Increased income disparity

One of the primary goals of economic reform and modernization has been for all Chinese in the country to achieve a

, or relatively comfortable lifestyle. As Davis (2000:17) points out, “in proclaiming the goal of reform to be the establishment of a xiaokang society the CCP [Chinese Communist Party] leadership legitimated a society stratified by financial inequalities.” Numerous studies show that reforms have given impetus to rapid income growth and rising living standards, but at the same time, income disparities are widening across different segments of the population, different regions (e.g. Khan et al. 1992, Davis 2000), and different types of business enterprises (e.g. Gold 1990, Bian 1994, Goodman 1995, Pearson 1997). Improved living standards parallel the rise of consumerism. As reforms severely weaken state central control of the economy, a consumer market has emerged, and a new generation of consumer goods is available to the general public (Walder 1991). Thus, state-monopolized collective consumption has been overthrown by a consumer revolution (Bian 1994, H. Lu 2000). Growth in income has increased purchasing power and the desire to consume. At the same time, increased economic diversity and the abundance of consumer goods have made it possible for manufacturers and retailers to target different groups of consumers on the basis of their purchasing power. Differential purchasing power and increased choice in housing, leisure, and other components of material life provide a wider space for mainland Chinese to make commercial lifestyle choices (Weiner 1994:13). Gradually, the homogeneity of the masses' lifestyle in pre-reform China gave way to economic diversity and polarization (Wang 1995, Ikels 1996). As Hanlong Lu (2000:136) observes, “People are not satisfied just to follow trends and fashions. They have begun to compete for prestige and style,” and they do so publicly. Before the economic reforms, only some high-ranking CCP cadres were able to enjoy a distinctive lifestyle, which was based not on their personal wealth but on their political elite status. Nowadays, wealthy Chinese are able to use their financial power to pursue new lifestyles that are not affordable to the mass majority. As a result, new elites are emerging, and they form the basis for a rising Chinese middle class whose status is not based on party membership (Li 1997; Pearson 1997, 1998; Yan 1997; W. Zhang 2000).

China opens up to the global market

Economic reforms are transforming the centrally controlled state economy into a market economy. At the same time, after many years of isolation from the rest of the world (especially during the Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 1976), an “open policy” has been instituted to integrate China into the global market. Opening up to world markets has attracted foreign investment and brought in advanced technology and management expertise from other countries. In 1997, approximately 5,000 foreign-funded enterprises and more than 6,000 representative offices were operating in Beijing. They employed more than 300,000 Chinese (Beijing Statistical Yearbook 1997). As of April 1998, an estimated total of 310,570 foreign companies were registered in China (W. Zhang 2000:114).

In the wake of the fast growth of foreign-investment businesses, a new job market has emerged which fosters a new generation of Chinese professionals working for foreign businesses. By mid-1998, 17.5 million Chinese were working in the foreign business sector, many of them in middle and senior management (W. Zhang 2000). Among these managerial level professionals, those working as middle and upper tier managers in multinational Western and Japanese companies form the core of the business elite in the foreign sector (Pearson 1997). These companies offer them much higher salaries than others. In addition, the global prestige of their companies gives them higher social status inaccessible to managers of smaller firms. This status, combined with the increasing attention they receive from the media, has made working as a professional in foreign business an attractive occupation, especially among the younger generation Chinese (Sun 1997, cited in W. Zhang 2000:121).

The middle and upper echelons of these professionals are referred to by some Chinese as

‘yuppies’. In addition to the original denotation of the English word, the Chinese term has the connotations of global orientation, trendiness, and sophistication. These social characteristics of the Chinese yuppies are represented in the word yáng in the following popular saying about them:

‘they wear foreign brand clothes, speak foreign languages, eat foreign food, and deal with foreigners’. Yáng captures the core characteristic of this group. Originally meaning ‘foreign’ or ‘Western,’ it now means anything fashionable and progressive (Yan 1997:41). Yan notes that “eating foreign food, and consuming foreign goods, has become an important way for these Chinese yuppies to define themselves as middle-class professionals” (1997:50). While there is not much scholarly research to attest to Western influence on the lifestyle of these Chinese yuppies, their unique occupational milieu, extensive contacts with business people from other parts of the world, and frequent international travel have given them greater exposure to other modern cosmopolitan lifestyles than many Mainland Chinese have. Their higher income also enables them to consume in many ways that other Chinese urbanites cannot yet afford. A survey of 800 young professionals working in foreign-invested firms in 1994 found that they share a modern and cosmopolitan outlook and may have a strong impact on the development of a new middle-class lifestyle in urban China (Liu et al. 1998, Liu & Yao 1998, cited in W. Zhang 2000:117). Later in this article I show that the Chinese yuppies in Beijing use linguistic resources to present their cosmopolitan professional identity.

