An Adaptation-theoretical Approach To Multilingual Harmony In Multiethnic Areas

With the acceleration of globalization and urbanization,language contact has become an inevitable phenomenon that greatly influences the linguistic ecology in human society,which leads to the studies of language shift,language maintenance,language endangerment,language death,language harmony,etc.in linguistics.Issues of how to deal with the relationship among different languages,how to guarantee the harmonious co-existence of multiple languages,and how to maintain the linguistic diversity have become critical questions worldwide,especially in multilingual areas.China is a typical multiethnic country,and it is of great significance for the cultivation of a good relationship among different ethnic groups and the construction of a harmonious society to study how to maintain a harmonious language relationship in frequent interethnic communication along with the rapid development of urbanization.The study of language harmony has thus become a focus of disciplines and interdisciplinary subjects including ecolinguistics,sociolinguistics,ethnolinguistics,etc.However,language harmony remains a new subject in these areas.Most relevant studies are still short of mature theoretical frameworks and models.This research,taking Verschueren's(2000)adaptation theory as the framework,attempts to investigate the phenomenon of multilingual harmony in a multiethnic village of Shuangjiang County,Yunnan Province.Adaptation theory regards pragmatics as a general functional perspective and holds that the using of language is a continuous process of making linguistic choices which is associated with the variability,negotiability and adaptability of language.The author believes that the multilingual phenomenon in multiethnic areas can be interpreted as a process of local residents' linguistic choice-making in daily contact in order to adapt to the communicative context.Based on this understanding,adaptation theory is considered to be interpretatively powerful for the phenomenon of language harmony in the research.Therefore,this study makes an attempt to investigate the phenomenon of multilingual harmony in a multiethnic village from the perspective of adaptation theory.Inhabited by Lahu,Wa,Bulang,and Han people,Qianfu Village,the demonstration village of spiritual civilization and cultural construction of Shuangjiang County,Yunnan Province,is a typical multiethnic village.This study chose Qianfu Village as the research site.By means of questionnaires and interviews,the study investigated the issues of local residents' language proficiency,the language usage condition and language attitudes.The research has found out that ethnic languages,Chinese dialect and Mandarin occupy their own positions and co-exist with each other harmoniously in the multiethnic community,forming the phenomenon of multilingual harmony.The situation of multilingual harmony in this village first shows that the ethnic groups in the village have inherited and keep using their own language,and they can all use Chinese dialect for interethnic communication.Secondly,besides their own mother tongue and Chinese dialect,some local residents are capable of using Mandarin and some other ethnic languages for daily communication.Thirdly,local residents' linguistic choices in different situations lead to the functional complementation of ethnic languages,Chinese dialect and Mandarin.Finally,local residents recognize the important functions of ethnic languages,Chinese dialect and Mandarin in communication and show strong emotional attachment to these languages and codes.After the pragmatic analysis from the perspective of adaptation theory,it has been found that the phenomenon of multilingual harmony in this community is associated with the adaptation of language use to the communicative environment in which the languages/codes are used.In a multilingual community like Qianfu Village,the language users have to make choices among different languages.To achieve successful communication,people's linguistic choices are influenced by the language users' roles in different situations,their language proficiency and language attitudes and are adaptable to the mental world,the social world and the physical world.It is such linguistic choices that allow different ethnic languages including Lahu,Wa and Bulang,etc.,Chinese dialect and Mandarin to complement each other functionally and form a harmonious relationship.So it can be argued that it is the adaptation of people's choices of languages/codes in different situations to the communicative context that leads to the harmonious co-existence of ethnic languages,Chinese dialect and Mandarin in the multiethnic village.