A Study On The Language Life Of Mongolian People In Hulunbuir City

Language life is an important part of national,ethnic,and regional conditions.With the continuous development of information,urbanization and economic integration in China,the practical function of minority languages in social communication is on gradual decline,and the scope of the language use is gradually narrowing down to the family level,indicating the great difficulty their further development faces.Mongolian,comparatively speaking,is a language with a large population in the minority languages in China.Hulunbuir City,especially the four banners of animal husbandry,is a Mongolian inhabited area.It has well preserved Mongolian language and traditional nomadic production mode and culture.Therefore,an all-round investigation of the language life of the Mongolians in these four banners is of great practical significance in understanding the current situation of the language life of the nomads and judging the development trend of their mother tongue as well as providing reference for the protection and development of minority languages.In this study,the Mongolian language life of the four banners of animal husbandry,that is,Shin Barga right banner,Shin Barga left banner,Huuchin Barga banner and Evenki autonomous banner,is targeted as the main investigation contents.Field literature method,field observation method,interview method and questionnaire method are employed under the guidance of linguistic ecology and sociolinguistics.On the basis of the first-hand investigation materials and data,this paper focuses on the analysis of the internal and external ecological environment of the Mongolian language life,and holds that the language environment of the Mongolian inhabited area in Hulunbuir city is conducive to the maintenance of Mongolian language,but not to the development of it.The development of Mongolian language faces the decrease of the number of the population,the decrease of the growth rate,the gradual contraction of the use area,and the continuous decline of the language status and so on.This paper consists of seven parts.The introduction part elaborates the reasons underpinning the chosen topic,the significance of the research,the research status at home and abroad,the main research content and the research methods of the thesis.Chapter one introduces the general situation of Hulunbuir city from the aspects of geographical location,ethnic population,production mode,historical origin and the basic situation of the four banners of animal husbandry,aiming to show the overall social and cultural environment of Hulunbuir city.Chapter two investigates the language use of the elders,peers and younger generation in the Mongolian family environment,their neighbors,government departments and administrative units,and then analyzes the current situation of language use and social differences.Chapter three examines the language acquisition,mastery and competence of residents in different communities.Chapter four delves into such aspects such as,Mongolian language identity,language emotion and language behavior tendency.Chapter two,three and four are about the quantitative analysis of the language living conditions of Mongolian residents.Chapter five and six are about the analysis of the collected data.Chapter five explores the influence of the external ecological environment of language,which includes geography,climate,population,nationality,education,culture and other factors,on the current situation of language life from three aspects natural environment,social environment and cultural environment.Chapter six analyzes the influence of language structure,language pattern and language landscape on language ontology and language status from the perspective of language internal ecological environment.The last part summarizes the current situation of Mongolian language life,reveals the existing problems,and puts forward the corresponding countermeasures and suggestions.The results of the analyses show that the Mongolian language is well preserved in Hulunbuir city,but there are intergenerational,urban-rural,tribal and class differences in the use of Mongolian: Mongolian is better preserved among the old than among the young;better preserved in pastoral area than in the Urban one;better preserved by Bargu and Buryat than other tribes;better preserved by herdsmen than by the public officers and students.In the field of social communication,the use of Chinese is gaining a gradual increase,but not sudden.With the steady growth of Chinese use,the use of Mongolian has gradually declined.Both Mongolian and Chinese are widely used,and the language life changes to be of bilingual one.According to the investigation of the overall language ecological environment,there are three types of language life in the four banners: because of their traditional herding lifestyle,the language environment of Shin Barga left banner and right banner are relatively closed,which leads to better preservation of the mother tongue;the language environment of Evenki Autonomous Banner is open,due to its urbanization and the rate of Chinese use is high;however,the Oirat and Buryat Mongols,who also reside in this area,do not show obvious decline in their use of mother tongue,perhaps due to their residential concentration.As a result of development of urbanization,Huuchin Barga banner shows a transitional feature in language use,that is,the state of language life is between the first two.Considering Hulunbuir's overall environment,the main factors responsible for language preservation are relatively stable and not easy to change,including population,national identity,and the stability of the language system.The main adverse factors to affect the development of Mongolian are economic development,media influence,cultural impact.On the basis of a large number of first-hand materials,this study compares and analyzes the current situation of language life in different Mongolian communities in Hulunbuir city,trying to show the panorama of language life,but there are still the following shortcomings which need further improvement in the future studies: inadequate investigation into language services and lack of micro level personal language life survey.