Language solidarity, vitality and status: Sibe family language attitudes in North-western China

ABSTRACT

This paper reports on a study of 148 Sibe youths and their parents from the Charbuchar Sibe Autonomous County of Xinjiang, North-western China, investigating their attitudes toward their mother tongue. Language attitude questionnaires that looked into the youths’ and their parents’ perceptions of their mother tongue’s solidarity (friendliness, beautifulness, usefulness and learnability), status (significance in the country, in economic development, in daily life and in cultural wealth) and vitality (including linguistic, extralinguistic and related factors) were used to collect data. The results show that Sibe youth were more pessimistic than their parents about the solidarity and vitality of the Sibe language, but shared their parents’ optimistic perceptions of the Sibe language’s status. Parents’ attitudes differed by education, income, profession and residence, with high-income, highly educated parents in urban centres holding more pessimistic attitudes than low-income, rural parents. Students’ attitudes also varied by gender and grade levels, with girls being more positive than boys. The findings suggest that concerted efforts in school, home, and communities, especially in urban communities, must be devoted to bridging the intergenerational gaps in language attitudes. Emphasis should also be placed on supporting youths,’ especially boys,’ ethnic identity and affirmation.

KEYWORDS:

• Language attitude
• solidarity
• status
• vitality
• Sibe (Xibo) group

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the The National Social Science Fund of China under [grant number 18BYY083].

Notes on contributors

Xiaorong Yin

Xiaorong Yin, PhD, was born in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, People’s Republic of China. She is interested in researching ethnic languages and cultures. She was awarded her PhD in Applied Linguistics from the Department of Chinese at Nanjing University, PRC. Her doctoral thesis involved a mixed-method sociolinguistic investigation of the Sibe language maintenance and family language policy. She is also a researcher at the Research Center of International Chinese Language Education to Central Asia.

Guofang Li

Guofang Li, PhD, is Professor and Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Transnational/Global Perspectives of Language and Literacy Education of Children and Youth in the Department of Language and Literacy Education, University of British Columbia. Her programmes of research aim to improve the life success of immigrant and minority students by addressing the cultural, linguistic, instructional, and structural barriers in their literacy learning and academic achievements both in school and at home.