Survey on the Language Attitudes of Young Students of Ethnic

Minorities in Guangxi Border

Hui Chen and Xianze Wu

Changshu Institute of Technology, Changshu, China

Keywords: Linguistic Attitude, Cognitive Perspective, Dialects, Mandarin.

Abstract: Language use is not only a reflection of language ability, but also a reflection of language attitudes. In this

paper, big data method is adopted. The adopted instruments include SPSS software, Matlab, SAS, Python

software. The questionnaire method is adopted to investigate and analyze the language attitude of young

students in the border areas of Guangxi from the perspective of emotion and cognition. Emotionally, most

people think that Mandarin is as friendly and pleasant as dialects; They consider dialects convenient and

practical, while Mandarin facilitates communication. Cognitively, they have a general sense of identification

with Putonghua and believe that Putonghua has greater development potential; They also attach great

importance to dialects, but believe that dialects can only be developed within a certain range.

1 INTRODUCTION

Language attitudes, also known as language

concepts, refer to people's perceptions of the value of

the use of language. This includes views on the status,

function, and future of language (DAI, 1993). In a

bilingual or multilingual society, due to the influence

of factors such as social or ethnic recognition of

language, emotions, purpose and motivation,

behavioral tendencies, etc., people will form a certain

understanding or make a certain evaluation of the

social value of a language or writing, which is usually

called language attitude (Wang, 2002). Research

papers in this area at home and abroad have achieved

considerable successes, such as: Wang Yuanxin's "On

Several Problems of the Language Attitudes of Ethnic

Minorities in China", and Long Huizhu's "The

Stratification of Language Attitudes from the

Perspective of Professional Background" Xu

Daming's "Bilingual Survey of Chinese Society in

Singapore" and Wu Meili's "Review of Language

Attitude Research", etc. Weng Yanheng investigated

and analyzed the language attitudes of ethnic

minority primary school students in Kaili District,

Guizhou Province, and found that primary school

students have a positive attitude towards Chinese

learning, which is closely related to the social status

of Chinese, and proposed bilingual teaching and

second language in the local area In the process of

language acquisition, students should be consciously

guided to remove psychological obstacles to promote

benign development (Wang, 1998). Wu Meili

reviewed the history, main contents and research

methods of language attitude research at home and

abroad, and summarized that there have been many

achievements in the research of domestic language

attitudes, especially the research on minority

language attitudes However, some studies lack

scientific research, which requires subsequent

researchers to continue to improve research methods

in order to produce more accurate data (Wu, 2005).

Chen Jianwei took Suzhou university students as an

example, surveyed and analyzed the attitude of these

college students towards Putonghua and Suzhou, and

the results showed that for this group of highly

educated young people, Suzhou dialect and

Putonghua will be in the same position a pattern of

long-term coexistence; The more formal the

occasion, the more often Mandarin is used; The older

you get, the more you identify with Suzhou dialect

(Chen, 2007). Chen Yanling (2013) investigated the

language use of primary school students in Quanzhou

City and Yongchun County in southern Fujian,

analyzed the disharmony in the use of Putonghua and

dialects among urban and rural primary and

secondary school students, pointed out that it will

take a long time to build a harmonious language life

Chen, H. and Wu, X.

Survey on the Language Attitudes of Young Students of Ethnic Minorities in Guangxi Border.

DOI: 10.5220/0011908400003613

In Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on New Media Development and Modernized Education (NMDME 2022), pages 173-177

ISBN: 978-989-758-630-9

 2023 by SCITEPRESS – Science and Technology Publications, Lda. Under CC license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

173

in dialect areas, and called for a long process while

vigorously promoting popularization, it is also

necessary to protect dialects and establish a linguistic

environment in which Putonghua and dialects coexist

harmoniously. All the above studies have been

specifically investigated and studied on the language

of a certain region, but so far, no scholars' attitude

towards the language of young students on the border

of Guangxi has been found Conduct research and

research.

Guangxi, China, is a minority ethnic minority

inhabited by the Zhuang ethnic group, gathering more

than a dozen ethnic minorities, whose languages or

dialects are diverse, and people who speak various

languages have long coexisted Dialects absorb and

merge with each other, constantly enriching and

developing. Guangxi shares a border with Vietnam,

with eight border counties and cities, and frequent

trade with each other, further complicating the

language of the border region. This paper mainly

investigates the language attitude of young students

on the border of Guangxi, aiming to analyze how

these young students, as the backbone of society,

view Putonghua and their own dialects, and analyze

border youth from the perspective of emotions and

cognition What is the student's attitude towards

dialect and Mandarin.

