Dialect contact and identity: A case study of exogamous Sui clans.

摘要

This study investigates dialect contact and identity by examining the systematic patterns of clan contact and immigration found among the exogamous clans of the Sui people, an ethnic minority concentrated in rural parts of Guizhou, China. Sui women, men, and children maintain the dialect features of their home clans to a high degree throughout their lives, regardless of any later migration and long-term immersion in other clan dialects. The study concludes that Sui speakers perform linguistic acts of clan identity that index and maintain their clan memberships. The study also introduces methodology for "socio-tonetic" research and provides progress in variationist sociolinguistic research of indigenous minority languages, Sui acoustic phonetics and dialectology, and dialect acquisition research.; In Sui clan exogamy, the wife moves permanently to the husband's village upon marriage. Since subtle dialect differences can exist between clans, the wife often has dialect features that differ from the husband's clan. For example, a woman may use a different 1st Person Singular pronoun than her own husband and children, and subtle clan markers are observed in other words and phonetic features (tones and diphthongs). This study involves detailed analysis of dialect features of such immigrant married Sui women, nonimmigrant speakers in their original home clans, and children of immigrant women, as well as ethnographic interviews investigating community views on dialect and clan identity.; The results show that the immigrant women maintain their home clan dialects to a very high degree rather than acquiring features of the husband's clan. For the children of such women, a transition to the exclusive use of the dialect of the father's clan begins at a young age as they learn about their linguistic identities through the metalinguistic influence of the community, and as they are directly exposed to the local clan dialect features in daily village interactions. Older children and teenagers adhere more closely to the father's clan dialect, fully acquiring that dialect as they reach adulthood. For all members of the community, ridicule is the consequence for use of dialect features that would identify the speaker as a member of any clan other than that person's father's clan. Further, children who use the mother's clan dialect features and women who use the husband's clan dialect features may also be admonished or criticized.; The study concludes that all members of the community---women, men, and children---perform linguistic acts of clan identity that continually reinforce their clan memberships. In the case of immigrant married women, such acts of clan identity operate in opposition to an otherwise typical human tendency for some amount of dialect acquisition in situations of long-term immersion (as evidenced by a survey of prior dialect acquisition studies).