| This paper is about the changes in contemporary Chinese and the profound transformation of Chinese society reflected by these language changes. The study is based on the following theoretical basis:Language is one of the most important communication tools in social life and social changes or potential social changes can often be reflected in language, so we can use language as a barometer of social change and use it to carry out our sociological studies from the perspective of language.The reason for the author to choose such a unique perspective is that there is a very obvious intersecting trend in the development of linguistics and sociology. Even within the linguistics itself we can see the birth of a dynamic social linguistics. In this trend of disciplinary intersection, which can give us a new object of study, the sociologists are doing little.The trend of drastic change in contemporary Chinese has become very obvious: new characters, new words or new syntax are appearing everyday. What does this mean to Chinese? Does it mean opportunity or threat? With confusions about this reality, the author started this study.From the historical perspective of disciplines, this study first analyzed thoeratically why linguistic sociology is a natural product of the development of disciplines and concluded that it is the lingustics’change towards society and the sociology’s change toward language that determined the inevitable birth of linguistic sociology.Then this study analyzed thoeratically the social significance and social function of language. Seen from the perspective of founctionism, language is a process of coding and decoding in communicaton. Ther are nine basical functions of language, including self-forming, thinking-constructing, behavior-constructing, group-thought shaping, mutaul-constructing of information, society-simplifing, mutaul-translating of thinking, language force and refracting of common ideas. At last, the author put forward three roles that language plays on society:the function of reflecting sosiety, the founction of influencing society and the founction of predicting society.Under the premise of this theory, the author started the literature research of the change of contempary Chinese, mainly focusing on the five aspects of changing cases, namely, address, gender, new words in Chinese, slogans and language distance; and obtained some important information concerning the development of comtempary society in China. It can be seen from the changing address that Chinese society is changing from a kinship society into a profession-related society, from an egalitarian society into an elite society, and from a flat society into a class society. It can also be found from the changes of gender language that Chinese society is changing from the period of national personality constructing to that of national personality turning. From the change of the Chinese new words, it can be found that Chinese society is experiencing the turning from a society for money into a society of law, from an authoritarian society to a civil society, from a substance-based society to a spirit-based society. We can also see from the changing slogans in China that China is experiencing a peiriod of civil rights unconcious stage transferring to the civil rights conscious stage; as well as a shift from a government-centered society to a human rights-concerned society. From the changes of language distance, we can see that the Chinese society is undergoing a transition from a simple society to a diverse society, from a polymerized society to an integrated society. From these specific research perspective, we can recognize the tremendous power of language in sociological research. Eventually, the author draws the following conclusions:(1)The basic characteristic of the development of contemporary Chinese social structure is that it is in a critical period of system differentiation and embryo formation.(2) The basic characteristics of the development of contemporary Chinese social culture is that the social ideology is in a contradictory period of independent will awakening and the inadequate nutritional supply of independent will.This article is divided into five parts:the first part is an introduction, putting forward the goal of this study, the significance and research methods of it; the second part conducts a historical analysis of the discipline of linguistics and sociology, so as to explore the academic foundation of linguistic sociology; the third part has a study of the structure and the function of language, illustrating in theory the role of language on society; the fourth part carries on concrete analyses of language from the perspective of sociology, analyzing the social meaning of hidden in the change of language; the fifth part is a summary, summing up the defects in this article and proposes new directions for future research.This study is an attempt of studying socity from linguistic perspective. Unavoidably, limited by the the author’s ability and level, such an attempt can not be completely successful, but it is hoped that the study can make some contribution to the development of linguistic sociology. |
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