Evaluation Indexes Of University And College Official Websites’ Language Functions

Official website of a university is an important platform for its information distribution,teaching management,cultural inheritance and social services.The construction level of university official website could reflect the comprehensive strength and service consciousness of colleges and universities,however,the attention to the language construction of university official website is far beyond enough nowadays.The analysis of the Language Function Evaluation Index(LFEI)of university official websites adopted the language function classification theory,explored the index of tool function and cultural function which can be used to evaluate the language function of University official website,and put forward some suggestions for the construction of official websites of universities.Tool function and cultural function are the two main language functions of university official websites.Tool function is embodied in both communication domain and expressive ability.Tool functional evaluation indicators consist of five parts: number of languages,default languages,website traffic(estimated traffic),number of backlinks,and Alexa rankings.The number of backlinks and the website traffic are negatively correlated with the ranking of universities,and there is a positive correlation between Alexa rankings and university rankings,which means the greater the value of the number of backlinks and traffic,the higher the ranking of universities,and the higher the Alexa ranking,the higher the ranking of universities.Cultural function is embodied in the construction of university image and campus culture,as well as the development of campus identity.Official websites of universities usually provide various multilingual services needed,which could be measured as an important language ability by the language index.Evaluation index of cultural function is composed of four indexes: section setting,language information theme,language information user and language emotion color.To catch more social attention and enhance their discourse power,universities could use the LFEI to evaluate their websites,and adjust language strategies based on it.The improvement of official websites relates to three aspects: the social status,the international status,and the inner status of universities.Within a university,it’s the staff who control the discourse power,so to adjust the proportion of official website contents based on the real needs of different types of users would be conducive to the overall development of the internal groups of the university.From the perspective of the social status of universities,university websites should focus on breaking news and strengthen their cultural content,so that the voice of universities could be heard more by the society,thus the social discourse power of universities could be enhanced.The further development of Chinese colleges and universities is inseparable from the cooperation with international universities.University official websites should provide more perfect language services and prepare for internationalization.Compared with other social platforms of universities,official websites are developing much more slowly.The LFEI of official websites were proposed to discover problems of university website construction.The analysis of the LFEI of university official websites can be used to understand the language functions better and promote the construction of the websites,as well as to attract enough attention about collecting,analyzing and making use of the LFEI data.It can provide a reference for improving the influence and expanding the discourse power of Chinese universities.