As China experiences tremendous economic and social transformation in the reform years, language use in China has also undergone remarkable changes in the past couple decades: the national obsession with learning the global English, which becomes both a resource for modernization and a source of contention; the expanding use of local languages and dialects in mass media, where standard Mandarin is promoted and legally prescribed as the principal language; the emergence of the Internet language that has become a creative source for constructing a distinct youth identity; the Cantonese writing movement that challenges the hegemony of the Chinese writing system, which is traditionally based on northern Mandarin, to name a few. The nine papers collected in this volume examine recent trends in language use in mainland China, and the associated social, economic, political, and cultural manifestations. Drawing on their backgrounds and expertise in sociolinguistics, cognitive linguistics, linguistic anthropology, and cultural studies, the authors offer interdisciplinary, insightful, and critical analysis of linguistic struggles and linguistic politics in contemporary China.

Introduction; Synchronic Variation or Diachronic Change: A Sociolinguistic Study of Chinese Internet Language; The Use of Chinese Dialects on the Internet: Youth Language and Local Youth Identity in Urban China; The Metaphorical World of Chinese Online Entertainment News; My Turf, I DecideA": Linguistic Circulation and the Construction of a Chinese Youth Culture; Learning English to Promote Chinese: A Case Study of Li Yang's Crazy English; More than Errors and Embarrassment: New Approaches to Chinglish; Chinese via English: A Case Study of Lettered-WordsA" as a Way of Integration into Global Communication; Writing Cantonese as Everyday Lifestyle in Guangzhou; Negotiating Linguistic Identities under Globalization: Language Use in Contemporary China.