An analysis of language and dialect

Language is a lexical system and grammar system that are used by people to speak (write), and which is a combination of pronunciation and translation existing in speaking (writing). To a certain extent, language has a creativity, constitutive property, significance, referential function, sociality, and individuality. As a media for people to communicate thoughts, the language will inevitably generate an impact on politics, economy, society, science and technology, and culture (Law 4). But language which is a cultural phenomenon continuously develops with the progress of human society, and its present spatial distribution is the result of the past development. According to the common points and origin relation of its characteristics of pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary, etc., the language in the world is divided into many language families, such as Sino-Tibetan, Indo-European, Altai Language Family, and so on. Each language family includes a number of languages, and these language families and languages have certain geographical distribution areas, but the language will slowly and unceasingly change when it is used in the society. In the same society, there is always different degrees of differentiation, which forms different groups, and in each society and group, the communication density between people is always uneven, so the innovation of language is always first spread in the groups with a higher communication density, and it is easy to cause a language differentiation, while the dialect is one of the language differentiations, and there are two categories: social dialects and territorial dialects.

About dialect

Dialect is a variant of the language. Although it is used only in a certain range, it has a complete system. It has a voice structure system, vocabulary structure system, and grammatical structure system, which are enough to meet the needs of the local social communication. Various dialects of one nation and the common language of this nation generally always show the language feature that “there are some differences in the common language, and there are some similarities in various dialects” (Ma 15). Under normal circumstances, the national common language is always developed on the basis of speech. According to nature, it can be divided into regional dialects and social dialects:

Because of different gender, age, educational level, economic status and social division, people in the society are divided into different communities. Within each community, the contact between people is closer, and their communication is frequent, but the communication between different communities is relatively sparse. Different communication density affects the spread of language innovation.

If the communication density in the internal communities is high, language innovation will be timely promoted within the communities; if the communication density between communities is low, language innovation will not be timely transmitted to another community, so that each community will form its own language characteristics. The communities which are divided according to the factors of communities are related to the language features, so these social communities are also known as different ‘speech communities.' The language of each speech community is a language branch or language variant which generates on the basis of the national language and has its own characteristics, so this is the so-called ‘social dialects’.

If a society’s productivity has a special progress, the population will usually have a sudden growth, and the territory will gradually expand. Due to natural disasters, wars and other reasons, a part of residents in a society may also have a mass migration to a faraway place. Under the condition of ancient undeveloped traffic, the above-mentioned two situations may cause a situation that the economy and politics are relatively independent and have an uneven communication within the different territorial scope of society.

As a result, it isn’t easy for language changes happened in an area to be spread to other areas, which makes the common points of languages used in each region constantly decrease and the differences continuously increase, which will form the branches of the same language in different areas (Mair 85). Under the condition of incomplete social differentiation, on one hand, the regional branches of language will maintain or increase their respective characteristics, on the other hand, in some ways, they will obey the evolution trend of their subordinated language, so the speakers in various regions will keep the language identity subordinated to the same language.

These regional branches which are separated from the same language, if they are in the social conditions of incomplete differentiation and under the mental identity of the same language, are called ‘regional dialects’, and also referred to as ‘dialects.'

They are all a result of language differentiation, and it is a reflection of imbalanced language development. They all use the material composition of the national language, and they don’t have national characteristics. Social dialects are spoken in a particular class while regional dialects are spoken in a particular area, but in terms of regions, regional dialects have some national characteristic in a certain range.

In the discussion of the language, I once mentioned that it is difficult to completely change the accent of original languages or dialects, and they always leave a certain accent of the original language. It is thus clear that even though it is the same language, there are different dialects, and the difference degree is not the same. Some dialects can be basically understood each other while others have a great difference, and it is like another language. For example, Beijing people cannot understand Cantonese, and Cantonese cannot understand Shanghai Dialect. In different regions, there are different languages and dialects, but even in the same class of different area, there are special vocabularies between people of different ages which are used to express their unique feelings, but it is difficult for the people in another class or the people of different ages to understand. It is like the above-mentioned family language and network language, whose application area and users are not the same, so it is hard for those who don’t understand them to understand.

As a unique national culture, it is inherited unceasingly, and it has the rich cultural deposits. To some extent, it can more represent the cultural characteristics of this community and region.

Language and dialect

As a tool for communication of a social group, language and dialect have no differences, and as far as their structural system is concerned, they are self-sufficient, so, as a research object of pure linguistics, we can say that there is no difference between them. But they have certain differences, which actually lies in the different social identity and political identity. Language is linked with the nation, dialect belongs to the national language, and what linked with dialects is a certain area or domain which is related to the nation. During the actual operation, the reason why individual language is called as a “dialect” is usually because there are following reasons: first of all, there is a lack of proper written language, and the language has not reached the degree of accurate description; Secondly, the language users don’t have their own country; Thirdly, the same nations (or countries) have several language systems.

Therefore, admitting an independent nation must admit that the verbal communication tool used by this nation which have obvious differences is an independent language, and the verbal communication tool used by different regions within this nation which have obvious differences is just a dialect that belongs to this language (Hamed 184). On the contrary, it is to admit that this group isn’t an independent nation but a part of the nation. Thus, the distinction between languages and dialects has risen to a height of politics which is closely related to the whole nation.

China has a long history, a large population, and a vast territory, and there are great differences between Chinese dialects. A few thousand years of common historical and cultural traditions, unified political situation, common national will, language relationship between dialects, most of the same basic vocabulary and grammar, and common written language guarantee that common language of Han nationality represented by mandarin Chinese and modern Chinese written language became the national language of Han common national language.

In the process of the standardization of national language, in addition to the trend that various dialects constantly draw close to the national standard language, at the same time, there is also a trend that in big dialect areas, little dialects draw close to authoritative dialect in larger cities, for example, various Wu dialects draw close to Shanghai dialect, various Cantonese dialects draw close to Cantonese, etc (Ma 8). This is a natural trend, and it is the only path of the standardization of national language. In this way, it is conducive for all dialects to draw close to standard languages.

In general, after all, language is a social phenomenon, so the language which is completely separated from the society is nonexistent. In real life, the difference between language and dialect is just the difference between social and political identities. So, distinguishing language from dialect from the perspective of the difference degree of language structure not only doesn’t work, but also it is untenable in theory.