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A sociological analysis of Tibetan language policy issues in China

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Abstract

This paper presents a sociological analysis of Tibetan language policy issues in China during the 1951–2020 period from a sociological perspective, while also attempting to portray the complex situations in which the same language is used in communication and interactions within sub-marginally demarcated societies where the same macrosocial structure is shared by traditions but the microsocial structure has been fragmented by the embedded social system, posing the risk of social structural collapse through social change stemming from language problems. In this analysis, Cooper’s model is applied to the Tibetan context of language status planning and social change while examining the process of how China’s language policy is to replace the Tibetan language, resulting in forms of social change. The results of this examination emphasise the need for multifarious reconciliation, not a single language policy issue, in sustaining the future identity of Tibetan populations (See Table 1).

Table 1 Comparison of different Tibetan dialects and regions where these are spoken
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Data availability

All data analysed during this study are included in this published article. The data mostly derived from public domain resources are in two languages of Tibetan and Chinese; some of the data were transcribed directly from local people’s WeChat Groups available on request from the author; some of the data analysed for this study are available in the [Reference 1, and 10]; some of the data are generated during this study are available in the [http://en.people.cn/constitution/constitution.html]; some of the data subject to third party restrictions are available with the permission of the third party.

Notes

  1. Fishman, “The Sociology of Language”; Giddens, The Constitution of Society.

  2. Cummins, “Empowering Minority Students.”

  3. Bass, Education in Tibet; Chu, “A Planning Error Revealed”; Jia, Social Structuration in Tibetan; and Jia, “Towards Mutuality in Modernizing.”

  4. Crystal, English as a Global; and Genç and Bada, “English as a World.”

  5. Bradley, “Introduction: Language Policy”; Burnaby, “Language Policy and Education”; Gao, “Linguistic Instrumentalism and National”; Paulston and Heidemann, “Language Policies”; Skutnabb-Kangas, “Language Policy and Linguistic”; Zhou, Multilingualism in China; and Zhou and Heidi, “Introduction: The Context.”

  6. A-tsog, Petition of the realistic; Huang, 70 Years Enterprise of China’s; Jia, “The Tibetan Village”; Johnson and Chhetri, “Exclusionary Policies and Practices”; and Su De, China Minority Education Development.

  7. A-tsog, “Petition of the Realistic”; and Lama, “A Poisoned Arrow.”

  8. Duranti and Goodwin, eds., Rethinking Context; Hill, Language and Social Relations; Hirsch, “Language as Reflective Experience”; Gao, “Cantonese is not a Dialect”; Gao, “The Ideological Framing”; Gao, “Language Policy Research”; and Vaillancourt et al., Official Language Policies.

  9. Blachford, “Language Planning and Bilingual”; Kaplan and Baldauf, Language Planning from Practice; and Kibler, Implementation of Educational.

  10. Lapolla, The Origin and Spread of Sino-Tibetan Languages; Johann-Mattis et al., Old Chinese and Friends; Zhang et al., Structures of Feeling in Language Policy; Jacques, “On the cluster sr– in Sino-Tibetan”; Hill & Di, Tibetan Natural Language Processing; Hill, Language and Social Relations; Tournadre, The Tibetic Languages and their Classification; Li, Chinese, English, Russian Encyclopaedias; Denwood, The Language History of Tibetan.

  11. Heikkinen, Huttunen, and Syrjiälä, “Action Research as Narrative.”

  12. Ibid.

  13. Dungkar Lobsang Khrinley, Dungkar Tibetological Great Dictionary; Jigme, Great History of Dome; Jia, Social Structuration in Tibetan; Jia, “Towards Mutuality in Modernizing”; Johnson and Chhetri, “Exclusionary Policies and Practices”; Stein, Tibetan Civilization; Wu, “Discovered Three Thousand Years”; Nima, “Problems Related to Bilingualism.”

  14. Dueck, “Culture, Language, and Integration”; Fishman, “The Sociology of Language”; Giddens, The Constitution of Society; Jia, Social Structuration in Tibetan; Postiglione, China’s National Minority Education; and Searle, “Language and Social Ontology.”

