Code Choices By The Young Working Migrants In Shanghai

In the great context of globalization and urbanization, the mobility and migration of population have exercised great influences on both the migrants and the locals in their linguistic and psychological development in the host city. The present study is a tentative effort toward the research of migrant languages in Shanghai, China in the perspective of urban dialectology, as it tries to analyze the choices of linguistic varieties made by the young working migrants in Shanghai within the limited space of six chapters.The first introductory chapter states briefly the present research interest, and explains the writer's motivation for the interest and the significance of the study. The second part is a literature review toward the research on the language use of migrants. This thesis paper is based on the theory of class stratification and linguistic market. In this part, research on the properties of the linguistic varieties and their functions, as different identity markers are also taken into consideration. The third chapter introduces the methodological problems: the methods of data collection, the standard for the categorization of subjects and their interactivities. In the end of this chapter, some of the specific terms are illustrated. The fourth chapter describes generally the linguistic choices by the migrants of the four social strata: the upper middle class, the lower middle class, the working class and the lower class. The fifth chapter analyses the phenomena of language use, maintenance, and shift among the migrants and tries to find out the relations between language choice, language attitude and the speakers' own intention in identification and establishment of their desired social identities. In conclusion, the present study shows that the migrants are making different linguistic choices to cope with their life in the host city under the influences of different linguistic markets. The choices of their linguistic varieties are in fact choices of different life style.However, the present study only a tentative effort rather than a comprehensive report on the issue of migrant languages. It is just intended to brings readers,especially the municipal administrators, more attention to the sociolinguistic problems of the migrant population and to attract more academic interest in the linguistic consequences brought by the increasing flux of migrating population.