ABSTRACT
In order to set up a more effective mechanism for revitalizing the Hakka language, the Legislative Yuan passed the amendment of Hakka Basic Act on December 29th, 2017. The revised version of Act institutes Hakka language as the local and teaching language in those "major Hakka cultural areas" (Hakka villages). After examine the revision process of Hakka Basic Act, this paper finds that the revised Act follows the "Local Government Act" and established "Hakka cultural regional cooperation organizations" instead of adopting the idea of "Hakka cultural self-ruling body" advocated by Hakka Affairs Council. This result from both of Ministry of Interior and Hakka Affairs Council tend to build the cultural self-ruling mechanism under the framework of administrative regions, which is according to the article 24-1 of "Local Government Act". For providing references to domestic policy analysis, this paper, which employs the institution of Belgium as a case study, explores the autonomous area of language family and regional self-ruling body in Belgium by the approach of public policy theory and literature review. Moreover, this paper tried to propose a designation of "Hakka language community", which is based on the experience of ethnic self-ruling body in Belgium. |
