A Study On Sequence And Language Choice Of Kazakh Family Members’ Daily Conversations In Urumqi

Based on theories of sociolinguistics, the present study mainly aims to find somebasic patterns of language choice and the sequential organization of language choicemade by Kazakh people in their daily conversations and also the influence of socialfactors on the language choice and sequential organization of language choice. Thedata of the present study are774turns which are composed of136sequentialorganizations of language choice. By using qualitative and quantitative methods, asystematic analysis is adopted in the present study.As shown in results, Kazakh family members’ language choices are divided intothree patterns, which are K pattern, KC pattern and C pattern. Based on the collecteddata, it shows that K pattern is mostly used by all Kazakh people. But the trend ofusing KC pattern and C pattern is gradually increasing based on the data. Accordingto age difference, grandparents prefer to use K pattern. The trend of using KC patternand C pattern by parents and children is gradually increasing. According to genderdifference, both males and females prefer to use K pattern but females’ using of KCpattern and C pattern is higher than males.Secondly, the result shows that there are three different sequential organizationsfound in this study: Sequence1(begins with Kazakh), sequence2(begins withKazakh and Chinese code-switching) and sequence3(begins with Chinese). Based onthe main finding, sequence1is commonly used by all Kazakh family members andthe second mostly used one is sequence2. Sequence3is used less than bothsequence1and sequence2. There are totally18variations which appear in these threesequences. Variation1(K+K+K+K), variation2(K+KC+K+K) and variation4(K+K+K+KC) are the mostly used variations. In these variations, it shows that theuse of code-switching and Chinese is gradually increased from sequence1tosequence3, which indicates that the complexity of language choices. The presentstudy also finds that some variables such as gender and age which can affect people’slanguage use. According to age difference, all tri-generation family members like touse sequence1. The grandparent generation prefers to use sequence1when they talkto the parent generation and child generation, which demonstrates the strong sense ofmother tongue maintenance. There is a trend of gradually increased using sequence2and sequence3when the conversation happens between the parent generation andchild generation or between parent generations. Based on gender difference, it showsthat the total trend of using sequence organizations by different gender is almost thesame and sequence1is mostly used by both males and females. But females’ using ofsequence2and sequence3is higher than males concerning to different social statusbetween genders.