Dialect and Nationalism in China, 1860-1960

Taking aim at the conventional narrative that standard, national languages transform ''peasants'' into citizens, Gina Anne Tam centers the history of the Chinese nation and national identity on fangyan - languages like Shanghainese, Cantonese, and dozens of others that are categorically different from the Chinese national language, Mandarin. She traces how, on the one hand, linguists, policy-maker...