The Promoting Effect Of The Education Of English To The Self-Identity Of Nationality's Culture Of Yi Nationality In Manshuiwan

Since the first industrial revolution, nationalities even races communicated more and more frequently and deeply. Then the collision between different cultures is naturally unavoidable. Now, the minorities in China are experiencing the collision within at least three kinds of cultures. Their own nationality's culture is not only in the great magnetic field of Chinese main culture-Han nationality's culture, but also has to face a totally new kind of culture-western culture. In such multicultural atmosphere, what kind of challenges and chances the minorities are going through and how they will deal with them? With those questions, I held a field work to Yi nationality in Manshuiwan for about one month.The reasons I chose Yi nationality in Manshuiwan as the object of my field work are: firstly, Yi nationality owns ample cultural meaning with special letters, religion, arts and custom. Secondly, though it has a close relation with outside and holds only 4% in the total population in Manshuiwan, people who belongs to Yi nationality keep the feeling of self-identity to their culture. It is the particularity which arouses my interest.In my field work, by the means literature collection, general search, interview, and questionnaire, I found out that there are different levels for the self-identity of nationality's culture, and the partition of levels related closely with the situation of management of three languages: YI language, Chinese, and English.In all the people of Yi nationality, those who only know Yi language are inclined to hold a close and stagnant self-identity of nationality's culture; those who know both Yi language and Chinese are easy to form a binary opposite self-identity of nationality's culture; and those who know YI language, Chinese, and English show more openly, developing, andcomprehensive self-identity of nationality's culture.The third one is just what the multicultural theory advocates. It steps out the binary opposite mode of thinking, it replace exclusion and hates with equality and respect between different cultures, what's more, it shows the spirit of tolerance towards the discrepancy of cultures, firstly in the history.Ernst Cassirer defines human beings as animals of symbol in his book-"An Essay on Man". Language is the most important part in the symbolic system. Meanwhile, language is not only the exterior expressional form of thinking, but also it will finally become the unavoidable medium of thinking. So the particularity of one nationality's culture is necessarily related with it's special language. That is why the collision of languages is ultimately the collision of cultures.To analysis the history of language education of students of Yi nationality in Manshuiwan, I found out a rule as follows: education of only Yi language(the atmosphere of Yi cultur -+ education of Chinese(atmosphere of Yi culture and Chinese culture) - + education of English in middle school(atmosphere of Yi, Chinese, and western culture). The education of English offers a good chance to help students form a new kind of self-identity of nationality's culture in the multicultural atmosphere, and that is also what Mr. Feixiaotong has called for: the self-identity of nationality's culture on the basis of nationality's self-consciousness and understanding of other cultures.As a conclusion, the education of English to Yi nationality in Manshuiwan can help them form a multicultural background, and finally strengthened their self-identity of nationality's culture.At last, I discussed the active and passive factors which affected the education of English in Manshuiwan, and advanced some suggestions for its development.