A Sociolinguistic Study On Language Use And Attitudes Of Kazaks

Language use and language attitudes have been the major focuses in manyrecent sociolinguistic studies, which help to explore the existence of many linguisticphenomena and will be of great importance to language policy-making in ethnicregions. The present study aims to investigate the overall trend of Kazak people’slanguage use and language attitudes by taking Mori Kazak Autonomous County asthe research place, and attempts to discover the correlation between language use andsocial variables, from social, environmental and psychological perspectives.Based on language variation theory and domain theory, the present studyintegrates questionnaire, interview and language proficiency test to investigate892Kazaks’ language use and attitudes in different domains with different interlocutorsin shared community inhabited by Kazak and other ethnic minorities in Mori County.This study adopts Xu’s (2004) questionnaire with some modification, and includes52items altogether. All the questionnaire data are input and processed through theStatistical Package for Science (SPSS16.0). The present study adopts bothqualitative and quantitative methods. The main results are as follows:Firstly, Kazaks’ bilingual proficiency is not equal both in Kazak and Chinese,while none of them neither understands nor speaks Chinese or their mother tongue,which clearly indicates the results of current language policy and bilingual education.Secondly, Kazak language is still a privileged language among Kazaks, butthere is some Kazak mixed with Chinese and Chinese in Kazak-dominatedconversations. Moreover, Kazaks’ language use in different domains is quite similarwith the general trend. From family domain to the public place, Kazak mixed withChinese and Chinese is moving up in usage rate. Conversely, usage of mother tonguedeclines in approaching the more public settings.Thirdly, most of Kazaks embody open and optimistic attitudes toward Chinese,but mainly in instrumental aspect. A study of ethnic minority people’s real situationof language attitudes towards a particular language does not only provides insightinto language problems but also promotes the development of bilingual education.All in all, the study on language use and language attitudes of Kazaks in MoriKazak Autonomous County as an empirical case aims to provide some referentialresources for the development and implementation of language planning andbilingual education.