An Investigation Into The Language Attitude Of Jingzhou Youths Towards Putonghua, Jingzhou Dialect And English From An Ecolinguistic Perspective

Ecolinguistics, as a new field of linguistic research, has drawn more and more attention. Motivated by ecolinguistic approach, this research is designed to explore the language ecology of Jingzhou City by investigating language attitudes of Putonghua, Jingzhou Dialect and English among Jingzhou youths.The aims of this study are:(1) to explore the status quo of language use and language attitudes of Jingzhou youths towards Putonghua, Jingzhou Dialect and English;(2) to analyze the reasons of those attitudes from ecolinguistic perspective and define whether there is language ecology crisis in Jingzhou.Questionnaire and interview are used as the main research methods to investigate the status quo of language use and language attitudes towards Putonghua, Jingzhou Dialect and English among120Jingzhou young people.The investigation shows differentiations of language use and language attitudes towards Putonghua, Jingzhou Dialect and English. Statistic indicates that Putonghua is dominant in Jingzhou youths’language use. English, as an international language, has gained more attention, while the use of Jingzhou Dialect is declining. Reasons for those differentiations are analyzed from the aspects of linguistic unification, national population mobility and the international use of English. Implications from these findings are inferred that it is of high priority to maintain language diversity and protect the regional dialect in Jingzhou.