2 THE INVESTIGATION

PROCESS AND ITS SITUATION

ANALYSIS

2.1 Survey Objects and Research

Methods

This article mainly investigates the attitudes of young

border students towards dialects and Mandarin. The

questionnaire survey method was mainly adopted to

recruit high school students aged 15-20 from the

middle school affiliated to Guangxi Normal College

for Nationalities in Chongzuo City and the ASEAN

International Vocational in Chongzuo, Guangxi A

total of 205 questionnaires were sent out from the

Faculty of Education's students, of which 1,84 were

valid.

2.2 Language Usage by Respondents

A total of 184 people were surveyed, of whom only

37 spoke Mandarin as their mother tongue, and the

rest were native speakers of their home dialects, of

which 72 spoke Zhuang dialect, followed by Hakka,

vernacular, Cantonese and other dialects. This is in

line with the dialect characteristics of the border areas

of Guangxi.

For young students in border areas, as shown in

Figures 1-2: In their daily lives, they mainly use

Mandarin, 115 out of 184 Mandarin is mainly used in

daily life. This may be because they are all students,

spend a lot of time in the school, and usually

communicate with classmates and teachers in

Mandarin; Secondly, they also tend to communicate

in Mandarin in public. In addition, they feel that

Mandarin is more proficient in expressing their

thoughts.

Figure 1 Which language do you primarily use in daily life

Figure 2 What kind of words do you think you can speak

more skillfully and express yourself more freely

Most students do not have psychological barriers

when speaking Putonghua, but some students will

have inaccurate pronunciation, unclear words or

some psychological factors when speaking

Putonghua due to the influence of dialects Speaking

Mandarin is not good or embarrassed to speak

Mandarin and other reasons, so that they have

psychological barriers to Mandarin.

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3 ANALYSIS OF LANGUAGE

ATTITUDES OF YOUNG

STUDENTS ON GUANGXI

BORDER

3.1 Look at Language Attitudes from

an Emotional Point of View

Chen Songcen pointed out that language attitudes

themselves can be divided into two categories:

emotional aspects and intellectual aspects. Emotional

language attitude mainly refers to the emotional and

emotional feelings and reactions of the speaker or

listener when speaking and hearing a certain

language. (

CHEN, 1999

) This paper mainly examines

the emotional language attitude of young students in

border from the perspective of language evaluation.

According to Table 1 of the survey results, the

proportion of young border students who believe that

their mother tongue is as cordial and pleasant as

Putonghua is the highest, at 44% and 53%

respectively. They think that the mother tongue is

more cordial than Mandarin, and Mandarin will

sound better than the mother tongue.

Table 1 the emotional language attitude of young students

in border from the perspective of language evaluation

extent

mother

ton

Mandarin The same

cordial 35% 21% 44%

Goo

22% 25% 53%

Table 2 below examines the evaluation of dialects

and Putonghua. It can be seen from the chart that the

vast majority of people evaluate dialects as

convenient and practical, unpleasant but cordial,

while the evaluation of Mandarin is conducive to

communication.

Table 2 the evaluation of dialects and Putonghua

appraise Unkind but nice Not nice but kind

Convenient

and practical

Good for

communication

Didn't feel

dialect 15% 21% 46% 18% 4%

Mandarin 20%% 8% 14% 50% 8%

The evaluation of Mandarin with dialect flavor

shows from the data shown in Figure 3: 62 out of 184

people have a dislike attitude, 77 have an uncertain

attitude, and only 45 like it. Among them, there are

the most uncertain people, which shows that in the

daily communication process, many people will

communicate in Mandarin with a dialect flavor, and

everyone holds this commonplace phenomenon The

attitude is not very clear, in addition, everyone feels

that as long as each other can understand each other's

words, it is okay, and the requirements for Mandarin

are not very high.

Figure 3 Your comment on the dialect of Mandarin

The above is mainly from the emotional

perspective to explore the language attitude of border

young students, from the above survey and analysis,

it can be seen that the majority of border young

students think that their mother tongue is as cordial

and good as Mandarin They have equal affection for

dialect and Mandarin. When evaluating dialects, I

think that dialects are convenient and practical,

Survey on the Language Attitudes of Young Students of Ethnic Minorities in Guangxi Border

175

unpleasant but cordial, because they are their native

language, so many words can be easily expressed,

and it is also very convenient to work with Other

people communicate and speak in tongues that give

them a sense of intimacy; For them, Mandarin is

conducive to communication, not cordial but good,

Mandarin prevails in every corner of us, and if you

know Mandarin, you can communicate with the

outside world unimpeded And learn a lot of new

knowledge. But for Mandarin, which has a dialect

flavor, many people are not very clear about it. On the

one hand, because of their living environment, the

people around them all speak Mandarin with a dialect

flavor, they have become accustomed to it, and they

don't care about this at all; On the other hand, they all

speak Mandarin with a dialect flavor and do not speak

very standard Mandarin, so when they encounter this

question, they don't know how to answer. In general,

from an emotional point of view, the border young

students have a deep affection for dialects and

Putonghua, and they are also the languages they come

into contact with and use the most, and dialects and

Putonghua have become indispensable languages in

their lives.

3.2 Language Attitudes from a

Cognitive Perspective

It mainly investigates the views of young students in

the border of Guangxi on the development of dialects

and Putonghua, and looks at their linguistic attitudes

towards these two languages from a cognitive

perspective.

The data in Figure 4 and in Figure 5 shows that

most of the young students on the border believe that

their dialect cannot be discarded, and think that they

need their dialect and that the next generation will

need to learn it.

Figure 4 Do you think it is necessary to learn your native dialect?

Figure 5 Do you think it is necessary for the next generation to learn the native dialect

From the data in Table 3, it can be understood that

92% of the respondents have a general sense of

identification with Putonghua, believing that

Putonghua has great development potential, and have

a positive and optimistic attitude. This is not because:

Mandarin is the standard language of the country, and

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for China, which has a large land and diverse dialects,

learning Mandarin can be related to various regions

People of all nationalities communicate; Secondly,

under the guidance of the country's policy of

vigorously promoting Putonghua, the Putonghua

policy has been deeply rooted in the hearts of the

people, and everyone is aware of

the importance of Putonghua, so everyone feels

that Putonghua has a lot of room for development.

81% of people think that dialects can be developed

within a certain range, and 15% feel that dialects can

be greatly developed, which indicates that dialects

can be greatly developed within a certain range. 3%

believe that dialects will be no longer spoken in the

near future, although this attitude is small, but it also

reflects the importance that a small group of people

value Mandarin At the same time, there are concerns

about the development of dialects.

Table 3 a general sense of identification

languges dialect Mandarin

Great development 15% 92%

Develop within a

certain range

81% 7%

It will not be used in

the near future

3% 0%

Unable to answer 1% 1%

From a cognitive point of view, the above data

analysis shows that young students attach great

importance to their own dialects and think it is

necessary to learn dialects, but they think the use of

dialects is very limited. It can only be developed

within a certain range, and most people recognize

Mandarin will be greatly developed in a large range,

and they have a great degree of identification with

Mandarin. This is mainly due to changes in the living

environment, more and more people in their

hometowns work and study in different places, whose

demand for Mandarin is also increasing; In addition,

due to the influence of the state's excessive

popularization policy, everyone is required to speak

Mandarin, and there is a consensus that

communication must be in Mandarin in public.

4 CONCLUSION

Language use is not only a reflection of language

ability, but also a reflection of language attitudes.

This paper mainly investigates and analyzes the

language attitudes of young students in Guangxi

border from the perspective of emotion and

cognition. From an emotional point of view, most of

the young students at the border think that dialects are

as friendly and pleasant as Mandarin; They believe

that dialects are more convenient and practical, while

Mandarin is more conducive to communication.

From a cognitive point of view, young border

students have a general sense of identification with

Putonghua, and they believe that ordinary good can

achieve great development; However, they also

attach great importance to their own dialects and

believe that it is necessary for the next generation to

learn dialects, but compared to Mandarin, the vast

majority of people believe that dialects can only be

developed within a certain range. Language attitudes

are a very complex subject, and the scope of my

research is limited and gender differences are not

taken into account, and I will continue to study them

on a larger scale in the future The topic of language

attitudes is studied from multiple perspectives.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This study is supported by the common project of

Philosophy and Social Science for Colleges in

Jiangsu (Research on language attitudes of Chinese

college students in the new era, Grant No.

2021SJA1408).

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