摘要
Researchers attaching great emphasis on language attitudes in sociolinguistic all over the world hold the views that an individual’s or a community’s attitudes toward their own language or other languages will affect how they learn and use a language and lead to a language’s further development or extinction. The research will be conducted on the relationship between people’s language attitude （LA） and the protection of dialects in China, where a great variety of dialects and Standard Chinese （SC） used by the speakers from 56 minorities co-exist and implement each other.With Standard Chinese promoted for 60 years, migration led by the development of social economy after the adoption of reform and opening-up policy, urbanization further promoted since 21st century, the status of Standard Chinese is rising while that of dialects is on the decline, and to some extent regional dialects in some ethnic minorities are dying out, resulting in the disappearance of their unique cultures and cultural forms, such as operas.Based on a review of previous studies on LA, the research will be conducted with questionnaire and interview. The questionnaire will suggest speakers’ conscious, overt attitude towards SC and dialects, the frequency they use SC and dialects, the situation in which they use SC and dialects and so on. Interview conducted indicates the interviewees’ unconsciousness and covert attitudes towards SC and dialects.The questionnaire and interviews conducted, three findings are obtained. First of all, parents’ LA plays a significant part in their children’s language learning or language use, further resulting into the decreasing number of dialect users in China. The second, the promotion of SC in schools varying from kindergartens to universities facilitates the widespread use of SC and extinction of dialects in that kids start to learn and use SC from so early ages that they have fewer chances of picking up a single dialect and the kids’ using SC offers their parents more opportunities to use SC in their daily family communication. The third, different attitudes towards SC users and dialect users from a community have great impacts on what language they will choose to communicate. Although SC plays a significant role in China’s economic development and urbanization, dialects are heritage of regional cultures; therefore, with the promotion of SC, dialects must be sustained and further developed.
