Papers, 4 (November 1987), is available here:
http://sino-platonic.org/complete/spp004_mandarin_chinese.html
http://sino-platonic.org/complete/spp004_mandarin_chinese.pdf
Here's how it begins:
Many hours have been spent at scholarly meetings and many pages of
academic writing have been expended discussing what is to be
considered acceptable Mandarin. Very often these discussions
degenerate into simplistic and narrow-minded statements such as
"That's not the way we say it in …!" or "We had better ask someone
from Peking." Objectively speaking, these disagreements on style
reflect a less-than-rigorous definition of which type of Mandarin
each party is referring to. Because there has been a failure by all
concerned to define fully the linguistic and socio-linguistic
parameters of their assumed language(s), Mandarin oranges are often
unwittingly being compared with Mandarin apples. This paper is a
preliminary attempt to articulate the fundamental differences
distinguishing four major language types subsumed under the single
English heading 'Mandarin'. Though the Chinese terms putonghua/guoyu,
guanhua, and difanghua help to accentuate the conceptual distinctions
distinguishing our four types of Mandarin, it is arguable that even
Chinese scholars are not immune from confusing one language with
another.
Sanders goes on to indentify and discuss what he calls
Idealized Mandarin
Imperial Mandarin
Geographical Mandarin
Local Mandarin
Thanks to Pinyin News for this blog entry:
