通过研究，我们可以发现河南桐柏方言在城市家庭的年轻一代中正面临着消失的危机，在农村地区，尤其是年轻一代，正在失去一些特色和原有的表达方式。此外，使用河南桐柏方言的地区正在缩小。可以推测，随着城市化的发展，越来越多的人对家乡方言不太重视，甚至失去了家乡方言。
Chapter One Introduction
1.1 Research background
Family is the starting point of human language acquisition, the place where human use language for the longest time, and the last bastion of human language maintenance and survival. In recent years, research on family language policy has attracted increasing attention of domestic and foreign academic world, and family language policy has also become an important field of language policy research (Sposky, 2004, 2012). It was first proposed by Cooper who assumed that language planning can be explored not only at the macro level, but also at the micro level (Cooper, 1989). According to King et al. (2008), it “provides an integrated overview of research on how languages are managed, learned and negotiated within families” (2008: 907). He also explains language use in families can be conceptualized in terms of Spolsky’s(2004) tripartite model of language policy: language ideologies (what family members think about language), language practices (what family members do with language), and language management: the interface between the previous two (attempts to influence language use). Although the study of family linguistic policy has not been carried out for a long time, it covers a wide range of areas and still has many dimensions to explore, such as the role of the family in home language maintenance; intra-family factors related to FLP; relationship between family language ideology, family language practice and management; the interaction with macro factors; multilingual immigrant families; the challenges of FLP; methodologies of FLP research and other perspectives.
Henan, as the national political, cultural and economic center for almost three thousand years in the Chinese five-thousand-year history, is an important birthplace of Chinese nation and Chinese civilization. As an important carrier of the culture, Henan dialect has a long historical origin and profound cultural connotation, which plays an important role in the development and inheritance of the central plain culture. However, Henan dialect shows a gradual weakening trend in recent years. Many young people seldom speak dialects and some even don’t know how to say them, especially in big cities.
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1.2 Aims of the research
The primary purpose of the research is to make a deep investigation about Henan Tongbai dialect usage and its intergenerational change from the perspective of family language policy in rural and urban Tongbai families. To be more specific, this research attempts to clearly present Henan Tongbai dialect situation, compare the different use of the dialect between rural and urban Tongbai families, and analyze the formation reasons and its developing trends in term of language ideology, language management and language practice in urban and rural Tongbai families. Based on the investigation, implications and suggestions may be obtained on Henan Tongbai dialect protection and transmission. To achieve this goal, the following questions are to be explored in terms of family language policy:
1. What is the current situation of Henan Tongbai dialect used for the daily communication in urban and rural families?
2. What are the differences of Henan Tongbai dialect use in the urban and rural families?
3. How does the use of Henan Tongbai dialect change between different generations in the urban and rural families?
4. What are the factors leading to the intergenerational change of Henan Tongbai people using their dialect? 5. What implications may we get from the research about the protection of Henan Tongbai dialect?
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Chapter Two Literature Review
2.1 Studies of Henan Tongbai dialect
This section gives a brief survey of dialects study in China, introduces study on Henan dialects and analyzes the role of of Tongbai dialect in Henan dialects study.
2.1.1 A brief survey of dialects study in China
Language faithfully reflects the culture, ideology, history, entertainment. It is the reflection of thought and emotion, but also influences the thoughts and emotion. As a kind of language variety, dialect is also the carrier of culture and thoughts and serves as the tool of communication. On the other hand, different from the common national language, it possesses its own unique features and value, and its formation and characteristics are closely related to the natural environments, including the climate, topography, soil and crops, and social environment, such as custom, lifestyle, religion and administrative division. Therefore, the dialect is of great linguistic, cultural and emotional value.
The research of Chinese dialect has a long history, which dates from the Western Han Dynasty. However, as an independent scientific discipline, the studies on Chinese dialect began in the 1920s. Its development course can be divided into four stages: the initial period of Chinese dialectology(1928-1949), specialization period(1950-1978), boom period(1979-2004) and diversification period(2005-now).(Xie Liuwen, 2019)
As Beijing university established dialect survey committee in January 1924, a group of scholars with modern linguistic theory and technological literacy, headed by Zhao Yuanren, starting from Zhao Yuanren’s survey of modern Wu dialect, carried out a series of dialect researches, including dialect survey in Guangdong Province, Guangxi Province, southern part of Shanxi Province, Jiangxi Province, HunanProvince, Hubei Province, Yunnan Province, Sichuan Province and other regions, and published some influential books, which provided a number of unprecedented reliable data for the Chinese dialect research, made us have a clear understanding of the categories and characteristics on modern Chinese dialects and also laid a preliminary foundation for the comprehensive development of modern Chinese dialect study.(Zhan Bohui,1999) The survey in this period are mainly focused on the phonetics.
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2.2 Studies of Family Language Policy
This section makes a comprehensive review on Family Language Policy study abroad and at home from different perspectives.
2.2.1 Family Language Policy study abroad
The study on family language policy (thereafter, FLP) abroad presents an increasing trend since it is defined in recent years in both the quantity and quality, covering more family types and more areas; and also investigating more detailed perspectives and in-depth themes.
