About
Although dialectology is an established field in linguistics, an interdisciplinary research on dialect drawing on cultural studies, media studies, literary theories, history, and other fields is just emerging. To facilitate scholarly research and teaching, this ongoing project aims to build a digital resource center of the interdisciplinary research on fangyan media (the media productions rendered in Chinese local languages or dialects).
In contemporary mainland China, the Beijing government has been promoting standard Putonghua Mandarin as the official national language and the principal language for mass media and school education, and the use of local languages and dialects, or fangyan in Chinese, has been strongly discouraged. However, as a fundamental feature of Chinese everyday life and popular culture for centuries, the various, distinctive local dialects play a prominent role in contemporary Chinese popular culture and media culture. Despite the 2001 national language law, media productions rendered in subnational, nonstandard, regional dialects have flourished in mainland China.
This website includes media source of different genres (sitcoms, TV series, dubbing clips, film clips, songs, comic sketches, news talk show) and media of different dialects (Sichuan Mandarin, Shandong Mandarin, Beijing Mandarin, Northeastern Mandarin, Shaanxi Mandarin, Cantonese, Shanghai Wu, Hangzhou Wu, Southern Min/Taiwanese etc.) and will continue to expand! In addition, it includes a section on teaching materials to provide short clips for teaching demo as well as a section on important scholarly work and bibliography in the field.
