Jocelin Lingxia Zhou

In recent years, "dialect-protection" campaigns have emerged in major Chinese “dialect” speaking areas in China. In more economically developed regions and individualized societies, local “dialect” speakers are more assertive and vocal about their linguistic rights and the preservation of the local language and culture. However, awareness of linguistic diversity and appreciation of the local languages can be raised through the power of mass media and consciousness-raising by celebrities. Those campaigns challenge the linguistic hegemony created by the national language policy of Mandarin promotion, and foster regional varieties of Chinese language that are under pressure from Mandarin promotion, as well as internal migration and globalization. The response of the central government shows the Chinese Communist Party's negotiation with an increasingly individualistic Chinese society as a strategy to enhance its "consultative Leninism", without negating the promotion of the official language in order to reinforce nationalism and a homogeneous Chinese national identity.