First, the study on FLP can be classified into FLP on transnational families and non-transnational families, according to the family type. With the globalization, there are growing immigrant families and transnational marriages all over the world. Consequently, questions like which language to choose, which context certain language are used and how to maintain minority language and become bilingual or multilingual are presented in these families. Transnational family can be sub-classified into family where two parents immigrate to another country and family where one of the parent is native speaker, while another is not. Such situation leads to multilingual home environment and inconsistent language usage between home, school community and other places. Curdt-Christiansen(2009) examined the family language policy in ten Chinese immigrant families in Quebec, Canada, where three languages, Chinese, English, and French are used within the family; the case of French heritage speakers living in the UK were analyzed through the eyes of bilingual children by Wilson(2020); Srhir(2020) examined how to make children multilingual in transnational Moroccan families in Spain by analyzing different cases of language transmission; Fogle( 2013) investigated how U.S. transnational adoptive parents planned and developed their family language policy for their school-age, native Russian-speaking adoptees; Kaveh(2018) described how to maintain Persian in a group of second-generation Iranian immigrant children in different parts of the Northeast United States in terms of family language practices, beliefs, and management. There is also a systematic literature review of transnational family language policy made by Hirsch & Lee(2018 ).
Table 3.1 Basic Information of Rural Family Members
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3.1 Participants .................................... 29
3.2 Methods............................... 32
Chapter Four Results and Discussion ................................................... 37
4.1 Current situation of Henan Tongbai dialect use ........................... 37
4.1.1 Henan Tongbai dialect use in the urban family ..................................... 37
4.1.2 Henan Tongbai dialect use in rural family ............................................ 42
Chapter Five Conclusion .................................... 71
5.1 Research findings .................................... 71
5.2 Implications for the protection of Henan Tongbai dialect ............ 73
5.3 Limitations of the research .............................. 75
Chapter Four Results and Discussion
4.1 Current situation of Henan Tongbai dialect use
This section describes Henan Tongbai dialect use in the urban family and rural family and compares similarities and differences of Henan Tongbai dialect use between the urban and rural families.
4.1.1 Henan Tongbai dialect use in the urban family
In the urban family, the whole family is not living together nowadays but in two neighborhoods in Zhengzhou. U1 and U2 live in a neighborhood, while U3, U4, U5 and U6 live in another neighborhood. Before going to primary school, U5 has been taken care by U1 in day time. The second generation and third generation now go to see the first generation every two or three weeks. In modern Chinese society, it is common that the young generation and the older generation are living independently due to different lifestyles and living habits.
U1 can speak Tongbai dialect and a little mandarin which is not standard and is learned in the interaction with some non-Henan dialect speakers in the city. When she was in the primary school, the teacher did not speak mandarin. She speaks Henan Tongbai dialect to U2, U3, U4, U5 and U6. She uses Tongbai dialect most of time but her dialect has changed a lot, compared to before, since she is living in Zhengzhou now, the capital of Henan province, where people are from different areas all over the country. Many mandarin expressions are added in her dialect and some original words in Tongbai dialect are abandoned. Henan Tongbai dialect is the primary and main language she use to speak with other people, including familiar ones or unfamiliar ones like people in the market or in the street. She will try to use her non-standard mandarin to communicate with others, when they can’t understand her, mainly non-Henan people. When her grandsons or others speak mandarin to her, she can understand most of them.
Table 3.2 Basic Information of Urban Family Members
Chapter Five Conclusion
5.1 Research findings
Through the careful observation of language use in the two rural and urban families, and the in-depth interviews with the different generations of the two families, research results and conclusions of Henan Tongbai dialect use and change are found out as follows:
First, urban family and rural family who initially are both Henan Tongbai dialect speakers present different situations of language practice, and different generations in the two families have different language ability. In urban family, the first generation mainly use dialect, speaking non-standard mandarin occasionally outside. The second generation, bilingual of mandarin, Henan Tongbai dialect, knowing about a little English, mainly speak mandarin to children, colleagues, friends, while they use Henan Tongbai dialect when communicating with the first generation, the other second generation, people and relatives in the hometown or other people who first initiate a conversation in dialect; the third generation no longer speak dialect, and they mainly use mandarin and speak English in English class as foreign language. In the rural family, the first and second generation could only speak Henan Tongbai dialect; the third generation use dialect as the main communicative language, only speak non-standard mandarin in other provinces for doing business and on some formal occasions, like school; the fourth generation who could speak fluent dialect, standard mandarin but unskilled English, use Henan Tongbai dialect mainly at home and in hometown but tend to use mandarin most of time on other occasions; the fifth generation could speak a few words in these three languages during the process of learning to speak.
Secondly, there are intergenerational differences or changes towards Henan Tongbai dialect between the two families in terms of FLP. In urban family, the Henan Tongbai dialect practice presents a sharp decreasing trend, with the eldest generation using it most of time but the youngest generation abandoning speaking it. At the same time, their attitudes towards it differ a lot between generations, from the intense love of the first generation to the uselessness of the second generation to the unfamiliarity and no emotion of the third generation, which shows a gradual negative ideology. As the main family language planners, the second generation pay more attention to mandarin and English, but ignore the Tongbai dialect. In rural family, Henan Tongbai dialect is well inherited, with all the members speaking Henan Tongbai dialect at home, but some dialect expressions are replaced by mandarin. And the younger generations tend to master more languages. As for language ideology, the elder generation pay more attention to dialect, while the younger generation give more focus on mandarin and English, although they all recognize the importance of these three languages. The first, second and third generation have relatively weak language management.
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