The USF Center for Asia Pacific Studies welcomed Dr. Fang Xu to campus on Feb. 23, 2022 to discuss her new book, “Silencing Shanghai: Language and Identity in Urban China”. This book investigates the paradoxical and counterintuitive contrast between Shanghai’s emergence as a global city and the marginalization of its native population, captured through the rapid decline of the distinctive Shanghai dialect. From this unique vantage point, this book tells a story of power relations in a cosmopolitan metropolis closely monitored and shaped by an authoritarian state through policies affecting urban redevelopment, internal migration, and language. The endangerment of the vernacular exposes how state-sponsored social exclusion silences a significant voice of the people and has shaken the linguistic foundation of their local identity.

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