When the linguistic market meets the tea business: language attitudes, ideologies and linguistic entrepreneurship in the Blang community in China

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper examines the impact of the local tea industry on the language ecology of the geographically remote Blang community in China. The paper takes an ecology perspective in language planning where all languages in the locality are given equal attention. These languages in the context of this paper include Blang, Putonghua, and English as the leading global lingua franca of international trade. The study used a qualitative approach and reports findings from semi-structured interviews collected in Yunnan Province. The discursive approach allows for the analysis of participants’ attitudes and ideologies vis-à-vis the changing economic and linguistic ecology. The findings demonstrate that the local tea industry has increased the economic value of Putonghua and further marginalised Blang. Putonghua and English were ideated as capital in the domestic and global markets, while Blang was perceived as having no economic value. These findings point towards a weakening vitality of Blang and reflect the uneven power relations favouring Putonghua and English. While economic entrepreneurship was paired with linguistic entrepreneurship, this agentive behaviour was mainly directed towards learning the dominant languages by the Blang people, and it was related to the extent to which individuals themselves engaged with the tea business.