China joins the transnational Chinese community

Rapid globalization has drawn China not only into the global economy but also into a modern transnational Chinese capitalist community (e.g. Harding 1993, Ong & Nonini 1997), which is characterized by economic and cultural interactions that transcend national boundaries among Chinese communities around the world. Overseas Chinese communities (i.e., Chinese living outside the PRC) have played a catalytic role in the economic development of China. Their businesses – mainly from Hong Kong, Taiwan, Macau, Singapore, and Thailand – make up the biggest contributor of foreign direct investment in mainland China (Yeung 2000:91). Furthermore, many Western multinationals employ overseas Chinese to manage their local operations in China. Using their cultural and linguistic advantages, overseas Chinese facilitate communication between the foreign headquarters and their local employees (Yeung 2000, W. Zhang 2000).

If the overseas Chinese have been playing a significant role in fueling the economic transformation of the mainland, overseas Chinese popular culture is exerting an equally powerful influence on mainland culture and society. In the wake of overseas Chinese investors and business executives, overseas Chinese cultural entrepreneurs also made their way into the mainland market in the early 1980s. At a time when there were not enough cultural products to satisfy the needs of mainlanders who were eager to see the world beyond their national borders, Hong Kong and Taiwan (jointly referred to in Mandarin as

) pop music, with its glamorously packaged singers and sophisticated stage and sound effects, immediately took over China's pop music market and its consumers, particularly the younger generations.

films and TV dramas have come out on top at the box office and dominate prime time on mainland television channels. Novels by Hong Kong and Taiwan writers are among the best-sellers. Although at the same time Western pop music, particularly American pop music, Hollywood movies, and Western TV serials also appeal to a large number of mainlanders, the impact of Western popular culture is far less significant than that of

(Gu et al. 1992, Tan 1992, Barmé 1993, Gold 1993). In this respect, the common roots of Chinese culture and shared languages give overseas Chinese popular culture, particularly

popular culture, tremendous advantages over its Western counterparts. Communicated in Mandarin or Cantonese,

popular culture presents to the eyes of the mainlanders a world with a prosperous modern cosmopolitan lifestyle and a new urban identity. This modern urban world is Chinese in essence and hence is readily identified by and with the Chinese on the mainland. Increasing interaction across state boundaries between China and other Chinese societies around the world has brought about the emergence of “Modern Chinese Transnationalism” (Nonini & Ong 1997). According to Nonini & Ong, it “generates new and distinctive social arrangements, cultural discourses, practices, and subjectivities. Perhaps most crucial, new identities are thereby constituted” (1997:11).

Although only a minority of mainlanders have gone abroad, the implacable forces of transnational Chinese mass media, new information technology, and the global flows of people, capital, information, and commodities (both material and cultural) provide them an array of resources to construct new identities and communities that link up with Chinese in other parts of the world (Barmé 1993, Gold 1993, M. Yang 1997). Resources that were previously inaccessible to Chinese on the mainland have now come to symbolize newly available orientations and subjectivities. The current sociolinguistic reality of China challenges us to go beyond treating identities and communities as territorially based and conceptualizing linguistic variation along the linear dimension of the standard and the vernacular. In the linguistic data to be discussed in this paper, a combination of linguistic features is employed by Chinese yuppies to participate in a newly emergent transnational Chinese linguistic market and to construct a new cosmopolitan professional identity.

In what follows, I describe the methodologies and participants for this study. Next, I discuss the linguistic variables and patterns of variation found. Then I explore explanations for the linguistic patterns. I conclude by discussing the implications of this study.

