Abstract
Among the 55 officially recognised ethnic minority groups in China, the Yi are the seventh largest, with a population of about 7.7 million, unevenly distributed across the mountainous regions of southwest China, primarily in three provinces, Yunnan, Sichuan and Guizhou. This chapter focuses on the Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture, home to speakers of Nuosu. Nuosu is not an endangered language but it is becoming vulnerable because of the power of Chinese and changes to the demographic makeup of society. The chapter uses an educational linguistic approach to investigate trilingualism and trilingual education in Liangshan. It finds that, in common with many other ethnic minority languages in China, the maintenance of Nuosu is hindered by historical, political and sociolinguistic factors, and suggests a number of measures to improve the situation.
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Notes
- 1.
One switch is counted when the speaker uses one language to talk minimally for a time length of two seconds.
- 2.
Southwest University for Nationalities: founded in 1951, the university is located in Chengdu, the capital city of Sichuan province. Its student population is largely composed of ethnic minorities, but it has recently opened up to Han Chinese and foreigners as well.
- 3.
The Great Leap Forward: an economic and social campaign of the Communist Party of China, reflected in planning decisions from 1958 to 1961, which aimed to use China’s vast population to rapidly transform the country from an agrarian economy into a modern communist society through the process of agriculturalisation, industrialisation, and collectivisation. However, this campaign turned out to be the prelude to a series of economic disasters.
- 4.
The Cultural Revolution: a social movement that took place in the People’s Republic of China from 1966 through to 1976. It was designed to further cement socialism in the country by eliminating capitalist elements from Chinese society. This process involved major changes to the political, economic and social landscapes of China. Social norms largely evaporated and previously established political institutions disintegrated at all levels of government.
- 5.
The Language Commission of Liangshan Autonomous Prefecture: a government body which makes the policy of language use at the prefecture level and supervises its implementation, including implementation of Chinese and other minority languages within its jurisdiction. It also sets and implements the standards of language use, both spoken and written. In practice, its main job is to facilitate the spread of standard Chinese.
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Liu, C., Ding, H., Wang, H., Yu, L., Yang, M. (2015). A Multi-case Investigation into Trilingualism and Trilingual Education in Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture. In: Feng, A., Adamson, B. (eds) Trilingualism in Education in China: Models and Challenges. Multilingual Education, vol 12. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9352-0_7
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