Language Situation Yili Daur Investigation

The Daurs is mainly distributed in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, Heilongjiang Province, and Taerbahtai Region of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, a few scattered in the Ili Region of the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. The Ili Daurs have adapted to the multicultural environment and have their unique situation of language use. Based the fieldwork, this paper discusses the Daur language use in four field sites, including the Garsu Village and the Yichegashan Village of the Yichegashan Xibe Ethinc Town of the Huocheng County, the64Regiment and the Neilhu County, and with literature research, data statistics and theoretical interpretation this paper discusses the factors of language maintenance, multilingualism, language shift, and the language retention models of the ethnic groups with a small population.This paper contains the following contents:The first part is the Introduction. It explains the origin and significance of this topic, reviews on the previous studies, introduces the methods used in this paper and information of the field sites, and the process and methods of the fieldwork.The second part is from chapter two to chapter four. It is the description and analysis of the Daur language use in the four sites.Chapter two is the village investigation taking the Daurs of the Garsu Village and the Yichegashan Village as an example. It describes the language use of the Daurs in the two villages from the aspects of the mother tongue maintenance, the multilingual competence and the multi-language use, and narrates the related language attitude, the attitude towards the intermarriage and the government’s ethnic policy. This paper argues that:the Daur language is endangered functionally, the Daurs have gained multilingual ability to adapt to the multicultural environment; a trend of a single language of Chinese has shown, and there is close relation between the Daur language maintenance and the multilingualism. By aspects of migration, social organization, intermarriage, political and economic development, school education, cultural development and ethnic identity, this paper analyzes the factors of the Daur language use in the two villages.Chapter three is a case study of the Neilhu Daur clan. Through the family members’personal ability of their mother tongue and their impact on the neighbors, it discusses the features of the mother tongue maintenance, the reason behind the good maintenance of their language, and suggests that the Daurs face up to the crisis existing in their language maintenance.Chapter four is a case study of the Daur clan of the64Regiment. It reveals the change order of the language ability, argues that the interactions of several forces, including families, communities, school education, attitude toward language and culture, is the cause of the orderly change of the family members’ language ability.The third part is chapter five. Based on the language use in the four Daur sites, this paper summarizes two models of language retention of the Ili Daur, and suggests that the Daur maintain their mother tongue with multilingualism. Using a series of cases, this study explores the process of family language changes, analyzes the mechanism that children affect the language use in the family’s language game in the background of the decline of the patriarchy and the advent of the post-figurative era.