Paper short abstract:

Focusing on the multiple language ideologies of Chinese in terms of enregisterment and language diversity, this paper discusses that skills in speaking and writing Chinese are celebrated by Wa migrants as capital of economic mobility and as communication skills in China’s multiethnic labor market.

Paper long abstract:

This paper examines the impacts of the neoliberal ideology of work upon the linguistic practices of Wa migrants when they move from rural homelands to an industrial district in Shenzhen, China. In the neoliberal workplaces, workers normally receive pay in exchange for the skills they can offer and use at work (Urciuoli 2008). The skills in speaking and writing Chinese mean learning to be a flexible economic actor. However, the combination of poor schooling and social inequality often creates an obstacle for Wa migrants (non-native Chinese speakers) to compete with their Han counterparts to achieve job promotion and to master communication skills in the Chinese-dominant workplaces. Furthermore, communication skills in speaking a particular language are often linked to the discourses of profit and capital for constructing neoliberal subjectivity (Heller and Duchêne 2012). The varieties of Chinese spoken by the populations of Chinese workers, I further suggest, present a different language ideology about language diversity among the workers. Focusing on the multiple language ideologies of Chinese in terms of enregisterment and language diversity, this paper discusses: how the state discourse about rural citizens' participation in labor work as a means for antipoverty affects Wa migrants' views of mobility and linguistic practices; how the language ideologies of Chinese play a determining role in the economic lives of Wa workers; and how they evaluate and comment on their various degree in mastering interethnic communication skills in Chinese along with their mixed feelings about desire for labor employment and work hardships.