  15. Sangje, “The Critical Discourse”; Sangje, “The Discussion of How”; and Sangje, “The Explication of Noun.”

  16. Stein, Tibetan Civilization.

  17. Denwood, “The Language History”; Jigme, Great History of Dome; Jia, Social Structuration in Tibetan; and Jia, “Towards Mutuality in Modernizing.”

  18. Jia, “Towards Mutuality in Modernizing.”

  19. Science of mind is a new subject of study based on Buddhist philosophy.

  20. Dungkar Lobsang Khrinley, Dungkar Tibetological Great Dictionary; Jia, “The Tibetan Village”; and Lane, “Minority Language Standardisation.”

  21. According to Dungkar Lobsang Khrinley (2002), the 33rd king of Tibet, Songtsen Gampo (617–640 AD) led the first standardisation of terms and grammar; the 36th King of Tibet, Tride Songtsen (798–815 AD), led the second standardisation of new terms; and Lochen Rinchen Zangpo (958–1055 AD) led the third standardisation of new terms, grammaticity, and language stylistic with the support of Lha Lama Yeshe O'd (965–? Died around age 70).

  22. Dungkar Lobsang Khrinley, Dungkar Tibetological Great Dictionary; Lane, “Minority Language Standardisation”; Ngang xamgy, “Rethinking About How”; and Ngawang Chothar, “Brief Historical Review.”

  23. Tsunga and Cruickshank, Mother Tongue and Bilingual.

  24. Cairang “The Research on the Characters.”

  25. Lhagyal, “Linguistic authority’ in state-society interaction”; Tso, “Opportunities and challenges”; Chu, “A Planning Error Revealed”; De Luca, “Mother Tongue”; Wang and Phillion, “Minority Language Policy”; and Zhou and Heidi, “Introduction: The Context.”

  26. Jia, Sociology and Tibetan Society; Jia, “The Tibetan Village”; and Jia, Social Structuration in Tibetan.

  27. Jia, Social Structuration in Tibetan; and Wang and Shang, “Development and expectation.”

  28. Goldstein, A History of Modern Tibet.

  29. In this year, the Tibetan Government, including the fourteenth Dalai Lama, were exiled to India.

  30. Goldstein, A History of Modern Tibet; and Jigme, Great History of Dome.

  31. Goldstein, Sherap, and Siebenschuh, A Tibetan Revolutionary: The Political.

  32. Goldstein, Sherap, and Siebenschuh, A Tibetan Revolutionary: The Political.

  33. People often express policy through their experience of language practices or how they maintained the practices of Tibetan language by teaching the political context, as was done, for instance, in the story of Six Stars with a Crooked Neck and How Dorje Tsering Saved Tibetan.

  34. Lupyan and Dale, “Language Structure is Partly.”

  35. Ngawang Chothar, “Brief Historical Review.”

  36. WeChat is a social media outlet similar to Facebook. Local Tibetans use it organise various forms of social activity groups. This is a form of local Tibetan language activist group; around 400 members who have joined this group aim to reinforce the status of Tibetan language in their native society. The author joined this group to engage in Tibetan language activities, and delivers talks concerning the Tibetan language situation. The author picked this group as an example of recent Tibetan activists.

  37. Golo is the name of place and one of the ten Tibetan Autonomous Prefectures in China.

  38. This talk was delivered by Ju Gasang, a very influential scholar in Golo and famous Tibetan mother tongue writer. The content was transcribed into English directly from Tibetan records by the author.

  39. http://www.chinaculture.org/gb/cn_law/2004-06/28/content_49690.htm.

  40. Dooly and Unamuno, “Multiple Languages in One”; Jia, “The Tibetan Village”; Jia, Social Structuration in Tibetan; and Wang and Phillion, “Minority Language Policy.”

  41. Nima, “Discourse of the Language”; Jia, “The Tibetan Village”; and Jia, Social Structuration in Tibetan.

  42. Blachford, “Language Planning and Bilingual.”

  43. Jia, “The Tibetan Village”; Liddicoat, “Language Planning for Literacy”; Simon and Klandermans, “Politicized Collective Identity”; Gyntsen, “The Way of Breaking”; and Wodak, “Language, Power and Identity.”

