BORDER-CROSSING BUTTERFLIES: HYBRID LANGUAGE IN FILM AND MODERNIST LITERATURE IN COLONIAL TAIWAN AND SEMI-COLONIAL SHANGHAI
Access to this document is restricted. Some items have been embargoed at the request of the author, but will be made publicly available after the "No Access Until" date.
During the embargo period, you may request access to the item by clicking the link to the restricted file(s) and completing the request form. If we have contact information for a Cornell author, we will contact the author and request permission to provide access. If we do not have contact information for a Cornell author, or the author denies or does not respond to our inquiry, we will not be able to provide access. For more information, review our policies for restricted content.
In China, Japan, and Taiwan nowadays, there exists an institutionalized national language, discursively constructed as a homogeneous entity. This framing makes it challenging to critically examine monolingualism and its impact on linguistic minorities, hybrids, and alternative language practices. To excavate the alternatives that were hardly examined in monolingualist historical narrative, in this dissertation, I focus on the hybrid language practices of the 1920s and 1930s. While each of the four chapters explores distinct subjects, they all share a common thread—the utilization of hybrid languages. These practices encompass languages used on screen, such as bilingual intertitles (Chapter 1), and offscreen, including benshi’s oral performances (Chapter 2). Additionally, they were also embodied in modernist literature either written in or inspired by the hybrid practices of languages (Chapter 3) and (mis-)translation (Chapter 4). During the 1920s and 1930s, hybrid or heterolingual practices were widespread. However, due to shrinking creative spaces, increasing nationalist sentiments, and growing centralized government control, these practices were gradually suppressed, albeit they still survive in elusive and yet variegated ways. These practices not only creatively responded to geopolitics or local politics by reflecting on the legacies of previous language movements, but they also offered new ways to imagine community. They serve as a microcosm of multi-layered power dynamics, spanning geopolitical, transnational, domestic, historical, and ideological realms.