The Ecological Vitality of the Lijiang Naxi Language and Strategies for Its Transmission and Protection from the Perspective of Ecolinguistics
Based on a 2022 questionnaire of 270 students at three schools in Lijiang's Gucheng District and Yulong County, plus interviews in Wenhai Village, this article by He Shunjuan assesses the ecological vitality of the Naxi language through UNESCO's intergenerational-transmission framework. It finds Naxi use dropping sharply between generations (only 46.7% of parents speak Naxi with their children, and Chinese dominates in schools), placing Naxi's vitality between UNESCO Levels 2 and 3 — showing signs of endangerment. Despite strong emotional attachment to Naxi (90% support preserving it), respondents rate Chinese as more practically valuable, producing a conflicted attitude that accelerates language shift. The author proposes five protection strategies: raising crisis awareness, government incentives (e.g., gaokao bonus points) favoring family transmission over costly bilingual schooling, Naxi-language kindergarten instruction, a modernized romanized Naxi script with new bilingual teaching materials, and leveraging cultural tourism to build ethnic pride and reinforce mother-tongue use.
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