  44. Gao, “Cantonese is not a Dialect”; Gao, “Language Policy Research”; and Zhou, Multilingualism in China.

  45. Paper presented at the 60th CIES Annual Conference 5–10 May 2016, at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada.

  46. Simon and Klandermans, “Politicized Collective Identity”; and Wang and Phillion, “Minority Language Policy.”

  47. Hill, Language and Social Relations; Thashi and Gyntsen, “A Report of Aba Tibetan”; Jia, Social Structuration in Tibetan; Jia, “Towards Mutuality in Modernizing”; Ngang Xamgy, “Rethinking About How”; Gyntsen, “The Way of Breaking”; and Gyntsen, “Mother Tongue Education.”

  48. A-tsog is a young Tibetan scholar of sociolinguistics working as a professor at Nankai University; A-tsog, Petition of the Realistic.

  49. Jia, “Towards Mutuality in Modernizing.”

  50. Cummins, “Empowering Minority Students”; Lane, “Minority Language Standardisation”; and Wang and Phillion, “Minority Language Policy.”

  51. A-tsog, Petition of the Realistic.

  52. Interestingly, these individuals started participating in social activities and meetings in U-Tsang, Kham, and Amdo after their retirement.

  53. Dory and Randy, “Minority Languages of China”; and Zhou, Multilingualism in China.

  54. Kaplan and Baldauf, Language Planning from Practice, 54.

  55. This is an example of Gannan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in Gansu. Jian, Minority Education Policy Research.

  56. Drol karkyi, “Critical Analysis”; Kolås and Thowsen, “The Dilemmas of Education.”

  57. Mabry, “Language and Conflict.”

  58. Dwyer, “The Texture of Tongues”; and Kibler, Implementation of Educational.

  59. Cummins, “Empowering Minority Students.”

  60. Hult, “Language Policy and Planning and Linguistic Landscapes”; Chafe, “Orality, Literacy”; Fajardoa, “A Review of Critical”; Hayward, “Indigenizing Intersexuality”; and Liddicoat, “Language Planning for Literacy.”

  61. Hanemann, “The Literacy Initiative”; Hornberger et al., “Ethnography of Language Planning”; and Liddicoat, “Language Planning for Literacy.”

  62. May, “Rearticulating the Case for Minority Language Rights.”

  63. A-tsog, Petition of the Realistic; Ngang xamgy, “Rethinking About How”; Cairang, “The Research on the Characters.”

  64. Nima, “The Choice of Language.”

  65. By the new semester in September 2020, a policy was confirmed that there is no Tibetan-track class in all primary schools and Tibetan institutions of higher education, like Northwest Minzu University, have terminated Tibetan classes by consolidating the minority departments of Mongolian, Uyghur, and Tibetan as one, whereupon these minority professors and teachers were asked to teach subjects in Mandarin for a mixed class (unpublished fieldnotes, 2020).

  66. Perez-Milans and Tollefson, “Language Policy and Planning: Directions for Future research”; and Jaspers, “Language Education Policy and Sociolinguistics: Toward a New Critical Engagement.”

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Acknowledgements

Authors would like to express sincere gratitude to these anonymous peer reviewers of this Journal for their constructive comments and suggestions on the earlier versions of this article.

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No funding was received for conducting this study.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Yunnan Normal University, Kunming, Yunnan, China

    Luo Jia

  2. Lanzhou University, Lanzhou, Gansu, China

    Pai Qie

Authors
  1. Luo Jia
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  2. Pai Qie
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Contributions

All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection and analysis were performed by [JL], and [QP]. Specifically, the draft of the manuscript was written and developed by [JL], and the second authors, [QP], contributed the important critical suggestions and comments for the revisions. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Luo Jia.

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Regarding writing and publishing this article, there is no potential conflict of interest with any third parties.

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Jia, L., Qie, P. A sociological analysis of Tibetan language policy issues in China. SN Soc Sci 1, 89 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s43545-021-00092-y

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