_Language is a primary channel of human communication;  it is the most

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expressive form of culture and a basic feature of ethnicity in human society.
     _
It was suggested in manystudies that there are close links between language and
   _
ethnic identity, between written language and the construction of socio-cultural
   _
norm, and among language, writing, and the emancipation of human feelings.
     _
There are also arguments demonstrating thesignificance of efficiency of writing
     _
in data communication.    Many researchers have pointed out that the impact of
     _
the interactions among these factors on human communication is tremendous,
     _
both socio-culturally and technologically.
   _
   _This study was an investigation adopting the above arguments into the
     _
context of the Modern Literal Taiwanese, a Latin-alphabetical written form of the
     _
mother tongue of about 80% of the population in Taiwan, to explore how it
     _
might affect the ethnic identity and communication among the Taiwanese

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people.
   _
   _The research methodology used in this study was a combination of intensive
     _
interviews and critical analysis.   In the interviews, 3 major advocators of the
     _
Modern Literal Taiwanese, 2 teachers of this writing system, and 2 teachers
     _
teaching junior high school Chinese in Taiwan were interviewed.    In addition
     _
to the background information about the Modern Literal Taiwanese, the results
     _
of the interviews indicated that the mastery of Chinese writing is a
     _
time-consuming process, compared with the efficiency in learning the Modern
     _
Literal Taiwanese.    The results of the critical analysis suggested that the Modern
     _
Literal Taiwanese is potentially constructive to the formation of a native-
     _
Taiwanese ethnic identity among the Taiwanese people; it provides with a
     _
channel for the native speakers of Taiwanese to express their feelings and

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thoughts freely, and help preserve their native language and culture through
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writing.    Also, it is more efficient in modern communication systems and is
     _
more effective in terms of functional literacy, compared with the traditional
     _
Chinese writing in Taiwan.

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____This thesis investigated the potential impact of a modern literal Taiwanese in
____
Latin alphabet on the ethnic identity and communication of the Taiwanese
____
people.
____
____The problems defined and discussed in this thesis were developed through
____
the following statements:

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1.2-1 Taiwanese and Its Chinese Writing

____All dialects spoken in China or other geographical regions with population
____
of Chinese descendants are generally referred as "Chinese."    But the term
____
"Chinese" is anumbrella designation for at least eight present-day varieties of
____
mutually unintelligiblelanguages; this situation is parallel to the various languages
____
that make up the Romancegroup of languages (DeFrancis, 1989, P.94). And just
____
as these varieties of speech are  mutually unintelligible, so are the varieties of
____
written language based on them (DeFrancis,1989, p.95).   It is a myth that
____
Chinese characters cut across boundaries of speech; the reality of Chinese writing
____
is that the characters have been created by speakers of many differentvarieties of
____
dialects and often reflect the peculiarities of their speech (DeFrancis, 1989,p.95).
____
Therefore, even though the Mandarin dialect has been the official language of
____
both Taiwan and China in the basis of writing, it takes more efforts for a
____
non-native speaker of Mandarin, such as a Cantonese, to learn to read and write
____
in the national standard than it does for a Spaniard to learn to read and write
____
French (DeFrancis 1984a in DeFrancis,1989, p.95).   The Taiwanese language,
____
which originates from the Banlaam (Min-nan, Southern Min ) language,
____
accordingly has its unique Sino-writing in harnji (Han ) characters. These harnji
____
characters were borrowed from the ancient northern Haxn language to code
____
the pronunciations of many southern languages, including the southern Min
____
language.    But the major problem of Taiwanese is that the Sino-Taiwanese has
____
never been considered as themainstream for writing and official use in Taiwan;
____
consequently, it gradually has lost themany harnji characters uniquely used in
____
this language, although even the usage of these characters has never been
____
unified.   On the other hand, people in today's Taiwan are no longer able to use
____
this writing tp wrote Taiwanese as aform of written communication;   on the
____
other hand, Sino-Taiwanese had never been popularized because of the
____
historical and culturalbackground of Taiwan.
____

