A Survey Of The Language Use Of Middle School Students In Rural Areas Of Jiaozuo

Jiaozuo is a city with a long history,meanwhile it is also an emerging city.The acceleration of urbanization has affected the development of rural area greatly.As the contact with foreign things and people increases,the language of rural villagers is changing.There are currently two dialects in Jiaozuo City.One of them is the urban dialect that appears with the development of Jiaozuo City,and the other is the Huaiqing dialect that has existed for a long time,which is spread over the suburban rural areas and the surrounding counties and cities of Jiaozuo.As a new dialect,the urban dialect is in a prosperous stage.In contrast,Huaiqing dialect has a large population base,but it is now undergoing variability.These variations are most evident in young people.This survey selects middle school students in rural areas of Jiaozuo as the survey object,and analyzes their language ability,language use and language attitude on the basis of the exploration of their language life,and then examines the variations in Huaiqing dialect reflected in their language use,along with the characteristics of local Mandarin.Sociolinguistic questionnaires and interviews are mainly used to collect data in this research,and Excel software is used for data statistics and analysis and charts making.Matched-guise experiment is also used to investigate the implicit language attitude of rural students.The study found that communicative occasions,communicative objects and communicative topics are three important factors that affect the language use of rural middle school students.When communicating with family,the usage rate of dialect is quite high.Inside of the campus,Mandarin is more used in the class than after class.Outside the school,middle school students mainly choose dialect to talk with their friends while choosing Mandarin to communicate with strangers like shop assistants.Formal communication topics such as study and news increase the use of Mandarin.In terms of overall language attitude,there is no significant difference between the students' attitudes toward Jiaozuo dialect and Mandarin.Because dialect and Mandarin perform their own duties and participate in the daily communication activities of middle school students,the two languages have nearly the same status in their point of view.However,in the evaluation of Mandarin,middle school students showed differences in age and gender.Senior students' positive evaluation of Mandarin was higher than that of lower grades and female students' positive evaluation of Mandarin was higher than that of male students.The analysis of the language ability of rural middle school students is based on their self-report in the questionnaires and the interviews we did afterwards.Most rural middle school students have great ability of Jiaozuo dialect.However,phonetic variation is happening,such as the disappearance of the sound y before the syllables with zero initial,the vowel(?)gradually replaced by the vowel and the disappearance of glottal stop coda in ru-tone syllables.Most students also have good ability of Mandarin,but the standard degree of their Mandarin varies greatly and a large part of the students have vernacular components in their Mandarin.The negative effect of Jiaozuo dialect is the main reason for the non-standard Mandarin of rural middle school students.