The Eco-linguistic Study Of The Tujia Language Endangerment In West Hunan Autonomous Prefecture

This study aims to probe into the Tujia language endangerment,its possible causes,the process it undergoes and the revitalization practice carried out to prevent the language loss by local Tujia people under the guidance of the local Ethic Affairs Office and the local municipality.The Tujia language teaching aims to reverse language shift and maintain its use in the Tujia community,and continues its transmission into the younger generations.This study is done for the hope of finding out the most effective way of conducting Tujia and Mandarin Chinese bilingual education in local schools of the West Hunan Autonomous Prefecture,so as to maintain the balance in regional language ecology.The Study is carried out against the background of unprecedented process of globalization in humane history,which calls for language unification,resulting in the dominant languages threatening minority languages or indigenous languages,and causes mother tongue language endangerment or language loss.Language endangerment or loss poses strongly threat to human cultural and language diversity,and reducing in language diversity will in turn hinder human creativity in general.Tujia language happens to fall victim to the pressures of the surrounding dominant language and is severely endangered by now.The Study starts from the general introduction of the language ecology situation home and abroad.It discusses the development and achievement as well as the research focus in the field of language endangerment.By reviewing the six major factors to evaluate a language’s vitality and state of endangerment put forward by the UNESCO and the similar evaluative factors proposed by the Chinese scholars,the study takes six factors indentified into particular consideration in assessing Tujia language vitality and its state of endangerment,namely,（1）Intergenerational Language Transmission;（2）Absolute number of speakers;（3）Proportion of Speakers within the Total Population;（4）Trends in Existing Language Domains;（5）Geographical coverage of the Language;（6）Language Attitude of the speakers.The study is done with both the qualitative and the quantitative method.100 copies of Tujia language Vitality Questionnaires and another 100 copies of Language Attitude Questionnaires are issued among the 4^th Graders and the 7^th Graders subjects in two Local Nine Year Schools to test the local Tujia language vitality state.Statistical analysis shows that Tujia language is seriously unsafe in all the six factors assessed.At the meantime,the author also carried out an anthropological field work on the language attitude study of the Tujia people in a particular Tujia village—the Shiti Tujia village.Interviewing and field research indicate that Tujia people demonstrate a rather paradoxical psychology to their mother tongue,in that they love their language,but at the same time,they are not so devoted to its use and the family transmission of the language to the younger generations.The study aims to work out the mechanism for Tujia language endangerment on the basis of eco-linguistic theories.The language ecology and language ecological system are conceptualized as the explanatory framework for Tujia language endangerment.The study reveals,with this framework,that the causes for Tujia language endangerment is the result of the interaction and interplay between both its extra-ecology and its inner ecology.The major forces bring about Tujia language endangerment lie in its social political and cultural surroundings,and the minor forces come from inside the language itself,in particular from its typological distances with the surrounding dominant Han language and its lack of orthography.Tujia language shares many similarities with the Dominant Han language,thus it tends to be influenced by Han language in the process of language contact.The influences it receives can be found in its phonology,syntax,and morphology,which in turn shows the degree of its endangerment.Finally,as an positive react to the Tujia language endangerment,the study delves into the Tujia language revitalization practice carried out by the local educators and activists,under the guidance of the local Ethic Affair office as well as the municipality,and put forward some constructive suggestions in regard to Tujia Language revitalization planning at three dimensions,that is its status planning,educational planning,corpus planning.The study is generally meaningful and significant in adding to China’s endangered language study.It helps to understand indigenous language endangerment from a new,eco-linguistic perspective.The study is also beneficial for the local government in speculating bilingual education or multilingual educational policies and stipulating its planning.