Standard Language Cultivation Effects In Mass Media

As a fundamental element of human communication,language is an essential measure in the process of socialization and liberalization of individuals,as well as an essential component of national cultural soft power.There is a direct link between national common language and discourse and Meta-communication: for one,the legal language of the mass media is Mandarin,and standardized language is delivered to audiences through the production of standardized news products.Second,as one of the entry restrictions for the mass media industry,better standard language skills are also a "doorstop" for entry into the news media industry.For this reason,the mass media is uniquely placed to promote standard language and to create a groundswell of standard language learning throughout society,and should be held accountable.By reviewing the previous researches,the article finds that although scholars have recognized the special effectiveness of mass media in the communication and popularization of standard languages from the subjective level,most of them have conducted the studies from the perspective of theoretical elaboration,and the discussion on the mechanism and influence mechanism of the effectiveness of mass media in the cultivation of common languages remains to be advanced.For this purpose,this study investigated the relationship between individual media use and their common language skills through conceptual operationalization into two branches of listening and speaking skills,using individual common language skills as the explanatory variable and differences in listening and speaking skills as auxiliary measurement variables.First of all,the article analyzes the theoretical basis of the effectiveness of mass media’s common language cultivation from the perspective of theoretical integration,arguing that the effectiveness of mass media’s common language cultivation is not only an important extension of the theory of cultivation in communication and linguistics,but also an inevitable result of optimizing the superstructure and consolidating the ideological position.The article also constructs a model of the influence mechanism of the effectiveness of mass media’s common language cultivation based on the Second Language Acquisition Theory.Furthermore,after fully integrating the theoretical foundations,this study explores empirical evidence of the mechanisms of the existence of the effectiveness of the cultivation of common language in mass media,based on a practical perspective and on top of panel data.An ordered regression model based on CGSS2018 data was constructed to find that media such as newspapers,magazines,radio,television,and the Internet can indeed contribute to a certain extent to the enhancement of individuals’ listening and speaking abilities in the common language,and to the coordinated development of listening and speaking abilities.At the same time,the study found that the role of new media,represented by the Internet,has a much higher weight on the improvement of individual common language competence than traditional media such as newspapers,magazines,radio and television.The article also develops an analysis based on random panel data from the China General Social Survey 2012-2018,and argues that the common language culturing effectiveness of mass media is characterized by stability and extension.China has been vigorously promoting Mandarin since the 1950 s,and the achievements have been remarkable since then.Based on the findings of this study,there are still obstacles of unbalanced and insufficient development of gender,urban-rural,ethnic,educational and economic factors on the road to promote the popularization of the language.In the future,building national language proficiency will not only include the promotion and communication of the common language and script at home,but also cover the key elements of international communication such as the promotion of China’s international image,the propagation of excellent Chinese traditional culture and the construction of international discourse power.Therefore,the article argues that we should give full play to the effectiveness of the mass media in culturing the common language and inspiring the public’s interest in learning the standard language;increase investment in media factors to firmly cement the cultural ties linked by the common national language and script;optimize the allocation of media resources to narrow the language divide among ethnic groups,urban and rural areas,and poor regions;and promote the optimization and upgrading of foreign propaganda media to strengthen the international influence of the national language.