Study On Language Attitude Of Chinese New Zealanders

As belonging to social psychology and sociolinguistics,Language Attitude plays an important role in people's daily life and has a profound impact on their language competence and language performance.In bilingual societies and multilingual societies,the study on Language Attitude is especially important to the education and the development of one particular language.As a multicultural and multilingual country,New Zealand currently has a population of about 200,000 Chinese.The vast Chinese community's language attitude towards Chinese and how they use Chinese both have a decisive influence on the international education and dissemination of Chinese.Therefore,the survey on the language attitude of Chinese communities in New Zealand has certain realistic value.The theoretical basis of this study is mainly the language attitude theory in the field of social linguistics.The research data are mainly obtained through the matched—guise technique and social questionnaires.The statistical analysis mainly relies on the Excel 2010 software,combined with the methods of individual interviews.The study finds that Chinese New Zealanders' overall attitude towards Chinese language is relatively positive,but the language ability and language use of Chinese in three different age groups of middle-aged and elderly people,youth and underage showed a gradual downward trend.Different language attitudes show a general trend of more and more positive growth in age groups.Chinese status in New Zealand is far less than English and Maori,also does not have the absolute superiority compared to other second languages,but still has its own place.However,most Chinese in the area are optimistic about the future development of Chinese in New Zealand.