Discussion On The Declination Of "Tujia(土家)" Language

Freedom and all enginery of language come from the people who formulate and use it. Language is not a pure physical phenomenon but a kind of humanism phenomenon. We have to admit that the man who is using the language is the dominator behind these physical actualities, even if we transfer and note down the language into physical actuality. So, we should study language livingness on the basis of the use of the language among its speakers. There are two ways to get the materials of the language use. One is to investigate widely and among a big number of people, and the other is to investigate locally like anatomizing a sparrow. According to the science theory, these two ways both have advantages and disadvantages and benefit each other. The author follows the latter. Therefore, this dissertation discusses on the declination of "Tujia(土家) " language through particularity investigation on the spot, taking for example the wanlong village of longshan county, in the west of Hunan province.The whole dissertation is divided into the following chapters: 1. a brief introduction to the race fountain, population distribution, forming time, and inhabitation evolution of "Tujia" minority; 2. the existed researches of "Tujia" language, including the language family, the language function, the language structure, and extincting trend of "Tujia" language; 3. the research on extincting phenomenon of "Tujia" language and the causations, particularly relating with the language use in wanlong village of longshan county, analyzing these linguistic and unlinguistic causations that lead "Tujia"language to extinction; 4.conclusions and more. Since the policy of reform and open was carried out, especially in the 1990s, "Tujia" language's societal functions have changed evidently, and the number of people using it is decreasing sharply, and the age of user is increasing, and the range of use is shrinking, and the frequency of use is declining obviously, and the children no longer study their mother tongue but begin to resort to Chinese learning. "Tujia" language is dying and being inosculated with Chinese. The trend that Chinese is replacing "Tujia" language may not and impossibly be stopped. What should we do? We should work over in time before "Tujia" language extincts, and keep record about it, observe the process of extincting, then develop bilingual teaching, and try our best to maintain it.