Research
My primary research focuses on the linguistic and creative practices collectively referred to as peiyin (voice acting, voiceover, dubbing). In Taiwan's commercial media production, peiyin professionals strategically navigate the politics of representation, blending linguistic dexterity with cultural and ideological nuance.
I am currently developing my book project, Dubbing Ideologies: The Politics of Language and Acoustic Aesthetics in Taiwan's Mandarin-Voiceover Production. Based on longitudinal ethnographic fieldwork in Taipei, Taiwan, this monograph introduces “an anthropology of audiovisual creativity.” It conceptualizes peiyin as a form of collaborative creative production, encompassing inter/intralingual transfer, ideological expression, audio-pictorial reappropriation, and commercial strategy. Some earlier work based on this research appears in several top-tier journals (Chen 2025, 2022).
Beyond my primary project on voice production, I collaborate with researchers across the Pacific to address linguistic racism and xenophobia within and against the broadly categorized group often labeled as “the Chinese (huaren).” This work spans diverse contexts, including Taiwan (Chen 2018) and Singapore (Lim, Chen, & Hiramoto 2021).
More recently, I have initiated a project employing conversation analysis and the ethnography of speaking to explore student lives within liberal arts contexts, aiming to uncover the intersections of language, identity, and institutional culture.
Invited Lectures, Workshops, and Discussions
2024.02 “Sinitic Polypoly: Taiwan’s Dubbing Industry and Sociolinguistic Landscape.” Guest lecture for Asian Studies (ASIAN 63: History of the Chinese Language), University of Wisconsin-Madison.
2023.11 “Parameterization of Voices in Taiwan’s Dubbing Performance.” Invited Presentation for “Language Work in the Movies: A Round Table,” Department of English, University of Bern, Switzerland.
2022.3 “Disembodiment in Taiwanese Voice Acting Peiyin”. Presentation at Discourse Lab, Department of Anthropology, UCLA.
2020.7 “Learning How to “Speak”: Language Socialization of Peiyin Novices through Shaming (學會怎麼「說話」：論羞恥感對於配音新手的語言社會化的影響)”. Institute of Ethnology, Academia Sinica, Taiwan. [Talk given in Mandarin Chinese].
2020.2 “The Sociolinguistics of Voice-Over Production”. Invited talk at National University of Singapore, Singapore. (Cancelled due to COVID-19)
2019.5 “Language, Voice, and Sound: Introduction to an Anthropology of Voice”. Invited talk at the Institute of Anthropology, National Tsinghua University, Taiwan.
2017.6 “From ‘Cool Japan (クールジャパン)’ to Glocalization: An Introduction to Cultural Production”. Guest lecture at Anthropology S175 (Japan through Time and in its Places), UCLA.
2017.4 “Dubbing as a linguistic practice: examining standard language ideologies in Taiwan’s voice-over industry”. Presentation at Discourse Lab, Department of Anthropology, UCLA.
Conference Presentations
2025.02 “Ethnolinguistics of 'Dubbing Mandarin (peiyin qiang)' in Taiwan.” Global Asias 3rd Annual Conference, University of California, Irvine.
2024.11 “Parameterization of Affect-Encoded Voices in Taiwan’s Dubbing Performance.” American Anthropological Association (AAA) 2022 Annual Meeting, Tampa, FL.
2022.10 “Shamed into Linguistic Insecurity: Language Socialization of Voice-Acting Novices in Taiwan." American Anthropology Association (AAA) 2022 Annual Meeting, Seattle, WA.
2022.11 “Socialization into 'Dubbing Mandarin': Struggles of Voice-Acting Novices in Taiwan." East Asian Anthropological Association (EAAA) 2022 Meeting, Taipei, Taiwan.
2021.11 “Animating Characters with and through Voices: Performative Animativity in Taiwanese Voice Acting.” American Anthropological Association (AAA) 2021 Annual Meeting, Baltimore, MD.
2021.6 “Toward an anthropology of trans-creativity: An ethnographic study of dubbing professionals who trans-create the filmic soundscape.” Sociolinguistics Symposium (SS) 23. The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China. (Online due to COVID-19)
2020.11 “Shamed into Linguistic Insecurity: Language Socialization of Voice-acting Novices in Taiwan.” East Asian Anthropological Association (EAAA) 2020 Annual Meeting, Institute of Ethnology, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan. (Conference canceled).
2019.11 “Acoustic labor and auditory pleasure: The push and pull factors in the making of Taiwan’s dubbing media.” American Anthropological Association (AAA) 2019 Annual Meeting, Vancouver, Canada.
2019.6 “From monopoly to polypoly: The story of Mandarin in Postwar Taiwan’s dubbing industry.” The 16th International Pragmatics Conference (IPrA), the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, China.
2019.4 “The politics of representation in and through the making of Mandarin dubbing in postwar Taiwan.” Sinophone Studies: Interdisciplinary Perspectives and Critical Reflections, University of California, Los Angeles. Los Angeles, CA.
2019.3 “When cultural production meets standardization project: The making of Mandarin in the Postwar Taiwanese dubbing industry.” Association for Asian Studies (AAS) Annual Meeting, Denver, CO.
2017.12 “Playing with voices: an inspection of code-switching in Taiwan's voice-over industry.” American Anthropological Association (AAA) 2017 Annual Meeting, Washington, D.C.
2017.6 “‘Standard Mandarin’ as an ideologically construed language: A case of Taiwan’s voice-over industry.” The 29th North American Conference on Chinese Linguistics (NACCL-29), Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ.
2016.11 “The ‘benign’ standard language ideology: Animation dubbing and its sociolinguistic implications and significances in Taiwan.” American Anthropological Association (AAA) 2016 Annual Meeting, Minneapolis, MN.
2016.6 “Re-/Constructing linguistic identities and boundary through map drawing.” Sociolinguistics Symposium (SS) 21, Universidad de Murcia, Spain.
2016.4 “Ideologies and identities as ‘different’ Mandarin-speaking people: Folk conceptualization of Taiwan Mandarin and boundary maintenance.” Language, Indexicality and Belonging, Linguistic Anthropology Conference, University of Oxford, United Kingdom.
2016.4 “Visualizing language ideologies: The interplay between perceptual linguistic geography of Mandarin and identity construction.” American Association for Applied Linguistics (AAAL), Orlando, FL.
2015.10 “Language ideologies on maps: Linguistic geographic perceptions of Mandarin Varieties and Taiwanese identities.” Culture, Language and Social Practice IV Conference, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO.
2015.6 “Redefining Taiwan Mandarin: language ideologies of Taiwan in change.” North American Taiwan Studies Association (NATSA) 21th Conference, Harvard University, Boston, MA.
2011.7 “Manga, the zeitgeist of the twenty-first century.” ISEP 2010-2011 Student Research Colloquium. Tokyo Gakugei University, Tokyo, Japan.