An Ecolinguistic Study Of Eastern Yugur

As a new form of scientific research, ecological world outlook provides new ways of thinking and research for scientific knowledge. While studying a language, it is necessary for researchers to observe and explore the relationship between a language and its environment, social reality and mutual influences timely. It is of practical significance to study a language not only as symbols but also combining it with cultures as well as people who are the creators and users of the symbols.This paper gives a description on the endangerment of Eastern Yugur, level of its endangerment and causes through an analysis on external and internal ecological language system of Eastern Yugur and the status of language use based on the data collected during the field research,employing the theories and methods of ecolinguistics in an effort to find out the solutions to maintain ecological balance of Eastern Yugur and protect it from endangerment in cooperation with linguists, educators, and policy makers.This paper consists of five chapters.The introduction introduces topic origin, research significance, literature review, theories and methods.Chapter one gives a description on the emergence and development of ecolinguistics and status of endangered language research in order to lay a theoretical basis for the study of Eastern Yugur, an endangered language, from the angle of ecolinguistics. In Chapter two, a research is made on the relationship between external ecological language system of Eastern Yogor, which includes history, geography, population, religion of Yugur nationality and the language. Besides, a main analysis is given on the objective factors that lead to the language endangerment.In chapter three, a study is made of the changes in inner structure of Eastern Yugur, such as poor function, and the influence of Chinese.Chapter four describes the results of questionnaire investigation on personal use of Eastern Yugur, attitudes towards the language,language protection and changes in the use of mother tongue in different occasions, which is made in Sunan County. The results shows that Yugur people cherish their native language as the symbol of affinity and union; although Eastern Yugur is in active use nowadays, it shows the trends of endangerment under the influence of globalization and urbanization; as the use of Chinese as a main language increases in bilingual and multilingual environment, Eastern Yugur is used as a language only in a family; younger generation seems to be neglecting mother tongue. On the basis of these findings, a testing on the level of endangerment of Eastern Yugur is conducted according to the assessment criterion for endangered language made by UNESCO.Chapter five reveals external and internal causes leading to the endangerment of Eastern Yugur and discusses the solutions to protect endangered language from the angle of ecolinguistics.