____Before the Japanese colonial period (1895-1945), literacy was generally low
____
in Taiwan. Most of the people were illiterate, for only people from well-to-do
____
families were able to go to private schools or to hire a tutor to learn to read and
____
write classical Chinese.   Poor people couldn't afford education, and women
____
were not allowed to go to school at that time.    Later, during the Japanese
____
colonial period, the official language was the Japanese language, by which mass
____
education was offered.    After World War II, the "mainlanders" and their
____
descendants (who today compose approximately 12-14% of the population in
____
Taiwan) who arrived on Taiwan in 1949 have strongly promoted Mandarin as
____
the official language (MacDonald, 1988, p. 13), by which education is offered
____
and media are dominated.
____
____It is because of the massive immigration of mainlanders after 1949 that the
____
position of the official language is so unusually strong for Taiwan, a
____
non-Mandarin-speaking region (Norman, 1988, p.248).    The mainland
____
population in Taiwan was originally associated with either the Nationalist
____
government or with the Nationalist army, and many of them had already
____
possessed a basic working knowledge of the official language Mandarin when
____
they first arrived in Taiwan (Norman, 1988, p.251).
____
       Today, most Taiwanese people can fluently speak and write Mandarin in
____
any official occasion; the adult literacy in Taiwan was 95% in 1985 (MacDonald,
____
1988, p. 14).    However, Taiwanese is still the major tongue of people's daily
____
communication underinformal settings and in closer relations, despite the great
____
progress in promoting the official language which has been made in the last thirty
____
years (Norman, 1988, p.248).    But inmetropolitan areas, notably the capital
____
Taipei, a large number of people under forty years of age, in the course of
____
growing up and especially as a result of their schooling, haveabandoned or
____
forgotten their non-standard family dialects (including Taiwanese and other
____
dialects) acquired in their infancy and have switched to the official language
____
Mandarin astheir sole means of oral communication (Norman, 1988, p.251). In
____
some young familieschildren have begun to learn Mandarin as their first
____
language, and in effect these children become native speakers of this standard
____
language (Norman, 1988, p.251).
____

1.2-3  The Role of the Taiwanese Language in the Democratic Movements --- How It Serves As a Symbol of Ethnic Consciousness
____
____Before the 1986 democratic reform, public discussion and criticism about
____
the language policy had long been a political taboo in Taiwan.   The democratic
____
reform since 1986 in Taiwan has launched a more native-orientedideology
____
among the Taiwanese people than before;   this includes the struggle for civil
____
rights, the awareness of environmental protection, the reform of native
____
Taiwanese culture,and the equality of language distribution in media use.
____
These sense of consciousness and the resulting actions consequently evoke
____
public concern about the very medium of communication -- the long belittled
____
Taiwanese language, which many reform-mindedpeople saw as a symbol of
____
native consciousness and an emblem and fortress preservingTaiwanese culture.
____
____In some cases of democratic movements, especially in the issue of
____
independency,the Taiwanese language is viewed as a symbol of native ethnic
____
consciousness (Ross, in Giles and Saint-Jacques, 1979, p. 10) in contrast to the
____
Sino-centric ideology imposed by the ruling authority and symbolized by the
____
official language Mandarin.
____

1.2-4   Ideographic Writing in Computerized Data ProcessingSystems
____
____ As Mandarin Chinese is the official language in Taiwan, the writing based
____
on it accordingly is the standard form of written communication.    Chinese
____
typewriters, wordprocessors, and especially computational systems have been
____
produced or developed to deal with jobs associated with data processing in
____
offices and families.    It is common, however,that the users of these data
____
processing systems get both mentally and physically stressed (Unger, 1987, p.
____
129) with their jobs done inefficiently.    This is because of the complex and
____
time-consuming process of inputting the large number of complex ideographic
____
Chinesecharacters.
____
____Generally, there are three different ways commonly used in today's Taiwan
____
to input Chinese characters into computers. ___One is a word-structuring
____
package called "Tsang Chieh ."  To complete a text, the operators using this
____
program construct the Chinese harnjicharacters by typing different parts of the
____
characters from a special keyboard with small parts of characters.    If the user
____
doesn't know the ideographic composure of a word, he or she has to interrupt
____
to look up the composure of the word or just fail to complete the typing if no
____
source of reference is available.
____
____Another way to input harnji characters is an extension of Chinese
____
dictionaries thatdivided harnji characters into different families under different
____
radicals.    To input a single character, the user first has to know which radical
____
this character belongs to.    The biggest problem of this program is that very few
____
people know the radicals of every hamji character, including those who are
____
mastering Chinese literature and language.   Most people know little about which
____
characters belong to which radicals.
____
____The most commonly used program in Chinese computational data
____
processing systems in Taiwan needs a special keyboard with symbols for
____
phonetic notations of Mandarin Chinese (in Mandarin the zhu`yi^nfu'ha`o )
____
(Norman, 1988, p.259).   When typing a Chinese text on a computer using this
____
program, the user has to type the phonetic combination of a particular word, then
____
press the "enter" or "return" command on the keyboard.   When finished, there is
____
a series of Chinese hamji characters representing this phonetic combination
____
appearing at the bottom of the screen with Arabic numerals indicating each single
____
character.    What the user has to do is select the numeral indicating the right
____
character.    If the user cannot find the right character, he or she has to press the
____
"enter" or "return" command again and again, till the right character appears.
____
After finishing allthese steps, the processing of a single hamji character is
____
completed and that single character appears and located in the writer's text on the
____
screen.    The major problem of this word program is that in Mandarin Chinese
____
there are too many homophones sharing the same phonetic combination (Liim,
____
1992, p.23); this takes the users much time and labor to complete data processing
____
character by character.    Moreover, it also bothers those who are not able to
____
pronounce Mandarin correctly.____
____
____The three methods used in Chinese computerized data processing described
____
aboveare time-consuming, and mentally and physically stress the users (Unger,
____
1987, p. 129).   Economically, on the other hand, computational data processing
____
costs more to output information written in ideographic than in alphanumeric
____
form because of the large numberof the ideographic characters and their graphic
____
complexity (Unger, 1987, p. 129).    The extraexpense comes from a need for a
____
high-resolution video monitor or printer, extra memoryfor storing the hamji
____
characters, longer plotting times, fewer characters per page, or someother
____
hardware-related factors (Unger, 1987, p. 129).
____
____This thesis, therefore, explored the potential of the moderm literal Taiwanese,
____
a Latin alphabetical writing system which can well convey both the sound and
____
sense of the Taiwanese language.    It is not an instruction of this writing system,
____
but an investigation of why it is important for the Taiwanese people and their
____
culture, how it can serve as an instrument of identity change, as well as how it
____
can help people communicate more conveniently and efficiently in an
____
increasingly technology-based society.
____

