A Study On Language Use And Language Attitude Of Eynu

One of the main uses of a language is to communicate. Language is the symbol of a nation and a society, and it is also used to set up and maintain social relationships. This is the reason why language is regarded as an important component of identity and culture for a nation.The present study takes language use and attitudes as its research realm which is a traditional research direction in sociolinguistic field. Previous studies about this issue have achieved a lot, however, in China, empirical studies on minority language use and attitudes still need to be enriched especially for Eynu language.Language use and language attitudes have been the major focuses in many recent sociolinguistic studies, which help to explore the existence of many linguistic phenomena and will be great importance to language policy-making in ethnic regions. The present study aims to investigate the overall trend of Eynu people’s language use and language attitudes by taking Sheyihil Village of Kashgar Yegishahar County as the research place, and try to discover the correlation between language use and social variables, from social, environmental and psychological perspectives.The present study tested to investigate 210 Eynu people in Sheyihil Village of Kashgar Yengishahar County through interview, questionnaire survey in different language domain of language use and language attitude. The present study adopts Xu’s(2004) questionnaire with some modifications. The questionnaire date processed through the Statistical Package for science(SPSS 16.0). Main results are as follows:Firstly, Eynu language is still a privileged language among Eynu peoples. In addition, from family domain to the public place, Eynu mixed with Uyghur language and Uyghur language is moving up. And the usage of mother tongue declines in approaching the more public place.Secondly, most of Eynu people have optimistic attitudes toward Uyghur language. However, it is mainly in instrumental aspect.The present study on language use and language attitudes of Eynu people’s in Sheyihil Village of Kashgar Yegishahar County as an empirical case aims to provide some referential resources for the development and implementation of language planning in Xin Jiang.