The local variables

Beijing Mandarin has a unique speech style that encompasses segmental features as well as complex prosodic, lexical, and rhetorical features. The Beijing style of speech is well known as

Beijing locals pronounce the phrase – with rhotacized syllable finals – as

, literally ‘Beijing tune.’ Speakers who demonstrate prominent local Beijing features are described as speaking with

‘a mouthful of Beijing tune,’ or

‘strong Beijing flavor.’ Beijing Mandarin has a special national status because of its tremendous cultural prominence. It has been the dialect of the capital city for several hundred years, and a conservative variety of this dialect is the phonological basis for MSM. In addition and perhaps more importantly, there is a rich literary tradition of writing in the Beijing vernacular (L. Zhang 1994). As the literary classics have been read and passed on from generation to generation, they have reified a few local characters that have taken on a life of their own and become cultural icons of and for Beijingers (Zhao 1995). The most famous of these are

‘Beijing smooth operator’ and hútòng chuànzi ‘alley saunterer’.

in

is Beijing. While yóu is the Mandarin word for ‘oil,’ it is also part of yóuhuá, which means ‘oily’ or ‘slippery’. When used to describe a personality, yóu connotes smooth and worldly wise. With the nominalization suffix –zi, yóuzi refers to someone who is well versed in the ways of the world. Hence, a

is a Beijing native who is smooth and streetwise (W. Chen 1992:358).

are extremely skillful and tactful in dealing with issues and people; they are neither hard-line conservatives nor radical liberals – they are smooth operators. Literary works of Beijing writers provide the most vivid examples of Beijing smooth operators in all walks of life, including business operators, entertainers and artists, descendants of Manchurian aristocrats, and intellectuals (L. Zhang 1994). In my interviews, participants frequently referred to well-known literary characters as examples of “prototypical” Beijingers.

Just as Beijing smooth operators are characterized by their smooth (yóuhuá) personality, they are also considered to be smooth talkers. The smoothness of

extends to a stereotypical speech style, known as

‘oily mouth smooth tongue,’ or yóuqiang huádiào ‘oily accent smooth tune.’ Both expressions mean ‘glib’ or ‘having the gift of gab’. They also refer to the particular sound of Beijing speech. This is what is known among lay people, both locals and non-Beijingers, as the “heavy r-sounding” feature. Although no study has pinpointed the exact linguistic features that contribute to the smooth style, I have found that Beijingers identify two features with smoothness. The first is rhotacization of the syllable final, and the second is lenition of retroflex obstruent initials. As both features are associated with the “smooth operator” character, I discuss them together as a subgroup of the local variables and refer to them as the “smooth operator” variables.

The “smooth operator” variables

The rhotacization of the syllable final, commonly known among Chinese speakers as érhuà, involves the addition of a subsyllabic

to the final, which causes it to become rhotacized (Chao 1968, Y. Lu 1995). In the following examples, the IPA transcriptions of the non-rhotacized forms are followed by their rhotacized counterparts.

Although many participants explicitly used the technical term érhuà or its variations

to represent smooth Beijing speech, others mentioned

‘heavy r-sounding’ and related it to the smooth quality of the stereotypical Beijinger. Rhotacization is not the only feature that contributes to the perception of “heavy r-sounding.” Additionally, it involves lenition of the group of retroflex obstruent initials,

. In Beijing Mandarin, these retroflex initials sometimes are lenited and realized as the approximant

(Chao 1968). Lenition can occur word-medially (in a multisyllabic word) and across word boundaries. It is briefly mentioned by Chao 1968 and Norman 1988, both of whom claim lenition to be a feature of weakly stressed (i.e., neutral tone) syllables. In my data, however, lenition also occurs in stressed (i.e., tonal) syllables. In this article, the retroflex obstruent initials are represented by the fricative

. The tokens used in the statistical analysis are word-medial occurrences, as shown in the following two examples. In (3), the second syllable of xuésheng ‘student’ has neutral tone. In (4), the second syllable of huasheng ‘peanut’ has high level tone.

In contrast to rhotacization, which was explicitly pointed out by many participants as an example of the smoothness of Beijing Mandarin, none of them used the technical term ruòhuà to refer to lenition. However, the examples that the participants gave made it clear that they did associate lenition with “heavy r-sounding.” In the following quote, the speaker uses two examples to illustrate what he means by “heavy r-sound.”

