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native Taiyuan Mandarin even though she plays an entertainment demistar,
Qiao Qiao, who is a native of Datong (fig. 9). Yet the use of local
language takes a new twist in this film, which distinguishes the language
of the female and male protagonists. The two male leads, Wu Qiong
(playing Xiao Ji) and Zhao Weiwei (playing Bin Bin), speak Putonghua rather
than dialect throughout the film (fig. 10). The difference in the male and
female protagonists’ language depicts a stratification among disaffected
and disillusioned Chinese youth, a feature many critics have yet to discuss.
Although broadcast-standard Putonghua Mandarin continues to be used
in this film as the mainstream media language largely for its ideological
connotation, the film seems to ironically confirm its elevated position in
the hierarchy of linguistic practices. One of Bourdieu’s main theses (1991)
is that the educational system as an institution plays a decisive role in the
standardization, legitimization, and imposition of an official language; the
dialectical relation between the education system and the labor market
conspires to devalue local dialects, which are often dismissed as uneducated
and coarse. The Putonghua spoken by the high school–educated Xiao
Ji and Bin Bin in this movie is therefore endowed with certain cultural
Figure 9: Qiao Qiao (played by Zhao Tao) in Unknown Pleasures (2002)
Modern Chinese Literature and Culture • 183
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