Language Maintenance & Shift In Guizhou Province

One of the principal uses of language is to communicate meaning, but it is also used to establish and to maintain social relationships. That is why language is regarded as an important component of identity and culture for many groups. As a cognitive system and a direct reflection of a way of thinking, it contains its speakers' cognitive system to the objective world. Therefore, it is feared that the disappearance of language diversity may lead to the degradation and absolution of human's way of thinking. Moreover, as an important feature for a nation, people of this nation have a special feeling towards their native languages and the disappearance of their language will bring them psychological shadow. So, language displacement is becoming a serious concern throughout the world.In all parts of the world, we observe an increasing tendency among members of ethnolinguistic minorities to bring up their children in a language other than their own mother tongue, thereby abandoning their former ethnic languages. These changes in language use by individuals might ultimately lead to the irreversible disappearance of the minority's original language (Coulmas,2001:273). So, the author analyzed 760 copies of questionnaires to discuss the language maintenance and shift in Qimeng Town, Guizhou Province. The results reveal that the difference of Dong language proficiency in each generation is significant, especially between children and the old,. And no significant difference between males'and females' language proficiency is found in both Han language and Dong language. However, females can use Dong language more fluently than males. From the perspective of educational level, people with high education speak better Han language than those with low education. Education level continued to exert an impact on their Dong language proficiency level. Those with high education speak less fluent Dong language than those with low education. Besides, people's attitudes towards Dong language also affect their language proficiency in using it. There are six major factors affecting language maintenance:social factor, technological factor, familial factor, personal factor, the termination of bilingual education, and people's negative language attitudes. In view of these factors, the author offers some strategies to maintain Dong language, such as, supporting bilingual education programs, appealing support of the government, and using it in the media.Guizhou Province is one of the typical multinational and multilingual provinces in China. And Qimeng Town is on the boarder of southern and northern dialects of Dong language. This dissertation is a tentative endeavor to apply the theory of language maintenance, language shift and language planning, from the point of view of sociolinguistics and on the basis of Chinese national policies and the 760 copies of questionnaires the author collected, to analyze and describe the present use and the maintenance of the Dong language in Qimeng Town, Guizhou Province.