Meghan Neville | 2026 I.S. Symposium
Name: Meghan Neville
Title: Children’s Hakka Language Education: How The Taiwanese and Taiwanese Diaspora Revitalize Hakka Language and Culture 兒童客家語教育：台灣與台灣離散族群如何推廣客家語與文化
Majors: Anthropology; Chinese Studies
Advisors: Setsuko Matsuzawa, James Bonk
Taiwan’s population encompasses a multitude of ethnic and linguistic groups, including the Hakka, a language-defined group originating from China. Taiwan has also experienced an array of countries’ occupations, enforcing their ways of life onto the Taiwanese people, including their language. Japan’s colonization (1845-1945) and China’s Guomindang regime’s (KMT) enactment of the Mandarin-Only Movement (1945-1987) established their languages as the national language for Taiwan. The occupants implemented their languages into the national educational system, even punishing children for speaking any other language. Starting in 1987 as a response to the previous language mandates, the Taiwanese government began to establish organizations to promote and protect the country’s minority groups and cultures. In 2001, the Hakka Affairs Council (HAC) was created by the government to revitalize the Hakka language and culture, gather community, and create more Hakka language environments. Through primary analysis of the HAC’s blue book, followed by interviews and an online survey, this study explores how Taiwan’s governmental organizations, as well as the Taiwanese diaspora’s non governmental organizations (NGOs) promote the Hakka culture and language and how the children’s educational system plays a role in the perpetuation of social hierarchy. Concluding this work, the methodologies utilized and the application of Pierre Bourdieu’s linguistic capital theory determine that the governmental, non-governmental organizations, and the children’s education system perpetuate social hierarchy through the absence of minority language courses in school systems and by creating environments distinctly based on culture, separate from the rest of the population.
Posted in Symposium 2026 on May 1, 2026.
