Language Oppression
Gerald Roche · Cornell University Press eBooks · 2024
This introductory chapter provides an overview of the issue of language oppression and the politics of language in the People's Republic of China (PRC). It focuses on the case of Manegacha. Surveys of Manegacha-speaking families suggest that about a third of them have stopped speaking Manegacha to their children and are now primarily speaking to them in Tibetan. If enough people continue making the same choice about the language for long enough, there will no longer be anyone who speaks it. On the one hand, local life in Rebgong (the area where Manegacha is spoken) is dominated by Tibetan. Tibetan is used in schools, the media, government, religious institutions, and business. On the other hand, Manegacha speakers also face systematic discrimination from local Tibetan speakers, who laugh at them if they speak Manegacha and insult them when they speak Tibetan with an accent. When Manegacha-speaking parents “choose” to speak to their children in Tibetan, they are responding to these contexts of exclusion and discrimination.