Research On Ethnic Identity And Language Attitudes Of Minority College Students In Yunnan

As an important tool in communication, language is a media for ethnic groupmembers to exchange information, transmit culture and knowledge. And it is a mediafor them to maintain ethnic identity, which can facilitate ethnic group members toachieve unity and consistency in cognition, behavior and feeling. Therefore, minoritiescan reinforce their ethnic identity by frequent use of their native language. From thesociolinguistic perspective, language use and language attitude are closely related.Language attitude refers to an individual or some group’s evaluations on language orlanguage varieties. How individuals evaluate language and language varieties plays animportant role in their uses of the language or language varieties. This is morefrequently seen among minorities in China. And their language attitudes are usuallyinfluenced by their ethnic identity and motivation.Most of previous researches focus on investigating current situations of languageuse and language attitudes of one specific minority group. However, few researcheswere conducted on language use and attitudes of Yunnan minority college students,especially from the perspective of ethnic identity.Yunnan is a multi-ethnic and multi-lingual province in Southwest China.Twenty-four minority groups have their own languages except Hui Nationality, andthese minorities will also learn Putonghua, even a third language, like English. Asmulti-lingual users, minority college students in Yunnan will choose differentlanguages in social communication. Their language choices and attitudes will influencethe development of their native language and maintenace of their ethnic identity, whichis of great importance to the construction of harmonious society in China.Under the context of harmonious development in Yunnan, this dissertation aims toexplore the relationship between language attitudes and ethnic identity of Yunnanminority college students. A total of592minority students (mainly including Yi, Bai,Dai, Zhuang, Miao and Hani Nationality) from three universities in Kunming and one in Yuxi, Yunnan is involved in this research. Data is collected through randomsampling in the form of questionnaires and interviews, and analyzed by SPSS16.0andAMOS20.0.This study focuses on four research questions:Research Question1: What is the current situation of ethnic identity for minoritycollege students in Yunnan? What influencing factors are involved?Research Question2: Which language will minority college students in Yunnanuse in different social communication?Research Question3: What attitude do they have towards their native language?Are there any differences compared with attitudes towards Putonghua and English?What influencing factors are involved?Research Question4: Is there any correlation between ethnic identity and theirattitude towards their native language?The major findings go as follows.(1) Minority college students in Yunnan hold high, positive ethnic identity. Gender,grade, living milieu, nationality of father, educational background of mother, languagelearning modes before college and number of friends from one’s own ethnic group areinfluencing factors.(2) Almost half of subjects in this research acquired their native language as theirfirst language and Bai students have the best command of Bai language compared withothers. Meanwhile, native language is frequently used at home, but Putonghua andlocal dialect are mostly used in universities. Putonghua is more favorable in readingand writing while Putonghua, English, native language and Thai are also used whenthey watch movies and listen to songs.(3) Minority college students in Yunnan have positive language attitudes towardsPutonghua, English and their native languages. However, Putonghua ranks top for itsposition, function and prospect, their native language next and English the last. Gender,grade and nationality are factors that exert influence on their language attitudes. (4) Ethnic identity of minority college students in Yunnan and their attitude towardstheir native language are significantly correlated in a positive way. Based on thecorrelation, a SEM (Structural Equation Model) between these two is built withintroduction of native language proficiency.Finally some implications and countermeasures are offered on language educationin Yunnan(bilingual and trilingual teaching in primary education and English teachingin higher education) based on its current situations. And some suggestions arediscussed on how to enhance the ethnic identity of minority students.