The first example for “heavy r-sounding” is a case of lenition (line 3) in which the syllable initial retroflex

in tóngzhì ‘comrade’ is lenited. In the ‘police station’ example in line 4, both lenition and rhotacization occurred so that

was realized as

.

In example (6) below, lenition is described as “swallowing sound.” In the expression ‘promise to Chairman Mao’ in line 2,

in both ‘chairman’ and ‘promise’ are lenited. Again the speaker relates ‘swallowing sound’ (line 5) to the smooth personality (line 6):

The “alley saunter” variable

The second local stereotype is called hútòng chuànzi ‘alley saunterer’. Hútòng is the local term for narrow streets or alleys. The city of Beijing is made up of main streets which are called jie or lù, and hútòng ‘alleys’. Traditionally, no private residence was built on the side of a main street. Hútòng was the corridor connecting the main street to residential neighborhoods. Nowadays, hútòngs are being replaced by thoroughfares as traditional one-story houses give way to high-rise apartment complexes. Chuànzi is a person who saunters around without a destination, and hútòng chuànzi ‘alley saunterer’ is a stereotypical Beijing male persona: a man who is feckless and walks about in the alleys, waiting for something to happen. While the smooth operator character can apply to many types, the alley saunterer calls forth a stereotypical lower-class male image (D. Yang 1994). The essential quality of an alley saunterer is lack of education and ambition, and being limited to the local. While both labels represent Beijing locals,

is well versed in the circumstances of Beijing as the national cultural and political center, whereas the world of hútòng chuànzi is restricted to the grids of alleys (Liu 1997).

The speech feature associated with the alley saunterer image is the interdental realization of the dental sibilants /s/, /ts/, and /ts^h/ as

, respectively. In this article, they are represented by /ts/, and I refer to this as the “alley saunterer” variable. In the following examples the realizations in MSM are presented first, followed by that illustrating the “alley saunterer” variant:

In the following excerpt, this feature is used to characterize the “authentic” Beijing Mandarin of alley saunterers. See lines 2 and 4:

In (10), Tian⁶

No formal study has been done of this feature. The single published mention of it is found in a footnote in

‘Chinese dialect vocabulary,’ as quoted below (Linguistics Group 19953:8, fn.12):

In the southern part of the city [Beijing], some speakers do not have the labial-dental sibilants, [ts], [ts^h], and [s], but use interdental sibilants

instead.

In my data, the use of the interdental variant does not correlate with the participants' geographic origin in Beijing. However, as this result is based on a small number of speakers, a larger sample is needed to investigate the geographic distribution of this variant.

The “cosmopolitan” variable

Variation in the use of the three local variables discussed above indicates differential degrees of local accent which can be located along the BM–MSM continuum. The fourth variable is the realization of a neutral tone as a full tone in a weakly stressed syllable. It differs from the previous three variables in two respects: First, it is suprasegmental in some sense, whereas the other three are purely segmental. Second, the use of a full tone instead of a neutral tone indicates not only using less of the local Beijing accent (moving away from the local dialect) but also moving away from MSM. As mentioned in the introduction, in recent years (Hong Kong) Cantonese and Taiwan Mandarin have exerted an influence on MSM in both lexicon and phonology (S. Chen 1991). In this respect, new cultural icons brought about by

popular culture (e.g., Barmé 1992, Gold 1993) play a pivotal role in the spread of non-mainland Mandarin features. The use of full tone instead of a neutral tone is well known among Chinese mainlanders, particularly northern Mandarin speakers, as evidence of

-accented Mandarin. This feature is stereotypically associated with

pop music stars and business people. In the rest of the article I refer to this as the “cosmopolitan” variable. In the following examples, the neutral tone realization in the Pinyin and IPA transcriptions is followed by the full tone variant, with the vowel and its tone mark in boldface:

In Beijing Mandarin and other northern Mandarin varieties, every stressed syllable has a full tone with a fixed pitch value. In other words, every stressed syllable has one of the four Mandarin tones. When a syllable is weakly stressed, it has neutral tone (Chao 1968). Unlike the four basic tones, a neutral-tone syllable does not have a fixed pitch value. Its pitch is determined by the tone of its preceding syllable (Chao 1968, Norman 1988, Qian 1995). While neutral tone is a common feature of the northern Mandarin dialect group, it is particularly prominent in BM. In contrast, most of the southern varieties, such as Cantonese, Min, and Shanghainese, have very limited use of neutral tone (Chao 1968, Qian 1995). Beijing Mandarin neutral-tone syllables are significantly weaker than those in other northern Mandarin varieties, and they are particularly short in duration and articulated with less intensity (Y. Lu 1995). Their special pitch and rhythmic features contribute to the unique

