A Study On Language Use In Chongqing

Ecolinguistics was first put forward by Haugen as a metaphor. After that, many linguists have paid much attention to the study of it, which forms a theoretical framework on ecolinguistics. In the past three decades, research on ecolinguistics has spread to a lot of fields. In this thesis, the author is trying to study one of the focal questions in ecolinguistics, the language diversity, so as to explore language for identity and communication in Chongqing. The originality lies in the ecolinguistic study of the complex language condition in Chongqing which provides an innovative way of the empirical investigation. Moreover, it is another attempt on the application of ecolinguistics developed by Einar Haugen in 1970 into the maintenance of diverse languages and the preservation of minority languages to testify its practicality and usefulness.In this research, the author tries to find out the answers to these questions: 1. what social and economic phenomena have influenced the current situation of language use in Chongqing? 2. What role does language play in realizing the functions of identity and communication? The author hopes these answers will attract more attention of linguists or other experts which in turn can lead to the future discussions on the role that language plays in maintaining the diversity, sustainability and peace of different cultures from an ecolinguitic perspective.Through the ecolinguitic analysis and statistical calculation of the percentage of different aspects in language use and attitudes of speakers in Chongqing, this study finds that, as an economically developed and traditional city, Chongqing maintains its own dialect for self-identity, at the same time, it begins to accept Mandarin for national communication, and English, as a language which is becoming more and more popular in the whole world, also finds its way of development in Chongqing. This phenomenon reveals the special ecosystem in Chongqing, especially the macro systemic changes, including the linguistic nationalism (according to Keisuke Kasuya, languages needs to be"nationalized"in order to make it possible for citizens to communicate with each other and to inspire in them the unified national spirit that could tie people together who never meet each other (2001: 239)) and the spread of English. All these vital factors have led to the phenomenon of language use in Chongqing.