid change of society.
Nowadays, both the government and NGOs are trying hard to help Hakka people adjust their recognition through construction, formation of social circumstance, and promotion of cultural symbols. Hopefully, modern Hakka people can identify themselves as Hakka and feel proud of their culture. To sum up, the way people identify themselves has gradually changed from Essentialism to Constructionism.
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