A Study On The Relationship Between Ethnic Identity And Language From The Perspective Of Ecolinguistics

The scope of ecology is nowadays changing from natural ecology, social ecology into the culture and spirit level. The factors of humane in ecology become stronger and stronger. Thus, The concept of ecology is not limited in a certain specialized field,but it develops gradually as an inspiration viewpoint to researchers, giving a good deal of enlightenment. As a new form of scientific paradigm,ecological provides a new scientific thinking method and research method. That is to say, researchers at the same time of studying of language, they should observe and disclose the interrelationship and interaction between language and environment and social reality. Although the language is regarded as a linguistic symbol by researchers, it's still being more significant to integrate with the culture and the human being who create the language and use it. Ecolinguistics is put forward under this background.This thesis is a study on the relationship between language and ethnic identity in shaping language diversity and preserving the endangered languages from the perspective of ecolinguistics. The thesis aims at discussing from biological diversity to linguistic diversity, to realize the relationship between language and ethnic identity as well as to be aware of the endangerment of language phenomena. Then, it also applies the language policy and planning to maintain language diversity and endangered language on the fundamental of language ecology and explore the solutions from the aspects of linguistics, educators, activists and policy-makers.Chapter One, aims at focusing on the significant, objective and layout of the thesis. Literature on ecolinguistics and ethnic identity are reviewed in Chapter Two. In this chapter, special attention is paid on the birth and developing of ecolinguistics and ethnic identity, different perspectives from different angles have been embedded into the history and origin of ecolinguistics; and the limitations and the new directions in the research. Language is a significant reflection of ethnic culture and ethnic identity. The relationship between language and culture can be illustrated as follow: on the one hand, language is a factor and product of culture, it can be reflected in the idea of culture as a complex entity which comprises a set of symbolic systems, including knowledge, art and customs, norms, beliefs, values, language, as well as habits and skills learned by individuals as members of a given society, which is transmitted from one generation to the next;on the other hand, language reshapes culture, reflecting it, internalizing it into individuals. That is to say, language and culture identity are signal of individual in the ethnic developing.Chapter Three begins with the diversity of biology to linguistic diversity. In this chapter, the theoretical framework is presented to analyze the relationship between language and ethnic identity. The ethnic linguistic vitality model is analyzed in detail. The first category, status, involved with prestige variables, which makes sense as that the more prestige a group is held to have; the more important it is as a collective entity. The second main category comprises large numbers and distribution demography. The more suitable the demographic trends; the more vital the group is as a collective entity. The third main category is institutional support. In a word, human being would like to hold certain language; the language has more power and vitality according to their cognitive system.The following two chapters represent the core of the thesis. Chapter four deals with ethnic identity in group from the view point of ecolinguistics. The research includes participants, procedures, design and materials, and data analysis. The research aims at fulfilling these targets: to find out the reality of language use as well as the relationship among Putonghua, English and minority language; to disclose the main reasons affect the minority languages endangerment; to discover the useful way for protecting language. At the end of the research, the language and their relationship to language policy, planning and reality will be depicted according to the research questions. Based on the data, several findings have been presented as following: the external reasons are the mainly causes for the endangerment of minority languages. These external pressures, for example, social statues and economical factors, are mainly the causes of the minority language endangerment. Though ethnic groups want to save their cultures, they still would like to abandon their mother tongues automatically in current life due to the external reasons. The participants would like to gradually use Putonghua both inside classroom and outside classroom. On the basis of contrast, it is easy to find out that participants thought promotion of Putonghua could weaken the minority languages rather than the spread of English. Moreover, the linguist, educator and activist also play important roles of preservation of minority language.So the chapter five carries out to explore measures and efforts to preserve minority language from the perspective of the linguists, educators, activist and the government policies. Those all play important roles in language planning such as protecting the minorities and fostering the traditional culture. For the policy-maker, minority status and minority culture should be emphasized. For the linguist, educator and activist, basic linguistic and pedagogical training should be paid much more attention. And sustainable development in literacy and local documentation skills should be got more supports. Linguistic nationalism represents a double-edged sword: on the one hand, it has advantages that contributes to the establishment of a common language for all nationalities and more feasible and convenient communication as a common national language; on the other hand, it has disadvantages by leading to the unfair treatment among different languages which positions the minority languages, such as dialects, at the margins of language loss and language death.Chapter six is the concluding chapter. It provides the major findings, analyzing the implications as well we the limitations of the study, in the end, offering some suggestions for future researches.