A Study On The Language Of Migrant Workers In Guangxi

From the perspective of language variation of sociolinguistics, the dissertation conducts a study on the language uses of Guangxi migrant workers, which is based on Language Identity and Speech Community Theory. This dissertation mainly explores the three aspects of migrant workers in Guangxi through the sociolinguistic research methods, such as language uses, language attitudes and language learning. Furthermore, on the basis of survey data, it analyses some common social variables which have effect on the language uses and distinctiveness which is shown. The common social variables include ages, genders, educational backgrounds, careers, and working time.Firstly, this dissertation makes an objective study on the language of migrant workers in Guangxi. It chiefly shows the usage of language varieties of the migrant workers in Guangxi before and after they move to the cities. Before they move to the cities, this part discusses the uses of local dialects and Mandarin. After they move to the city, this part researches the general features of language uses of the migrant workers, which focus on the expansion of the language repertoire, code-switching and changes in the verbal communication strategies. And then it analyses the synchronic differences of language uses of the migrant workers, which mainly finds the diversities of the common social variables.Secondly, this dissertation studies the language attitudes of migrant workers in Guangxi. The research primarily concentrates on the diverse attitudes of the local dialect and Mandarin of the migrant workers. The study on the attitudes of Mandarin chiefly consists of three aspects. For example, the subjective comments on Mandarin, the psychological acceptance of Mandarin, and the self-satisfaction with Mandarin. The discussion on the local dialect of migrant workers in Guangxi mainly embodies in two sides, like the subjective comments on dialects, and the satisfaction with the attitudes of children who speak Mandarin. Likewise, this part further talks about differences of language attitude between local dialects and Mandarin the migrant workers in Guangxi have, due to different social variables.Thirdly, this dissertation researches language learning of the migrant workers in Guangxi. The language learning principally refers to the point that the situation of the Mandarin that migrant workers learn in Guangxi. This part discusses the general situation of Mandarin they study, via the following ways, such as the starting time of learning Mandarin, the way to study Mandarin, the most difficult point of learning Mandarin, and the perspectives of Mandarin training.Finally, it comes to the conclusion of this dissertation, which also involves some thoughts which should be considered. First of all, it generalizes the study of the three parts above, and analyses the language uses of migrant workers in Guangxi, which chiefly designs case studies of Nanning and Guilin. Then it makes an exploration and analysis on its significance, which concentrates on the investigation of the language uses of the migrant workers in Guangxi. There are also some inadequacies should be included, such as the survey pilots are in limited range, which can’t cover all the migrant workers in Guangxi, and there is short of diachronic analysis in the study, which ought to be taken into account.