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In:Learning Chinese in Diasporic Communities: Many pathways to being Chinese
Edited by Xiao Lan Curdt-Christiansen and Andy Hancock
[AILA Applied Linguistics Series 12] 2014
► pp. 97–116

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Chapter 5. Learning and teaching Chinese in the Netherlands

The metapragmatics of a polycentric language

 | Tilburg University
 | University of Luxembourg
Published online: 10 July 2014
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/aals.12.06li
This paper is concerned with the metapragmatics of Chinese as a polycentric language. Based on ethnographic observations and interviews in and around a Chinese complementary school in the Netherlands, this paper describes an ongoing shift along with demographic, economic and political changes, in what counts as Chinese: a shift from Hong Kong and Taipei to Beijing as the most powerful centre of Chinese in the world. Migration makes communicative resources like language varieties globally mobile and this affects the normativity in the diaspora classroom. A clearer understanding of the metapragmatics of Chinese is useful because it provides a key to understanding social identities in contemporary Chinese migration contexts and to understanding language within contexts of current globalisation.
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This list is based on CrossRef data as of 11 december 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

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