Tu, Qiang Language And The Newly Created Text In The Field Of School Education Development Research

The dissertation is one of the outcomes of research in the center for Chinese Ethnic Minority Studies —Central University for Nationalities " 985 Engineering Project", a research center for Chinese ethnic minority language, culture, education and history, geography in the frontier, an innovative base of philosophy, social science and key issues of humanity, social science of Ministry of Education.With the influence of symbolized information society and globalization, quite a few of ethnic languages and its writing systems with long history have been suffering from unprecedented attacks. It has become a matter of governmental , linguistic and educational organizations to respect and protect the versatility of human culture, thus enabling the ethnic languages to adapt themselves to the new situation of globalization and information development with the result of its survival and further development at the end.The ethnic education adopted among many minorities is characteristic of the cross-language and cross-culture in the world today. Nowadays it has been the one of most difficult choices for administrative agencies, school institutions, teachers, parents and experts to decide which language and its writing systems should be used for schooling and teaching.The Chinese State has attached great importance to the written creation for the ethnic groups. For instance, the written systems modeled on Latin letter have lately been created respectively in 1980s and 1990s for Tu Minority and Qiang Minority with little population. With the social and cultural transit, the language function of Tu and Qiang Language has changed and shared many similar features. Therefore, an investigation of their use and current status, esp. in the schooling, is necessary.Tu and Qiang have used their newly-created writing systems for a short period, also because of the strong influence of globalization, mediadevelopment; more and more youth are using mandarin and Chinese. The minority language usage is shrinking rapidly. We need a comprehensive investigation to the current situation of Tu and Qiang languages and new created writing systems. This is to protect our ethnic lingual and cultural diversity, develop the Tu and Qiang languages and newly-created writing systems, and provides suggestions to the relevant government agencies when they draw up language and literature policy and bilingual education policy.I did lots of field works in Huzhu County, Minhe County, Tongren County in Qinghai province and Mao County, Wenchuan County in Sichuan province in 2006, where I interviewed local teachers, students and villagers with the collected questionnaires. Based on these databases, I find that Tu and Qiang languages have their certain function in the inhabited regions, these languages are limited to the household, seldom in school, never in any official places. In some regions with good transportation, people are deeply influenced by Mandarin Chinese and thus they usually speak Mandarin Chinese in the daily life. Though some people have the desire of protecting their own languages and writing systems, the language program has not been implemented very well. The new writing systems have been created, but the trail implementations have almost stopped in school and publications relevant to these languages are hardly seen. With the impact of communication, media and internet representing mainstream culture, the usage of languages and newly-created writing systems of Tu and Qiang are on the decline and have already been in danger.The thesis comprises following chapters:The introduction explains the background and significance of this study, introduces the history of Tu and Qiang languages and characters. It defines the theory and methodology adoped in the thesis and main conceptions.The first chapter makes a brief introduction of the culture andhistory of Tu and Qiang, population, tradition, language use and education respectively.The second describes the process of the creation of the Tu and Qiang writing systems, explains the background of the creation, the selection of standard language spot, the work of related administrative agencies and the process of writing system design.The third chapter reviews the creation and trail implementation of Tu and Qiang newly-created writing systems, in which I elaborate the trail implementation in schooling and other fields and their function.The fourth and fifth chapters make a careful arrangement of the 700 questionnaires collected during my field works in Tu nationality and Qiang nationality regions respectively. The three kinds of questionnaires cover teachers, students and villagers form Huzhu County, Minhe County and Tongren County which in Tu nationality region, Mao County, Wenchuan County in Qiang region. I analyze these databases with SPSS statistical software. Based on the data, I elaborate the situation, emotion, attitude and act in language use, the attitude to the study, application and development of newly-created writing system, as well as the teaching language selection and attitude to bilingual education.The sixth chapter discusses various complications, which affect and obstruct the application and development of Tu and Qiang language and newly-created writing systems. From the contact among ethnic groups, the change of language, social political status, newly-created writing systems, language and cultural environment, the thesis discussed the their affection to the function of language and writing systems, the population and coverage of these languages and the change of social culture. The analysis of how the national minority language and writing system rules and policy affects the usage of the minority language and writing system demonstrated the complications which affect and restrict the usage and development of Tu and Qiang new created writing systems. By an emic approach interview, it shows the local people's various view to the usageand development of their own language and new created writing systems directly as well as their bilingual education.The seventh chapter makes an approach to the necessity of implementing bilingual education in their inhabited regions with the multi-cultural education and bilingual education theory from the ethnic viewpoint. Based on the study of the relationship between assisting bilingual education pattern and ideal bilingual education pattern, it suggests the ideal bilingual education pattern for schools in Tu and Qiang inhabited region.The eighth chapter focuses on the usage and development of Tu and Qiang language and character with the conception of culture capital, which is from Bourdieu's culture reproduction theory.