Language as Movement: A Short History of the Cantophone, 1840s–1920s

Abstract: This article explores how Cantonese speakers in the late Qing and early Republican periods traveled and connected with the world. It is a social and cultural study of the journeys and transformation of Cantonese, both as a people and as a language, in a new geopolitical and technological environment consisting of Western imperialism, Chinese nationalism, and individuals’ enterprising efforts. I study how Cantonese reached Shanghai and Guangxi within China to interact with the languages and people in those places, and I also explore how it crossed the South Sea to British Malaya and the Pacific to Hawaii and the United States. I then follow the trajectories of study abroad students in Japan to witness how Cantonese left China and came back and in what ways the language participated in some of the most important political events of the time. This historical account offers an alternative view to understanding the life of a language, which in turn can help us understand the complex dynamics of language, power, and identity.