‘Beijing tune.’ In my interviews, many participants shared the view that

is “rhythmic and melodious.” Repeatedly, they used the phrase yìyáng dùncuò – an expression typically used to describe the rhythm and melody of poetry and speech – to describe Beijing Mandarin. The use of full tone in its place transforms the rhythmic Beijing style into what Kubler 1985 describes as a staccato effect and hence can be immediately identified by Beijingers as non-local and non-mainland.

Changing economy, changing markets

While the yuppies' less use of the three local Beijing features might be interpreted as an indication that they speak a more standard variety of MSM, such an interpretation in terms of standardness masks the complexity of their linguistic practice. Their adoption of the “cosmopolitan” full tone variant in addition to their lesser use of local features shows that the linguistic resources they employ are not limited to MSM (also recall the magazine article quoted at the beginning of this article). In my interviews with state professionals and speakers outside the international business sector, one of the most frequently commented-upon speech features characterizing people of

‘foreign enterprises’ is their use of the full tone in place of a neutral tone. Although not all respondents explicitly named the use of the full tone, it became explicit in their examples. The most common examples came from their telephone interactions with professionals in foreign businesses. They would say xiansheng ‘mister’ and

‘miss’ using the full tone in the second syllable of both address terms where native BM speakers would use a neutral tone, i.e., xiansheng and

.

The use of the full-tone realization of a neutral tone in Beijing is identified as non-local and non-mainland. Hence the yuppies' adoption of this feature makes their speech not only non-local but also non-mainland. The linguistic difference between the two professional groups cannot simply be described along a linear dimension from vernacular to standard. Rather, the yuppies draw on features from both BM and non-mainland Mandarin varieties to construct a new and non-local variety of Mandarin, and they use that to construct a cosmopolitan yuppie style. In the rest of the article, I refer to this new variety as “cosmopolitan Mandarin.”⁷

In contrast to the yuppies' cosmopolitan style, the state professionals' speech is characterized by local Beijing features. Particularly prominent is their greater use of the “smooth operator” features and the categorical use of the neutral tone in unstressed and weakly stressed syllables. As BM is the phonological basis for MSM and these three features are also shared by other northern Mandarin varieties, the state professionals' speech can be described as MSM with a prominent Beijing accent. Furthermore, the lack of significant topic-dependent shift in their use of rhotacization, lenition, and neutral tone (shown in Table 3 and Figure 2) shows that these features did not play as significant a role in presenting the professional aspect of their identities as they did for the yuppies.

Since the independent variables – geographical origin, level of education, and professional ranking – were controlled so that they would not exert considerable effect on the use of the linguistic variables, the sharp intergroup variation seems to reflect the differences between the two professional categories: working in state-owned versus foreign businesses. In other words, to say that the linguistic variation found reflects professional category difference is to assume that the less frequent use of the local features reflects the part of the yuppies' work that deals with non-mainland Chinese. However, such an assumption is implausible if we consider the fact that, as employees of the mainland China (Beijing) branches of international businesses, their work involves interactions with people from both Chinese and international corporations. Despite the differences among the companies they work for in terms of Chinese versus foreign, some factors such as the following would predict more similarity in the linguistic practice of the two groups. Since many sociolinguistic studies have shown that standard language is expected in formal (and by extension corporate) settings, we should expect the two groups to demonstrate a high degree of similarity in their use of non-local features. Particularly, we would expect that the state professionals show greater intraspeaker (i.e., topic) variation in their use of the variables. However, the results show significant topic variation in only one variable. The businesses that the state professionals work for, though based in Beijing, are all large enterprises with nationwide operations. The majority of their clients are from other parts of the country. That fact represents another aspect of similarity between state professionals and those in the foreign sector, who also conduct business at a non-local level and often interact with non-Beijing clients. Moreover, in both national and foreign enterprises, native Beijing employees make up only a small portion of the total number of employees. Thus, in both groups, most of their colleagues are non-BM speakers. The above discussion shows that the assumption that intergroup variation reflects professional group difference fails to explain why state professionals do not show significant topic-dependent variation, or why the yuppies use a cosmopolitan variety that does not strictly conform to the norms of MSM. In what follows, I argue that the intergroup variation is the result of the professionals' participation in two different linguistic markets, and of the differences in the symbolic value of MSM and a new cosmopolitan variety of Mandarin on each market. I show that the state professionals participate in a Mainland Standard Mandarin linguistic market while the yuppies participate in a transnational Chinese linguistic market.⁸

