An Investigation of Family Language Policy in Chinese Urban Middle-class Families

Abstract

China is a nation with linguistic and ethnic diversity. Putonghua, which translates to “common language” is the common spoken language in mainland China, also known as Standard Chinese historically and Mandarin Chinese in English, has been actively promoted for over half a century aiming at facilitating communication among people with different dialects across China. Under the nationwide promotion of standard Chinese since the State Council issued Instructions Concerning the Promotion of Putonghua in 1956 (Zhou & Sun, 2004), the linguistic ecology represented by the interaction among Putonghua and other dialects in urban contexts has changed dramatically. Based on the three dimensional language policy theory which includes the language ideology, the language practice and the language management (Spolsky, 2004), this study intends to investigate the family language ecology of 30 Chinese parents from 20 urban families with children aged three to seven years. Through analyzing the data collected from survey questionnaires and two interviews, the results indicate that the status of dialect has been marginalized consensually by parents within the family domain. Additionally, parents are shielding their children from dialect both consciously and unconsciously. This study concludes with a discussion of implications for future Family Language Policy (FLP) research within the distinctive Chinese context.