Language Use on Guishan Street in Xinping Yi and Dai Autonomous County, Yuxi City of Yunnan Province

Xinping Yi and Dai Autonomous County of Yuxi City in Yunnan Province is a multi-ethnic area with Han, Yi and Dai as the main residents. With the aim of exploring the language use characteristics and its development trend, this paper collected 162 questionnaires concerning with the situation of language use on Guishan Street. Four families from different nationalities are interviewed for case study. In Guishan, the language life shows a bilingual mode, that is, Han dialect is the main language, and ethnic minority languages are subsidiary, while the use of Mandarin is not as frequent as expected. For most people, their proficiency in minority languages is not good enough, but their proficiency in Han dialect is outstanding. We suggest that we should respect the language awareness and language attitudes of all nationalities, and take according measures to promote the further protection of language resources, so as to achieve a more harmonious development of language life.