The Mainland Standard Mandarin linguistic market

MSM, the officially designated common medium of communication in China, is used in large national enterprises and other national and government organizations headquartered in the capital city. National corporations, the bureaucracy, educational institutions, the media, and other cultural institutions constitute the sites of the MSM linguistic market in Beijing. However, the standard linguistic market in China is not exactly the same as what Bourdieu 1977, 1991 describes. He argues that competence in the legitimate language constitutes the most valuable linguistic capital on the standard linguistic market. Possession of this kind of linguistic capital helps one become a viable participant in the standard linguistic market. In the MSM linguistic market, the spoken variety of MSM does not constitute a profitable form of symbolic capital. As several studies have shown, more than four decades since the initiation of the national language standardization campaign, spoken MSM has not become a social index, nor a symbolic asset necessary for access to elite status in mainland China (Guo 1990, Zhu & Chen 1991, Harrell 1993).

‘speaking standard MSM’ – a slogan in the campaign to promote MSM – does not therefore represent a kind of social prestige sought by the majority of mainland Chinese, except for those who work in a very small number of occupations such as broadcasting, journalism, and entertainment, in which standard MSM is mandated. As Zhu & Chen (1991:99) point out, “No great advantages can be gained if one speaks Putonghua [MSM] while no harm can be done if one does not.” Hence, nearly four decades after the implementation of the language standardization policy, most Chinese on the mainland are content to speak a localized variety of MSM.

While the spoken variety of MSM does not constitute an especially important form of symbolic capital, linguistic hegemony is established through competence in written Standard Chinese. It is required for access to elite status. The relation between spoken and written standard language is well summarized by Harrell:

My interviews with state professionals confirm Harrell's observation about the symbolic value of spoken MSM. Most of them did acknowledge the importance of speaking MSM in their work, but for them its value lies in the function of facilitating communication. In my earlier study on the Tianjin dialect (Q. Zhang 1996), many respondents contended that the ability to speak MSM indicated that the speaker was educated or cultivated. In contrast, among the Beijing state professionals in this study, speaking MSM was not evaluated as an indicator of educational level or cultural refinement. A possible explanation for this difference is that BM is the phonological standard for MSM; hence native Beijingers are, in a sense, native speakers of MSM, or more precisely, native speakers of a local variety of MSM. Hence, unlike many speakers of other Chinese varieties, Beijingers do not have to learn spoken MSM at school. As Bourdieu (1984:86) argues, the encouragement of the acquisition of a specific competence can be achieved only when the market promises or guarantees profit for this competence. The Beijing state professionals in the MSM linguistic market are “endowed” with the linguistic capital which is the officially established common medium for communication. As there is not much anticipation of reward for speaking standard MSM, the state professionals do not have to strive to speak MSM without a Beijing accent. Hence, we should not be surprised to find the much higher frequency in their use of the two best-known Beijing features, and little style-shifting.

The transnational Chinese linguistic market

While the professionals in the state economic sector participate in the MSM linguistic market, the yuppies in the international sector are engaged in a different linguistic market. As mentioned at the beginning of this article, China's participation in the transnational Chinese capitalist community and global economy has given rise to a new job market. In this market, the traditionally dominant system of state-controlled job assignment has become obsolete. Individuals become competitors and commodities in the market. Job applicants have to sell themselves. The selling process starts with the job interview, a totally new experience to job seekers when first introduced by foreign companies. Making a good self-presentation at the job interview – packaging and comporting oneself appropriately according to the rules of the game in the new market – has become a crucial practice for anyone who wants to enter the international business sector, a steppingstone to a new cosmopolitan lifestyle.

