Maintenance Of Tibetan: An Investigation Of Tibetan Usage In Batang

Over the past century, thousands of languages have approached extinction as their populations have increasingly adopted the more "universal" languages of Chinese, Spanish, and English. This globalization of communication has resulted in linguistic homogenization; the ten most common languages in the world are now spoken by 49 percent of the world's population. This process has been accelerated by the infiltration of television, print, film, radio, and the internet into previously isolated cultures, a transition that has connected disparate regions of the globe by replacing native tongues with global ones. As the many unforeseen negative effects of globalization surface, efforts are being made to combat what is perhaps the most pervasive and least palpable consequence-that of language extinction.Tibetan areas are vulnerable to the threat of globalization, being unique in culture and language. The economy in Tibetan areas has developed and Tibetan people have enjoyed much better life than before, but the Tibetan language and the Tibetan culture are in the danger of extinction. The questionnaire of children's Tibetan usage in Batang has already illustrated and proved the situation of Tibetan language and culture losing. As a Tibetan,â… should do some contribution to the maintenance of my native language and culture, that's whyâ… wrote the paper.This paper illustrates and proves the fact of language extinction tendency existing in Tibetan areas. More and more children can't speak and write their own native languages. That matches the awkward situation all the minor languages are undergoing the background of globalization. Maintenance of Tibetan not only benefits our Chinese but also contributes to the goodness of the whole world. The maintenance of language diversities has some positive effects: children's school achievement, local peace, culture preservation, planetary survival, tests of linguistic theory and other disciplines interests. This paper will tackle the maintenance of Tibetan hierarchically from 3 levels: language policy, family language attitude and individual language attitude.The Thesis comprises six chapters:Chapter One illustrates the language extinction in the world and explains the causes for language extinction.Charpter Two introduces the severe situation of language extinction in China and proposes the positive effects of language diversity maintenance.Chapter Three briefly introduces Tibetan areas and Tibetan language. It mainly focuses on the distribution of Tibetan people, three main dialects of Tibetan language, and profound culture carried by Tibetan language. This chapter also investigates the usage of Tibetan by children in Batang. It first gives the background information of Batang County and The People's School, and then demonstrates all the survey results in the form of tables.Chapter Four analyzes the statistical results of questionnaires. The author analyzes and compares the statistics from different perspectives and angles and discovers some rules and characteristics.Chapter Five proposes some suggestions on Tibetan maintenance. This part is the focus of the paper. It suggests Tibetan maintenance should be performed hierarchically in three levels: language policy, family language attitude and individual language attitude.Chapter Six is a conclusion, in which necessity and importance of Tibetan maintenance are emphasized.