| With the acceleration of globalization and urbanization, weak languages whosefunctions have declined in modern economic, cultural and educational activities aregradually replaced by strong languages and thereby are forced on the brink ofendangerment or even go to extinction. This phenomenon has universally existed in themultiethnic and multilingual countries and areas worldwide. In Xiangxi Tujia and MiaoAutonomous Prefecture, Tujia nationality occupies the largest part of the population ofminority nationalities. Influenced by the mighty Han language, an overwhelming numberof Tujia people shift to Han language, abandoning their native language. Thus theprospect of Tujia language is by no means optimistic. Language attitude greatly affectslanguage users’ language behavior and therefore governs a language’s developmentdirection. Tujia people’s attitudes towards Tujia language will exert a direct impact onthis ethnic language’s survival and development.Guided by language attitude theories in sociolinguistic area, this study investigatesTujia people’s language attitudes towards Putonghua, local Han dialect and Tujialanguage through the combination of a matched-guise experiment and a questionnairesurvey. Subjects involved in this research are60Tujia people in Xiangxi Tujia and MiaoAutonomous Prefecture who are15-78years old, reside in different areas and are withvarious educational levels. Then, with the help of SPSS (13.0) and Excel (2003) software,all the data obtained from the research are analyzed quantitatively.The present study mainly discusses the following three questions:1) What are Tujiapeople’s attitudes towards Tujia language, local Han dialect and Putonghua respectively?2) How do Tujia people’s language attitudes relate with such social variables as gender,age, educational background and habitual residence?3) What affects Tujia people’slanguage attitudes?According to the findings of the research, Tujia people show strong identificationwith Han language and adopt open attitudes towards it; while as to their native language, their attitudes are pessimistic or indifferent. Putonghua, as the standard language in ourcountry, is considered as having the highest prestige. In terms of the solidarity dimension,Tujia people attach deep emotions to local Han dialect instead of their native language,which receives the lowest evaluation on both the solidarity and the social statusdimensions. Tujia people’s attitudes towards Tujia language differentiate due to theeffects of such social variables as gender, age, educational background and habitualresidence. In detail, the age group of15-35gives Tujia language the lowest evaluation.The greater the discrepancies of the educational background, the more remarkable thedifferences of evaluations on Tujia language exist. In addition, subjects from the urbanareas hold the most negative attitudes towards Tujia language. Females rate Tujialanguage a bit lower than males with respect to solidarity and social status dimensions,but gender difference is not significant. At present, a majority of subjects can neitherunderstand nor speak Tujia language. The using frequency of Tujia language apparentlydeclines and its using scope shrinks sharply in this region. Local Han dialect has been themost frequently used language by Tujia people no matter in public or private domains.Tujia people’s language attitudes are affected by historical background, thesocio-economic development and the popularization of education and Putonghua in thisdistrict.This study provides materials and data for ethnic languages, especially endangeredlanguages study; and is helpful to arouse native speakers’ awareness to save and protecttheir ethnic language and culture. What’s more, it offers references for local governmentsand related organizations to work out language policies and take appropriate measures toprotect Tujia language. |
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