To become a commodity in demand in the new market, one has to acquire the kinds of symbolic capital that are valued in that market. On the employer's side, specific language skills alongside educational credentials, specialized skills, and other requirements are expected of job seekers. These include the ability to speak Standard Mandarin without a local accent, and proficiency in one or more foreign languages. English is unquestionably the most valued foreign language at present; others include Japanese, German, and French. Very often, requirements of appearance (

‘having regular features’),

‘having regular features’ is a euphemistic way to describe people who are physically attractive in a particular way. Hence, a requirement that job seekers have “regular features” is another way of saying “ugly people and those with physically visible abnormalities or deformities should not apply.”

In consequence, the establishment of the international business sector has given rise to a new linguistic market that creates linguistic values different from those in the MSM linguistic market. In the latter, the BM phonological system is the standard, and spoken MSM is valuable as a lingua franca. In contrast, the ability to speak Mandarin without a local accent has become profit-generating linguistic capital in the new linguistic market. Working for international businesses engages the yuppies in a market in which MSM is only one of the varieties of Mandarin – others include Taiwan Mandarin, Hong Kong Mandarin, Singapore Mandarin, and so on. The following comment from Mr. Wang, chief representative of a foreign bank's Beijing office, displays keen awareness among these professionals of the fact that they are members of a market in which BM is not the single standard variety (the italicized words were originally said in English):

It is also worth noticing that Wang uses the English word Mandarin rather than its Chinese equivalent,

. This indicates that he is using a term that can refer to multiple varieties of Mandarin:

on the mainland;

, the standard Mandarin variety in Taiwan; and

, the standard Mandarin variety in Singapore.

I call the new linguistic market the “transnational Chinese linguistic market.” Yuppies' use of cosmopolitan Mandarin shows that they do not conform to the norms of MSM, which are based on BM. Indeed, the value of cosmopolitan Mandarin extends far beyond facilitating communication. During their interviews, the yuppies all emphasized speaking Mandarin without a local accent as an important aspect of building their professional and corporate image. For them, therefore, the new Mandarin variety is no longer an object of need – a common medium needed for communication – but a resource for distinction (Bourdieu 1984). The yuppies use the cosmopolitan variety to distinguish themselves from those in the MSM linguistic market. Its use not only distinguishes the yuppies from their state counterparts, but also helps create and perpetuate the sanctions of the new linguistic market. The effect of the sanctions of market on linguistic behavior is elaborated by Bourdieu:

Hence, it is not completely a matter of personal choice whether to use a variety of Mandarin that is not strictly tied to the mainland standard. What is at stake is presenting oneself as a competent business professional in the international sector. Hence, the use of a cosmopolitan variety has the potential to produce symbolic profit and, ultimately, economic profit, whereas failure or inability to use it would be detrimental to one's image as a competent professional. The fact that senior professionals sometimes go so far as assuming the responsibility of norm reinforcement indicates that the yuppies are aware of the sanctions of the market. In the following example, the speaker, David, is a deputy representative of a European bank:

Working in a foreign business, it's inappropriate to speak to clients with a heavy Beijing accent. Once, I heard my secretary talking to a client on the phone, she said

[‘too late’]. “téi” is Beijing vernacular. I had to tell her to get rid of it.

Constructing a Chinese Yuppie Identity

Although differences in linguistic markets contribute to the significant intergroup variation reported here, the construct of the linguistic market cannot explain the nuanced meanings of variation. The yuppies' use of the cosmopolitan variety of Mandarin is not an isolated demand of the transnational Chinese linguistic market, but one aspect of a whole set of related practices that constitute a new yuppie style and identity. Linguistic practice is only a part of the practices that distinguish the yuppies from other social groups. Their work environment, or in Bourdieu's term, “occupational milieu” (1984:103), exerts a strong effect on their behavior.¹⁰

Through their daily engagement in the new linguistic market, which is part of a broader symbolic market, the yuppies gradually develop practices that comprise the yuppie habitus, reflected in the ways they act, speak, shop, and even eat. All these practices give meaning to who they are. As Jenkins 1996, Eckert 2000, and a host of others have argued, the construction of social identity and community is about the making of meaning. In the rest of this section I show that the yuppies extrapolate and appropriate various resources to make their emergent cosmopolitan identity meaningful.