1.3  The Significance of the Problem
____
____Language is a primary tool of human communication;  and the written form
____
of a particular language is the most important medium to preserve this language,
____
both linguistically and culturally.   Therefore, the investigation of the potential
____
impact of theModern Literal Taiwanese is significant in the study of human
____
communication.    This studyexplored how the ethnic identity of an
____
ethnolinguistic group can be evoked, shaped, andeven manipulated through the
____
written form of the mother tongue of that group, which haslong been depressed
____
under a special historical and political setting;   how this written form of the
____
mother tongue might influence people's daily communication;   and finally, how
____
this Latin alphabetical writing system, being unencumbered with diacritical
____
marks, can beperfectly processed through any computational data processing
____
systems just like English or any other European languages.
____

1.3-1   The Significance of Language and Cultural Reform
____
____Under the system of the Modern Literal Taiwanese, the spelling of each
____
single wordcorresponds rather precisely to the pronunciation of this word as a
____
whole, and is no morethan the simple combination of the phonetic
____
representation of the constructing harnji characters (Liim, 1988).    It is
____
alphabetical;   and no additional phonetic signs is used in this system (See
____
Appendix 1).    For example, hoesoaan-ym, the circling-around vowels uniquein
____
Taiwanese, are represented in the forms as "aa," "ii," "uu," "ee," "oo," "oo,"
____
"mm," and "ngg."   This method of word spelling enables people to learn the
____
spoken Taiwanese by memorizing words by spelling, and to write sentences
____
using an ordinary typewriter or a word processor (Liim, 1988).
____
____From the point of view of reforming the native language and culture, this
____
writing system is potentially significant to the Taiwanese people for the following
____
reasons:

1.3-2   The Significance of the Impact on Ethnic Identity
____
____Since the Taiwanese language, as has been discussed formerly, plays the role
____
as a symbol of ethnic consciousness (Ross, in Giles and Saint-Jacques, 1979, p.
____
10) in thedemocratic movements in Taiwan, accordingly, a writing system which
____
can well serve as a medium of written communication of the language will play a
____
part as the visible symbol of the ethnic consciousness of the Taiwanese people.
____
Also, it may socio-culturally and psychologically build a collective identity
____
among the Taiwanese people within the contextof native culture in terms of the
____
cultural significance of writing in preserving a language.
____
____Language, together with ethnicity, are basic elements of the identity
____
and individuality of a human being (Saint-Jacques and Giles, 1979).   Moreover,
____
since languageis a part of the codified culture (Schramm and Porter, 1982, p.81)
____
and the unifying factorof a particular culture (Saint-Jacques and Giles, 1979),
____
and whereas writing codes language, this modern literal Taiwanese might
____
spontaneously awaken a more native-oriented identity among the Taiwanese
____
people.    This spontaneous awareness might happenwhen the Taiwanese people
____
are acculturated under the literal orientation of the written Taiwanese language.
____
This is because written language is not only a derivative symbolsystem enjoying
____
only a parasitic status with respect to oral language (Scinto, 1986, p. 1) but also
____
a culturally organized function or system subject to learning and development
____
(Scinto,1986, p-77).    Also, language itself is a dynamic force in the unfolding
____
progression of group interaction and identity formation (Ross, in Giles and
____
Saint-Jacques, 1979, p.ll);   it isimportant as a symbol of an underlying image of
____
group purpose and identity, and in this regard, it is the most powerful single
____
symbol of ethnicity because it serves as a shorthandfor all that makes a group
____
special and unique (Ross, in Giles and Saint-Jacques, 1979,P.9).
____

