Bravery doesn't enter into it -- I used the word because as linguists, we want to refer pragmatically to "whatever Chinese varieties actually are", rather than

Bravery doesn't enter into it -- I used the word because as linguists, we want to refer pragmatically to "whatever Chinese varieties actually are", rather than entering into endless debates about what is a language and what is a dialect. By the way, I'm a linguist (and a native Cantonese speaker) who is acutely aware of the dialect/language issues surrounding our topolect, so while I sympathise and thank you for recognising that Cantonese would in other times and places be considered a language, using "topolect" allows us to focus on the topic at hand.