I have repeatedly emphasized that the yuppies see and present themselves as cosmopolitan business professionals. They are using a cosmopolitan variety of Mandarin to carve out a space in the transnational Chinese community and the global business world. Equally important, however, is that the use of this new variety does not uproot them from their local basis, Beijing. In other words, the yuppies do not construct their new social identity by simply disassociating themselves from being Beijingers and packaging themselves as “Hong Kong-Taiwan wannabes.” It is true that they have a global orientation, many of them wear foreign brand names, and all speak foreign languages. However, these are only part of the repository of resources from which they draw to forge their yuppie identity. As Giddens 1991 observes, all cosmopolitans are nonetheless contextually situated in space and time. The space that they are carving out is in and of Beijing but not limited to Beijing. They are picking and choosing among local as well as non-local resources to make their identity meaningful in a local context. Linguistic features that are socially significant in the local context are employed by the yuppies so that their identity becomes not only meaningful to themselves, but interpretable and meaningful to others around them.

The purpose of the meaning-making process is twofold: (i) to produce agreement among the members, that is, to make the internal similarity meaningful to members; and (ii) to produce distinctions between their group and significant other groups – that is, to make the external difference meaningful to outsiders. This is achieved through the creation of a style – a system of distinction (Bourdieu 1984, Irvine 2001). As a powerful means of self-expression, style helps us articulate who we are and how we are different from others. It defines the group's boundaries against other groups and defines them “more sharply in relation both to its members and all outsiders” (Clarke 1976:182).

To create a distinctive style, individuals draw upon resources that are accessible to them. However, they do not pick up stylistic material in a free-wheeling fashion. The creation of style can be seen as a process of “bricolage” (Lévi-Strauss 1966) in which the “bricoleur” selects from a limited and preexisting set of materials at hand and arranges them into a meaningful ensemble (see, e.g., studies in Hall & Jefferson 1976; Hebdige 1996 [1979]). California Style Collective 1993 examine the linguistic bricolage of adolescent style through phonological variation. Numerous recent sociolinguistic studies, though not adopting the concept of bricolage per se, also demonstrate the appropriation of socially (and culturally) significant linguistic features to give meaning to various social identities and/or communities (Bucholtz 1996, Barrett 1999, Coupland 2001, Wong & Zhang 2001).

The orchestration of a stylistic ensemble based on a limited set of existing resources is crucial because it establishes the basis or common ground for recognition and identification by both group members and outsiders. The linguistic material that the yuppies pick up represents well-known cultural personae. The connection between these linguistic features and their corresponding personae is well established in the public imagination in Beijing. Hence, the use of rhotacization, lenition, and full tone triggers the connection and thus can be easily recognized. In addition, social and symbolic significance is not the only condition that determines what gets picked up. Another important condition is whether there exists a fit, or to use Clarke's (1976) term, “homology,” between a potential symbolic resource and the group's ideology or social orientation. Among the three local features, the yuppies use the two “smooth operator” features to a limited extent, as the smoothness and skillfulness in dealing with business is compatible with the persona of a business professional. They eschew the use of the interdental realization of (ts) because there is little homology between the image of an alley saunterer and a yuppie. The locally established meaning of the interdental variant – fecklessness, restriction to the local market, lack of education and ambition – conflicts in every aspect with the cosmopolitan persona that the yuppies are trying to construct. Meanwhile, they adopt the full tone feature – a symbol of the new cultural icons in the transnational Chinese market – to accentuate the cosmopolitan aspect of their identity. The identity of a Chinese yuppie, like social identity in general, is multiplex (Hall 1996, Jenkins 1996). A Chinese yuppie is simultaneously a cosmopolitan, a business professional, a young person, a Chinese, a woman or a man, and a Beijinger. These multiple aspects intersect with each other and consequently affect the ways in which the yuppies select and appropriate symbolic resources. Finally, rather than examining the meaning(s) of each linguistic variable separately, we have to put the variables back into the system of distinction to elucidate our interpretation of the social meanings of linguistic variables. In other words, the social meanings of the features studied are inseparable from one another. It is not the use or non-use of rhotacization, lenition, and full tone that gives specific meaning to any one of these features. What makes them meaningful is the appropriation of the whole ensemble – the cosmopolitan variety of Mandarin, as well as other practices and resources – in the construction of a yuppie style.