1.3-3   The Significance of Efficient Computerized Data Communications
____
____The use of data communications through computers is expected to
____
increase tremendously in the future (Liim, 1990a, p.5).   Actually, the past decade
____
has witnessed aboom in computer data communications, which enables
____
computers and their operators to "talk" in highly efficient networks (Duffy, 1992,
____
p. 170).    The highly efficient datacommunications through computers requires
____
efficient input, which combines the speed and accuracy of data input with the
____
minimum of physical and mental stress of users on man/machine interface, and
____
output, which seeks minimum hardware costs (Ungjfer, 1987,p. 129).   Those
____
languages with a large number of ideographic characters such as Chinese and
____
Japanese, however are not well suited for efficient and convenient input and
____
output of dataprocessing owing to the complex and large number of ideographic
____
characters (Unger,1987, p.64).    Therefore, in order to achieve efficient data
____
communication, in Japan Romaji(the Romanized writing) and kana have been
____
widely used in data communication systems instead of kanji (this term is
____
equivalent to hamji characters) (Unger, 1987, p. 19).    China has also been
____
promoting writing reforms such as alphabetization and simplification of
____
characters in Mandarin Chinese since the early twentieth century (Norman, 1988,
____
p.262).   However, in terms of alphabetization of characters, there is an
____
unsolvable problem in the Mandarin language itself:   the large number of
____
homophones sharing the same spellings,which has caused ambiguieties among
____
characters for a particular pronunciation (Liim,1990a, p.58; andHsu, in VIST,
____
1991, p. 195).   On the other hand, for thousands of years Taiwanese has
____
primarily served as an oral language;   therefore, the articulation and
____
pronunciation of this language is very slightlydistinguished by the speakers to
____
avoid miscommunication (Liim, 1990a, p.4).    As a result,there are very few
____
homophones in this language and, therefore, the phonetic ambiguieties which
____
Mandarin has suffered in data processing can be avoided (Liim, 1990a, p.4,
____
p.58). Accordingly, this alphabetical writing system is potentially superior to
____
the traditional ideographic harnji characters in terms of efficiency and economy
____
in data processing, which is crucial in today's technology-based society and the
____
arena ofinternational competition.    It can be efficiently processed through
____
computers, word processors, or just ordinary typewriters like English or other
____
European languages and can save time and labor.    Moreover, the additional
____
demands on hardware to code and outputharnji characters will be unnecessary.
____

1.3-4   The Significance of Efficient Language Learning and Functional Literacy
____
____As spelling makes the learning of written language easier and therefore
____
enables literacy more funcionary applied than memorizing the graphic structures
____
of ideographic characters (Liim, 1990a, p4). the Modern Literal Taiwanese is
____
expected to help Taiwanese learn the writing of their native language efficiently.
____
Also. it will provided anyone who wants to learn this language with a reliable
____
and efficient sourse of learning.
________
____The impact of the Modern Literal Taiwanese on the Taiwanese people is
____
potentially significant in both communication and socio-cultural levels.   In terms
____
of communication, on the one hand, the writing system will enable the native
____
speakers of Taiwanese to express their inner thoughts and feelings and makes the
____
learning of written Taiwanese efficient and convenient.   On the other hand, as
____
computers and technology will be used tremendously in any work place, family,
____
business, and industry in the future (Liim, 1990a, p.5), it is, therefore, crucial for
____
any society to have efficient and economical data processing systems to be
____
competent in international competition.
____
____And socio-culturally, it will keep the Taiwanese language itself
____
from disorganization and distortion.   It will also preserve the folk literature,
____
which is culturally important, from oblivion.   Lastly, it might serve as a medium
____
of written communication for the Taiwanese language, which, politically, is a
____
symbol of ethnic consciousness (Ross, inGiles and Saint-Jacques, 1979, p. 10) in
____
many Taiwanese democratic movements.   InTaiwan today more and more
____
people are looking forward to a more democratic political environment with a
____
more native Taiwan-oriented ideology; while the issue of independency has been
____
highly debatable and controversial, it is interesting to investigate how and why
____
this writing system might impact the ethnic identity among the Taiwanese people.
____