Topolect literature
« previous post |
If you do a search across the internet for this term, you will find it used here and there. You will even find the extended expression Topolect Literature Movement (TLM), which is traced back to at least the mid-twentieth century.
For the lexical legitimacy and morphological construction of "topolect literature", see this comment to a previous post:
"Topolect literature" may seem to be a contradiction in terms — fāngyán wénxué 方言文學 ("topolect literature"). On the other hand, "oral literature" is a well-established concept / term in global scholarship, the idea being that this is written literature transcribed / derived from oral sources.
Fāngyán 方言文學 ("topolect literature"). I've alluded to this phenomenon scores of times on Language Log and elsewhere, but I don't think I've ever devoted an entire post specifically and wholly to it. Perhaps the most famous example of a work of topolectal literature in recent Chinese history is Hǎishàng Huā Lièzhuàn (SH He2 zaan3 ho1 lih4 zoe3) 海上花列傳 (translated into English as The Sing-song Girls of Shanghai (SGS) also translated as Shanghai Flowers or Biographies of Flowers by the Seashore, an 1892 novel by Hán Bāngqìng (SH Hhhoe3 Paan1-qin3).
The Sing-song Girls of Shanghai is (in)famous / notorious for being written in Wu topolect, but I have always felt that it is not really written in Wu topolect, since the latter is almost entirely restricted to the dialog spoken by the prostitute characters.
Ditto for the shāngē 山歌 ("mountain songs") collected by the famous vernacular writer, Féng Mènglóng 馮夢龍 (1574-1646), which are noted for their Wu topolectisms. These songs do contain an appreciable number of Suzhou expressions, but as I recall from having read them many decades ago, such Suzhouisms are restricted primarily to erotic and pornographic phrases and passages. As such, although Feng Menglong's mountain songs are celebrated for being topolect verse, I think that the topolectal elements in them are window dressing, and that they are not wholly / purely Wu topolect literature.
Here are a couple of examples:
Jiě'er shēngdé hǎo gè bái xiōngtáng, qíngláng mō mō yě wúfáng.
姐儿生得好个白胸膛，情郎摸摸也无妨。
"Sis has nice, white breasts; if her lover rubs them, she doesn't object."
Jiě'er shēngdé xiàng duǒ huā, shízìjiētóu qù mài chá.
姐儿生得像朵花，十字街头去卖茶。
"Sis is like a pretty flower; she goes out to the street corner to sell tea.
I'm not getting into the more implicitly / explicitly erotic / pornographic songs in this post, but you can check them out for yourself here or here if you so desire.
Consequently, when I mention works such as The Sing-song Girls of Shanghai and Feng Menglong's mountain songs, it is not without lamenting that the sinographs are ill-suited for writing anything in topolect or colloquial language. When you compose something in topolect (i.e., non-Mandarin / non-Guānhuà 官話 ["non official's-speak"]), you must needs make heavy concessions to the "standard" sinographic writing system.
Jing Hu and I are writing a paper on the origins of "Guānhuà 官話", and so far we have a pretty good handle on it back to the Song period
I'm not the only one who complained about the constraints and strictures of the sinographs when it comes to writing fāngyán 方言 ("topolect"), kǒuyǔ 口語 ("colloquial"), and tǔhuà 土話 ("earthy, local speech; patois"). The great author about life in Peking, Lǎo Shě 老舍 (1899-1966 [suicide]), bemoaned the fact that he had to forego his favorite expressions from spoken Pekingese because there was no way to write them in Han characters.
About 30 or 35 years ago, I heard the news of a novel written in Shanxi or Shaanxi topolect. It won a major literary prize, partly on the strength of its allegedly being written in "topolect". Full of excitement, I went to the considerable trouble and expense of buying a copy. That was in the days before there were convenient book ordering services online. The meaning of the title of the book was "storm".
I read through the whole big novel (hundreds of pages); it took me about a week. My recollection is that I found only 5 or so phrases / words that might be considered topolectal. I was deeply disappointed.
I loaned the book to someone and, as so often happens, never got it back, thus I no longer have access to it. I would be very grateful if someone could help me determine the name of the author and the title of the book.
Selected readings
- "Battle for Taiwanese, part 2" (4/21/25)
- "Topolect writing" (11/23/14
- "Topolect: a Four-Body Problem" (7/18/24) — with bibliography
- "Shaanxi topolect" (9/6/18)