Social Meaning and Variation in Perception: Beijingers' Attitudes Towards Beijing Mandarin

Existing variationist studies on social meaning in various languages and societies have advanced our understanding of variation, although predominantly in language production and little is known about the sociolinguistics of the Chinese language, especially in perception. This chapter presents results from a matched-guise experiment conducted as part of a larger project exploring the social meaning associated with variation in Beijing Mandarin, focusing on the social meaning of sociolinguistic variation in perception.