Review of Bilingual education and minority language maintenance in China: The role of schools in saving the Yi language, by Lubei Zhang and Linda Tsung
Norbert Francis
October 2020 

The theme of the book centers on the evidence for advanced language shift toward Mandarin Chinese monolingualism in the Yi communities of Yunnan and Sichuan provinces, a strong claim congruent with its highly critical assessment of official educational policy and practice. At the same time, the authors appear to temper their critique by pointing to powerful objective conditions that over the years have been driving language replacement. A separate study by Gao (2015) highlights one of these factors – intermarriage – associated with the breakdown of community isolation, tied as it is to one that the authors document: virtually universal access today by girls to public education that has brought an end to widespread female indigenous language monolingualism and illiteracy.

Format:	[ pdf ]
Reference:	lingbuzz/005491 (please use that when you cite this article)
Published in:	Journal of Linguistics
keywords:	yi language, china, bilingualism, language replacement, mandarin chinese, bilingual mixed language, syntax
Downloaded:	368 times

 

[ edit this article | back to article list ]