A Sociolinguistic Study Of New Migrants In Shanghai

This dissertation is an explorative Study of the ongoing language change happening in the urban context.It aims at the language choice patterns and language proficiency,language acquisition and language attitudes of the migrant population in the urban context,and tries to provide a first look at the language contact phenomenon from the perspective of the "outsiders" instead of the local residents.In the contact with local residents,the migrant population has always been understood as a unity in contrast to the local.Yet it is true that their language behavior shares much in common in the sense that they all use Putonghua in public context,while the local often use more local phonological,lexical or grammatical features or straightly the dialect.They were identified as an enthnolinguistic group in the sense that they form a larger group which is NOT local. Urbanization in China has come to a new point that the panorama of the migration should not only cover the less-educated rural migrants from the underdeveloped area but also cover the better-educated urban counterparts,especially those graduates from all different colleges.The perceived 'migrants' or 'outsiders' in fact is far more heterogenic than expected.Shanghai urban dialect used by the local citizens was formed by the co-contribution of the migrants to a considerable context in the early 20^th century.The migrants that time have merged into the locals now.While nowadays,another continuous migration movement has taken placed,is and will be taking place in a long term.It will be interesting to see when the migrants are coming from different language contexts what will be the language landscape.The present study is aimed at the language choice patters,the acquisition patterns they used in acquiring the knowledge of their home dialect,the national variety Putonghua and the local prestigious variety Shanghai Urban Dialect.The study is trying to find the difference and agreement of the features of four social strata:i.e.the professionals,the office workers,employees in the commercial and service industries and labor workers.The Analysis is based on data drawn from the questionnaire study, participant and unobtrusive observation and interviews as well.This essay tries to analyze the language behavior pattern of the migrants of the four social strata from both the quantitative and the qualitative data.The data collected are from questionnaires,observation and interview.The whole essay is composed of ten Chapters,the first is an introduction of the sociolinguistic context,the research question,the methodology and the goal of this study.The second Chapter is a literature review on the theories I rely in macro- and micro-level of understanding the migrants' language choices and also the socio-psychological theories that helps to understand the subjects and their behavior.Chapter 3 is a preliminary study of the language contact situation in Shanghai.Chapter 4-7 is the presentation of language choice behavior of each social stratum..Chapter 9 is a summary of the linguistic features concerning gender and age across all social strata.Chapter 9 is a description and analysis of the variation of Putonghua in migrant context in Shanghai and Chapter 10 concludes the whole in the end.