The Perspective On Social Functions Of Dialect From People's Language Attitudes--Based On The Investigation Over University Students And Civil Servants Of Yantai City

Since the last 20 years of the last century, sociolinguistics has been a new carrier of the development of research on dialect. Chinese sociolinguists have achieved much fruit in researches of dialect from the angle of sociolinguistics. However, the research on the comparison between dialect and standard Chinese in Yantai City is still a gap and the research on the social functions of dialect is also much less. Therefore, it will be the highlight of this dissertation. This dissertation has a perspective on functions of dialect from people's attitudes. The author starts with describing people's language attitudes to both dialect and standard Chinese or Putonghua in Yantai City. The subjects are university students and civil servants of Yantai City. Then, it is to compare the differences of language attitudes among the two groups with the purpose to find out the relations between people's attitudes and the language use, and so as to investigate the social functions of dialect from people's language attitudes.The dissertation is to study social functions of dialect from people's language attitudes. The author adopts the method of questionnaires, the quantitative and qualitative analysis method, and chooses the students of Yantai University and civil servants in Yantai City as samples. After collecting the questionnaire, the author uses the questionnaire statistical software 2.4 to get the distribution of frequency.Through the analysis of data, the author mainly has the following tentative findings: Dialect exists as a low variety while Putonghua as a high variety in communication. Dialect has the function of verbal communication as a low variety mainly in the family. In terms of social functions of dialect, it has the function of inherent identity, external symbols, carrier of local culture and contacting hometown passion. Finally, the author has also made a contrast between university students and civil servants in the city, and finds that their language attitudes are varied differently.The dissertation is to study social functions of dialect from people's language attitudes, which is a new research angle and has less literature to be referred. Therefore, this research has comparatively some value in theory and application. Since this dissertation is to investigate people's attitudes to dialect and the use of dialect among university students and civil servants of Yantai City, therefore we could know the present situation of the social functions of regional dialect in Yantai City. Through the investigation into people's attitudes to dialect, this research might reflect the present situation of language use in this region and provide a scientific data for the harmonious co-existence between dialects and Putonghua. Simultaneously, it might serve as a reference for the relevant departments to make language policy as well.