The Effect Of Icelandic Language Protection Policy On Local Chinese Promotion Activities And The Corresponding Strategies

With the continuous expansion of the scale of the Confucius Institute, Chinese promotion campaign has developed in many countries of the world, including some countries, such as Iceland, which with small population and less frequent contacts with China. Since we are not familiar with the conditions of these countries, some new problems may occur during the process when we promote Chinese to these places. Among these new problems, one is quite important, namely the local language protection policy. These countries, with small population and their own language, will pay a lot of attention to the protection of their language during today’s globalization, thus the language protectionism there will be quite strong. Without doubt, the relatively strong language protectionism will bring a new obstruct to the Chinese promotion campaign and we need to study and analyze this phenomenon.In this paper, the author first describes the status of languages used in Iceland, the history of local language preservation and explains the local language protection policy from restrictions on foreign languages and protection of its mother language. Then the author makes a macroscopic presentation of the conditions of Chinese promotion campaign in Iceland from the aspects below:Chinese degree education and culture activities in Confucius Institute in University of Iceland, elementary Chinese courses in Reykjavik’s business schools, elective Chinese courses in Iceland’s primary and middle schools and a series of culture activities organized by Iceland-China culture communication association.After describing the basic situations above, the author concludes the shortcomings of the current Chinese promotion campaign. In addition, the author analyzed how the language protection policy affects the Chinese teaching activities there and what are the positive and negative influences caused by this policy, which roughly includes the scale of teaching, requirements for teachers, qualities and variety of teaching materials, linguistic diversity, cultural diversity and the cooperation with Iceland to promote Icelandic to the world. To make the paper more persuasive, the author also uses the results from a questionnaire, which investigates the studying motions, status and suggestions of the students in local Confucius Institute, and some e-mail interviews with the teachers there.After analyzing the impacts of local language protection policy on the Chinese teaching campaign and some experience from the English and French language promotion campaigns, the author concludes some suggestions to deal with the impacts, which includes:1. Respect and obey the local language protection policy;2. Pay more attention to culture teaching activities;3. Cooperate with the local government and enhance the exchange of language education programs between China and Iceland;4. Improve the attractiveness and usefulness of Chinese.Finally, the author provides an overview of the language protectionism in Europe as a whole, pointing out that there are quite a lot of countries with the same problem as Iceland and this paper can be used as a reference for Chinese promotion campaign in these countries. Meanwhile, the appendix includes the streamlined version of language protection policy in Iceland in2008, which is translated by the author from Icelandic. The author hopes this document can provide a reference objects for other scholars to do related researches and facilitate them to make comparisons between Iceland and other countries, thus to develop more effective ways to promote Chinese in these countries.