A Study On Code-mixing And Language Shift Of The Migrant Worker In Songtao County

With the rapid development of economy and technology,increasingly numbers of people leave their hometown for a better job.Under the constant influence of the dominate language of the resettled place,the languages of these migrant workers and their offspring have changed to different degrees,and the two generations have different characteristics in the use of language.Based on language contact theory,this study adopts the methods of observation and interview to collect spontaneous vernacular data from 11 Shaoyang migrant workers' families for a total of 13 hours and transcribed 426 tokens.With the help of GOLDVARB X and EXCEL(2010)software,this study analyzes various social variables that influenced their language changes and differences,namely gender,generation,addressee,education background and conversational topic.This study mainly focuses on two questions:(1)What are the distribution and specific manifestation of code-mixing and language shift among migrant workers' families?(2)What causes these changes and generational differences of language?It is found that the language of migrant families changed varying degrees after migrating to a new place for many years.There are many records of the usages of Songtao dialect and the variant of Shaoyang dialect mixed with Songtao vocabulary in the daily communication of migrant workers families,meanwhile,some children's language has been shifted.Generally speaking,the frequency of Songtao words is slightly higher than that of code-mixing.People use different variants according to different addressees,and the language changes most when talking to migrant seniors.More specifically,owing to the language shift of some little children,there are plenty of Songtao dialect tokens when the hearer is migrant seniors.Affected by different educational experience,members of migrant workers families change their language varying degrees.Language changes most in the group of people who are only educated in Shaoyang city,and characterized by code-mixing which means the usage of Shaoyang dialect mixed up with Songtao words.The following group is migrants who are only educated in Songtao County,and this group of people can only speak Songtao dialect,in other words,language shift appears.Migrants who have been educated in both places are characterized by smallest change in their language.Their language usages distributed evenly;The overall language change of the second generation is higher than that of the first generation.More specifically,the usage of Songtao dialect accounts for a much higher proportion of the language of the second generation than that of the first generation,and the language change of the first generation is mainly showed as code-mixing.As migrant families have lived in Songtao for a long time,their language changes are mainly influenced by local dialect,and the change of language of the most second generation is mainly influenced by their peers because they are educated at Songtao.The study of language changes in migrant workers' families is helpful for people to know the language situation of migrant families.Meanwhile,it has certain reference significance for the preservation of dialect as well as the language planning of migration.