Silencing Shanghai

Reviews / Votes

This book offers a panorama of transformative language life and linguistic contentions, which makes the investigation meaningful for researchers interested in endangered language and identity. * Language in Society * Silencing Shanghai is a lucid and poignant account of the precipitous decline of the distinctive Shanghai dialect, or language, that once thoroughly permeated life in this city. This unique ethnography treats this urban dialect as a lens on the struggle to maintain a distinct urban identity and culture in the face of neoliberal globalization and state-led nation-building. The book examines both insiders -- the Shanghairen -- and newcomers -- the new migrants from other parts of China -- as they try to maintain or establish their positions in this ever-changing global city. -- James Farrer, Professor of Sociology at Sophia University in Tokyo and author of <i>Opening Up: Youth Sex Culture</i> and <i>Market Reform in Shanghai and International Migrants in China's Global City: The New Shanghailanders</i> Fang Xu's Silencing Shanghai: Language and Identity in Urban China is a welcome addition to the limited, non-ideological scholarship about the world's largest country that continues to suffer from ideological bias and related western exoticism. Employing a wide range of multimodal methods, quantitative and qualitative data, and linguistically-informed rich ethnography, Xu describes, discusses, and gives close up examples of the impact of a century of intensive Chinese nation-building, and subsequent neoliberal globalization of this great city.... I must note at the end of this review, that despite its modest 276-page length, Silencing Shanghai: Language and Identity in Urban China covers much more territory than I would be able to cover, even in a long review essay. In essence, it is a book that ought to be read in its entirety. * Urbanities * Fang Xu, who was born and raised in Shanghai, combines her research expertise with her first-hand experience as a Shanghairen (Shanghai-person/people) who witnessed the relatively recent social and linguistic transitions of the city. This insider perspective, both culturally and linguistically, is especially valuable in teasing apart the complexities faced by the city, its languages, and its people. * Asian Studies Review *