A Study On The Language Use Of Foreign Business People In China-myanmar Border City Ruili

Research on language use and language attitudes has long been one of the major focuses of sociolinguistics,and it is conducive to shedding light on the existence and change of many linguistic phenomena.Meanwhile,studies on language use of particular groups can reflect many social issues such as immigrants' integration,the cultural and language transmission of minorities and language socialization and so on.In recent years,much research has been conducted to investigate the language use of foreigners in China,in particular the language use of foreign students and foreign business people.However,very few studies have been conducted on language use and language attitudes among foreign business people in the southwest China's border areas.Therefore,a study on the language use of foreign business people in the border areas has both theoretical and practical significance.Under the framework of “domain theory” and “language attitudes”,and by means of an adapted questionnaire from Yang(2012)and Tian(2014)and semi-structured interview,the present study aimed to investigate the overall trend of language competence and language use of foreign business people in China-Myanmar city Ruili.Meanwhile,the language attitudes held by those foreign business people towards different languages and the underlying reasons were explored.The total number of valid questionnaires was 182,which were coded and analyzed using SPSS13.0.For further information,thorough analysis and discussions were made on transcribed individual interviews.The findings obtained from the study showed that:(1)in terms of the participants' Chinese and English competence,the female business people had higher level than the male business people,and the participants at the age of 20 to 29 had higher level than the other age groups.The participants with higher educational levelexhibited better linguistic competence in English but not in Chinese.The longer the participants had been in Ruili,the better their Chinese competence became.(2)The participants preferred to use different languages in different domains.Burmese,Putonghua and the Han dialect used in Ruili were their most commonly used languages and interlocutor was a decisive factor for their language choice.The effects of social variables on the participants' language use were varied in different domains.(3)On the whole,the participants held positive attitudes towards Chinese,placed much more weight on the Han dialect used in Ruili than Putonghua,and also regarded English as a very important language for both themselves and their children.(4)The influences of the participants' incompetence in Chinese were reflected on their developing a good relationship with Chinese business people,conducting business and daily life but the effect decreased gradually.As an empirical case,the findings of the present study added new evidence to the further development of “domain theory”,“language attitudes” and language use research.The limitations of the present study may result from the small size of the samples as well as the limited number of participants in the interview and so on.The further study could reduce the limitations by enlarging the sample and adopting other data collection methods such as observation and in-depth interview.