Watch your language

Little S, the brash, hyper-physical talk-show queen, is jangling Taiwan's sensitive ethnic nerves. Her style is to shock but she may have gone too far by reviving an old ethnic slur. Taike, a Mandarin word, translates directly as 'Taiwanese guest'. In practice, it describes someone - usually a man - who is crass, vulgar and almost invariably speaks the Taiwanese dialect. Picture a twentysomething betel-nut chewing Honda Dio scooter rider somewhere in Taipei's gritty suburbs, his hair dyed blond, a gold chain around his neck and a flowered shirt from the night market on his back, and dirty blue-and-white flip-flops on his feet.

Little S - whose family is from Hunan - has been using the term and its variants on her shows for the last couple of years. The mainstream media has only recently picked up on it, after a coalition of pro-independence groups denounced Little S's insensitivity. The latest round in Taiwan's culture wars was under way and everyone from pop singers to the premier soon chimed in.

Pro-independence groups say that the taike stereotype is demeaning and reflects decades of prejudice against Taiwanese speakers and Taiwanese culture. While the etymology of the word is hotly debated, it appears that a generation ago, second-generation mainlanders used it to refer to Taiwanese street toughs.

The term fell out of popular use until a few years ago, when it was embraced by Taiwan's emerging youth culture as an expression of street cred. Self-proclaimed taike see themselves as real Taiwanese in contrast to the much-despised 'ABC' or American-born Chinese.

This explains why some of Taiwan's most famous rockers came to Little S's defence. Led by Wu Bai, Taiwan's Bruce Springsteen, they staged the Taike Rock Concert last weekend as a celebration of unvarnished working-class culture.

Still, the controversy will probably usher in a new era of linguistic caution - especially on television. And rightly so; despite Little S' protests, her use of the term did have the ugly overtones of casual sneering at ethnic Taiwanese.