A Case Study Of Shangli Dialect Use And Change From The Perspective Of Translanguaging

As a new theory of applied linguistics,translanguaging has captured great interest and attention of scholars and researchers both at home and abroad in recent years.The core research theme of translanguaging is traditionally related to bilingual and multilingual education,but its scope is getting more extensive.Scholars point out that translanguaging practice does not need to be attached to some named language,and it is across language boundaries and language variants.Apparently,translanguaging can be a new perspective to study dialects,especially the use of a particular dialect in people’s daily communication.This thesis attempts to study the use and change of a local dialect from the perspective of translanguaging for the purpose of providing some theoretical and practical reference.The research subject is Shangli dialect which is a variant of Gan dialect in Jiangxi Province.The study is conducted through the observation of a rural and an urban family members’ use and change of Shangli dialect from the perspective of translanguaging.In about 10-month fieldwork,the research results are as follows:(1)There are differences in Shangli dialect use between the urban and rural family,and language use varies among people of different ages,occupations,educational backgrounds and genders.The personal experience,ideology and cognitive ability of family members all affect their language practice.(2)There are significant changes in the frequency and manner of Shangli dialect use both in the two families.Although Shangli dialect is still the language mainly used in the urban and rural family,the frequency of the use by the third and fourth generations is gradually declining.In particular,the fourth generation of the urban family is no longer using Shangli dialect.Moreover,in multilingual environment,the way of Shangli dialect use also changes greatly along with some lexical gaps in its own language system,i.e.,the use of Shangli dialect is often mixed with other languages and language variants.The change of Shangli dialect use suggests that translanguaging practice be getting common in community,school,and other social settings.(3)Both the sociocultural environment and people’s language attitudes affect Shangli dialect use and change in the two families.The third and fourth generations both in the rural and urban family believe that language change is a spontaneous and natural existence in the multilingual environment,and translanguaging help them better communicate,learn,express emotions and make sense of their world.In addition,the study has also found that older generations have stronger consciousness of Shangli dialect protection and inheritance than younger generations.The result of research may provide some enlightenments for the development of language diversity and the study of harmonious coexistence of the dominant language and minority languages as well as dialects.