Professor Li Yuming Delivered a Lecture on Language Competition

On 28th April, Professor LI Yuming of Beijing Language and Culture University delivered a lecture on Language Competition in the Academic Lecture Hall of the University Library, North Campus. Several prominent teachers and professors attended the lecture. The host, ZHAO Junfeng, gave a brief introduction of the speaker: LI Yuming, Professor at Beijing Language and Culture University, is the Vice President of International Association of Chinese Linguistics, Chief Editor of the Chinese Journal of Language Policy and Planning and the winner of May 1st Labor Medal in 1997.

A Full House of Audience

In the beginning, President ZHONG Weihe issued a Certificate of Honorary Professor to Professor LI on behalf of GDUFS. As Professor LI mentioned, Beijing Language and Culture University has a close cooperative relationship with GDUFS, and the two universities share the common research field of linguistics.

President ZHONG Weihe issued a Certificate of Honorary Professor to Professor LI

Professor LI studies language competition in four dimensions: structural factors; application fields; age grades of language users, and geographical distribution. According to Professor LI, language mainly consists of pronunciation, character , vocabulary and grammar, while vocabulary is the most susceptible by human activities. In other words, language competition mainly reflected in the dimension of vocabulary.

In the second part, Professor LI showed a pyramid to illustrate language application in different fields and situations. Family and religion,at the base of the pyramid, is the root of language application. Social activity is on the layer of language preservation. The layer of education is the inheritance of languages where lies the main contradictory of national languages, and foreign language contends for this layer . The second layer, mass media and professional language, is considered the layer of vitality. On top of the pyramid is the government terminology, which represents the authority of the nation. Through this systematical classification of language application carried out by Professor LI, the audience was convinced of the profound social influence of language.

A Masterly Speech On Language Competition

Language users of different ages have different conceptions of language. Another pyramid of age grades showed that the age of 0~7 is the period of language exposure focusing on oral communication; the age of 7~19 is the stage for the elementary education of language focusing on written language. Language is extensively used at the age of 19~40;without this age layer of people, language would be in imminent danger. The age of 40~70 is the period of preservation of using language, and after 70, language using comes to a degenerating stage.

The geographical distribution of the first language in most nations has been stabilized since the Second World War. On the contrary, after the Second World War, the second language such as English for non-English speaking countries, had great influence on people’s lives. Fierce competition in the second language is widely seen nationwide, giving rise to a growing concern of linguistic conflict. According to Professor LI, since linguistic conflict is one of the social conflicts that lies in every nation, we should build up the concept of language harmony and language equality to alleviate the conflict.

The audience benefited a lot from the lecture presented by Professor LI, and they expressed their appreciation to him. At the end, several questions were put forward by the audience and Professor LI answered them with patience. The lecture ended with a round of applause.

中文报道：

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