A Study On Language Use And Attitude Of Kirgiz People In Xinjiang

Language use and language attitudes study is the majior branch of the socilinguistic studies.The study of language use and language attitudes of various ethnic groups can reveal the causes of the occurrence,existence and development of many linguistic phenomena.Besides,it has important role on language planning and language policy making.Previous studies about language use and attitude have achieved fruitful results abroad and at home,however,in China,empirical studies on minority language use and attitudes still need to be enriched;especially for Kirgiz language.Present study takes Kokterek village as the research place,987 local Kirgiz people are chosen as the subjects.Based on the “variation theory” and “domain theory”,both questionnaire and informal interview are adopted to conduct the present study,all the questionnaire data was input and processed through the Statistical Package for science(SPSS 19.0).Major findings are as follows:First,from the perspective of language proficiency,Kirgiz people's bilingual proficiency is not equal,their mother tongue proficiency is obviously higher than that of Chinese language.However,more than 80% of subjects have the ability to communicate in Chinese,and a certain amount of people have writing ability of Chinese at different level.Second,from the language use point of view,Kirgiz language still takes the dominant position,but Kirgiz language mixed with Chinese and Chinese language also accounts for a certain proportion.This kind of language choice not only indicates the sense of identity in their mother tongue but also reflects the tendency of Chinese mixed Kirgiz language use influenced by the social environment.Thirdly,as for language attitudes,Kirgiz people are strongly affectionate towards their mother tongue in emotional aspect,while towards Chinese and bilingualism in instrumental aspect.In a word,present study,as a case study,summed up the characteristics of Kirgiz people's language use and attitudes aims to provide some referential resources for the implementation and development of language planning and bilingual education in Xinjiang.