An Investigation Of Multi-Dialectal Harmony From The Perspective Of FLP

Family language policy has been seen as a new research field of language policy and planning in linguistics and applied linguistics since the year of 2008.As a micro level of language policy,it has attracted more and more attention since it has a quite close relationship with language maintenance or language deficiency in applied linguistics and sociolinguistics.In this sense,a series of pioneering studies on family language policy have been carried out from an interdisciplinary perspective in the world.However,at present,the research on family language policy in China is still in its infancy.Although the importance of family language policy research has been noticed in China,empirical researches are still destitute.Therefore,it is of great significance to do research on the family language policy,especially in the multi-dialectal areas of immigrant families in Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps as dialects in China now are facing the challenge of disappearance under the great influence of language policies at national level.Taking the Xiyuan Community of the 150~thh Regiment of the Eighth Agricultural Division,Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps,Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region as an example,this research is intended to inquire into the multi-dialectal harmonious coexistence from the perspective of family language policy based on Spolsky's(2004)three-dimensional theory of language ideology,language management and language practice,so that it may provide some implications for language protection and maintenance.The enquiry attempts to make a deep investigation of the family language policy of the participants and interviewees with the instruments of questionnaires and semi-structured interviews.A professional statistical tool named Wenjuanxing is adopted for data analysis.In the research,the following results have been found:First,all the three dialects of Putonghua,the native dialect and the local dialect harmoniously co-exist in Xiyuan community.Based on the previous data from quantitative and qualitative researches,it shows us a generational transmission between predecessors and successors,which is totally contrary to the research result reached by Fishman(1970).In the first generation of grandparents,they are only able to speak their own dialect.In the second generation of parents,they can speak the local dialect or Putonghua except their own native dialect.In the third generation of children,all of them can function Putonghua,the native dialect and the local dialect.Second,the research data shows that there is a paradox between language ideology and language practice.On the one hand,for both parents and children,there is a paradox between their language ideology and language practice toward Putonghua.On the other hand,there is a paradox of parents'language ideology and language practice toward the native dialect.Third,in frequent infusion,all the three dialects of Putonghua,the native dialect and the local dialect play their own roles and complement each other in different domains.The superior status of Putonghua does not weaken the function of the other two.And the native dialect and the local dialect realize their roles independently.On the basis of the major findings of the research,some implications are discussed.Because of the author's ability and time limitations,there are weaknesses and loopholes in the research.Therefore,some suggestions for the future study are provided in the end.