A Contrastive Study Of Thanking Between China’s Dongxiang Minority Language And Lanzhou Dialect

The Dongxiang nationality mainly scatters over Gansu province, which belongs to Mongolian language of Altai language family. Many minority languages are endangered in China. Dongxiang minority language (DML) is one of them. There are many publications which study Dongxiang language from a perspective of phonetics, structure or lexicon, but few from a perspective of pragmatics. In this study, I investigate the similarities and differences in thanking strategies among Dongxiang family members, and the diversity of the strategy between Dongxiang Minority Language (DML) and Lanzhou dialect (LD).I aim to answer four questions in this study. First, what similarities and differences are displayed in thanking strategies of DML between mother and her son/daughter? Second, what similarities and differences are displayed in thanking strategies of DML between father-in-law/mother-in-law and son-in-law/daughter-in-law? Third, what similarities and differences are displayed in thanking strategies of DML between mother and her son/daughter compared with mother-in-law and her son-in-law/daughter-in-law? Fourth, what similarities and differences are displayed in thanking strategies of mother-in-law and son-in-law/daughter-in-law between DML and LD? In order to answer these four questions,270DML speakers from Dongxiang County and270LD speakers from Gaolan County were randomly selected for the study.This research included six procedures:(1) Interview;(2) Designing and administrating role-plays. Based on the interview, the situations and conversations in the role-play were designed, which were related to the participants’daily lives.The selected participants were asked to play the role, which were video recorded, in terms of the designed situations and conversations at the location of Dongxiang county and Gaolan County respectively.(3) Transcribing the videos and recordings. In terms of Dongxiang Minority Language and Chinese Dictionary, the videos were transcribed by Dongxiang native speakers and then were revised by DML expert Mr. Chen Yuanlong.(4) Pilot Study.(5) Large-Scale Questionnaire.(6) Data Coding and Analyzing.Results of the analyses indicate that:(1) when DML mother performed thanking to their children, the alerters she uses include "general term" and "zero term". She favors to employ more "hearer dominance perspective" than "speaker dominance perspective". She uses more "indirect strategies" than "direct strategies". The speech acts used in supportive moves consist of "praise","apology" and "blame". When mother performs thanking to her son, she tends to use "religious names term" and "general term" and prefers using "hearer dominance perspective". Mother performs the thanking speech act to her daughter, she likes using "zero term" and "general term" and would rather employ "hearer dominance perspective" than "speaker dominance perspective"(2) When DML father-in-law/mother-in-law performs thanking to son-in-law, he/she inclines to use "kinship terms" as alerters such as "brother-in-law" and employ "speaker dominance perspective". He/she likes to use "indirect strategies". The speech acts employed in supportive moves involved "apology","praise" and "blame". However, when father-in-law performs thanking to son-in-law, he is inclined to use more "speaker dominance perspective" and "direct strategies" than mother-in-law.(3) When she performs thank speech act to her mother/mother-in-law, DML daughter/daughter-in-law favors to use "kinship term" such as "Ana (mother)" or "Grandma" and "speaker dominance perspective". They employ more "indirect strategies" than "direct strategies"; but "speaker dominance perspectives" used by daughter-in-law are more than daughter used. The speech acts used in supportive moves between daughter and mother consist of "blame", but daughter-in-law employs fewer.(4) Comparing her performing thanking to her son-in-law with DML mother-in-law, LD mother-in-law favors to use more "zero term" and "hearer dominance perspective", while DML mother-in-law employs more "kinship term" and "speaker dominance perspective". In the aspect of speech acts used in supportive moves, DML mother-in-law used more "blame" and "illustration" than LD mother-in-law.(5) When performing thanking speech act to daughter-in-law, LD mother-in-law is inclined to employ "general term" as alerter, but DML mother-in-law seldom uses it. LD Mother-in-law favors more "hearer dominance perspective" than DML mother-in-law. LD mother-in-law employs more "direct strategies" while DML mother-in-law uses more "indirect strategies" to daughters-in-law.The differences reflect that Islamic culture has great influence on the language use of Dongxiang nationality, while the language performance of Han nationality in Gaolan, Gansu province is affected by the classic Chinese culture and modern ideology. The similarities revealed that the two types of culture have been interacting and overlapping in the long ran.