A Survey Of The Language Status Of Residents In The Old City Of Yangzhou

Yangzhou is a famous historical and cultural city.Its tourism industry is developing rapidly and the process of urbanization is speeding up.Meanwhile,the new areas of Yangzhou is growing.But for the old area,the rapid development of the city process makes the modern elements gradually out of it,which makes it appear to be old and backward.In addition to the lack of hardware facilities,the language of the old area should also be paid attention to.This research is based on residents' language life of the old area of Yangzhou,and explores three aspects including language use,language attitude,language ability.The result shows that in the use of home language,three generation's selection code in the family are different.Grandparents communicate with their children by dialect,and choose a little more Putonghua to say with grandchildren;parents are bilingual typical,and choose dialect and Mandarin with quite frequency;the youngest generation make more choice in dialect when facing their elders,which is related with growing ages.Communication between spouses is also the basic choice of dialect.In addition,the use of Putonghua will rise if some special topic is discussed in the family field.In the community of language,the closer communicative objects are,the more frequent use of dialect residents do;the more formal communicative topic are,the higher the probability of selection of Putonghua is;the more formal communication occasions are,the higher using degree of Putonghua is,especially the higher requirements of Putonghua in places such as hospitals and schools.In language attitude,the residents shows highest evaluation on the Yangzhou dialect's emotional attitude,but shows cold on evaluation function and behavior tendency.For Putonghua,whether it is from the emotional evaluation,or in behavior or function,residents have shown a positive attitude,because they think that Putonghua is the standard and essential language in the future based on the social language quality.The most optimistic assessment reflects in emotional function for English.It seems to have no special preferences on emotion,but for looking forward to children's English ability,parents showed a higher enthusiasm.In addition,the residents' social characteristics affect language attitudes,but have less influence on the dialect and English attitude.Attitude of Putonghua is influenced by occupation,education level and neighborhood function.The study of residents' linguistic competence is based on their own situation,combined with researcher's observation in the interview.Most of residents think their selves competence in high level.On the Putonghua's speaking ability,in fact,there are some people with obvious dialect color,but the speakers aren't aware of,because of influence from long life of dialect environment.Gradually,dialect tone would be included in saying Putonghua.But it will not delay the exchange,which did not attract people's attention.The survey also finds some problems,such as the weakness of the residents' awareness of both languages,the nonstandard pronunciation of Putonghua and etc.The author also gives consideration to the language situation of the city and gives some suggestions.As far as individuals are concerned,we should realize the importance of "double talk" consciously,and cultivate the dual speaking ability of dialect and Mandarin.Meanwhile,we should not forget to teach the next generation.The language planning of different functional neighborhoods should be realistic,and different language planning schemes are adopted for different regions.