The rationale underlying the conference is that as written representations of Chinese dialects become increasingly prevalent in economically advanced regions of China where dialects are popular, they have also been attracting scholarly attention. The scope of the conference includes such topics as: all aspects of Chinese dialectal characters, romanisation and phoneticisation of Chinese dialects, sociology of written representations of Chinese dialect, interaction between dialectal scripts and standard Chinese script, relationship between general graphology and written representation of Chinese dialects.

鑒於漢語方言書寫尤其是在經濟發達地區已經非常流行，引起方言學界的關注，因此本會特別希望大家能提出有關於方言書寫的論文，包括以下各範圍:

1. 所有有關漢語方言字的研究;
2. 羅馬字及其他音標作為方言文字;
3. 漢語方言書寫的社會學、社會語言學;
4. 方言書寫與 5. 標準漢語書寫體的互動關係;
6. 普通文字學與 7. 漢語方言書寫的關係。