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Liu to Lecture on Chinese Dialect Writing on the Internet

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Jin Liu, associate professor of Chinese in the Ivan Allen College School of Modern Languages, has been invited as a guest speaker by the UCLA Center for Chinese Studies. Dr. Liu will deliver a lecture examining the dialect writing in Chinese characters on the Internet in contemporary China. Deviating from the standard writing of Chinese, the Internet-savvy youth transcribe their native dialects on an ad hoc basis, which celebrates multiplicity, creativity, individuality and resists uniformity, standardization, and institutionalization. In particular, the study investigates how written dialectal words are explored to mark a distinct visual style and to articulate a distinct local youth identity. Furthermore, this study examines the dominant strategy of phonetic borrowing in dialect transcription. It is argued that diachronically, the youth's phonocentric obsession tapped into the May Fourth tradition of the baihua movement; and synchronically, the celebration of dialect sound on the Internet echoes the contemporary soundscape of local dialects formed in the mass media in recent years. 

Dr. Liu's interdisciplinary research studies contemporary Chinese popular culture from the perspective of language, sound, voice, and music. She is the author of the book, Signifying the Local: Media Productions Rendered in Local Languages in Mainland China in the New Millennium (2013). She co-edited and contributed to the book, Chinese Under Globalization: Emerging Trends in Language Use in China (2012). She has published articles in journals including positions: Asia CritiqueModern Chinese Literature and CultureJournal of Modern Literature in ChineseChinese Language and Discourse, and Harvard Asia Pacific Review.

Link to the event: http://www.international.ucla.edu/ccs/event/11415

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  • Workflow Status:Published
  • Created By:T. Jesse Brannen
  • Created:10/22/2015
  • Modified By:Fletcher Moore
  • Modified:10/07/2016

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