[Huang Tao] Characteristics, value and protection strategies of language and cultural heritage

[Abstract] Starting from the internationally accepted basic categories and working norms of intangible cultural heritage, and from the academic perspective of the intersection of linguistics and folklore, some basic theoretical issues on the protection of language and cultural heritage are discussed.

Most of the views against the protection of dialects in society are based on the fact that language is first and foremost a tool of communication, but there is a lack of understanding of the importance of its cultural value.

On the basis of fully understanding the major protection value and special attributes of language and cultural heritage, we should formulate scientific and appropriate protection strategies.

In particular, we must properly handle the relationship between the protection of weak languages and respecting the language holders 'willingness to make independent choices, survival and development interests, and Correctly understand and coordinate the relationship between dialect protection and the promotion of Mandarin.

[Keywords] Language; Cultural heritage; value; Protection Strategy [Author Profile] Huang Tao: Doctor of Law, Professor, School of Humanities, Wenzhou University (Wenzhou, Zhejiang 325035) In the process of modernization of human society, the degree of globalization in information dissemination, science and technology, economy and other aspects is becoming increasingly high, which has brought about the threat of world cultural convergence and simplification, including the sharp decline of human language varieties and the crisis of the extinction of vulnerable languages.

In the past thirty to forty years, there has been a large-scale extinction of language varieties.

China has also encountered problems of language extinction or dialect decline that have attracted widespread attention in society.

Language diversity is the foundation of cultural diversity and an important part of it.

Therefore, in the grand project of protecting intangible cultural heritage, the protection of language and cultural heritage is particularly important.

In recent years, the international and domestic calls for protecting cultural diversity have become louder and louder, and remarkable achievements have been made.

However, domestic awareness of the importance of protecting language and cultural heritage is still insufficient.

There are still significant differences and fierce debates in academic circles and society on whether endangered languages and dialects need to be protected.

Relevant theoretical research is even rarer and needs attention and in-depth discussion.

Since the existence of language in human society, there has been the decline and disappearance of language.

However, in the past, people were indifferent to it and very little did.

Scholars also have a long history of investigating and studying language.

The protection of language and cultural heritage now referred to is part of the world cultural heritage protection project carried out in the context of modernization and globalization.

This work must be quite different from previous linguistic surveys and studies.

The key to this difference is that today's work on protecting language and cultural heritage cannot only regard language as a communication tool in accordance with traditional concepts, but must regard language as an intangible cultural heritage.

This is a kind of work based on the new situation and new perspective, and there should be concepts, theories and methods that are in line with the norms of cultural heritage protection.

In recent years, the protection of intangible cultural heritage has been carried out throughout society under the leadership and support of the government, while the research work has been carried out in multi-disciplinary fields such as folklore, ethnology, history, anthropology, and art.

The main force of scholars engaged in this work is folklore scholars.

Language folklore is one of the important components of folklore, and language folklore is a branch of folklore.

The research and practical work of language and cultural heritage should also involve scholars engaged in language and folklore research.

The author has been engaged in the investigation and research of language folklore for many years, and attempts to conduct a preliminary discussion on the basic theoretical issues of language and cultural heritage from the perspective of the intersection of folklore and linguistics.

1.

Definition of Language and Cultural Heritage Regarding the definition of language, people are accustomed to the saying: "Language is the most important communication tool of mankind","Language is the main medium and expression of thought", or "Language is a combination of sound and meaning" symbol system ".

From a linguistic or philosophical perspective, these statements are reasonable and have been used by people for a long time.

However, according to this understanding, conducting the research and practice of language protection as intangible cultural heritage will cause conceptual and theoretical bias, mistakes and shortcomings in practical work.

To properly define language as intangible cultural heritage, we need to first understand the concept of intangible cultural heritage.

The internationally accepted concept of intangible cultural heritage is reflected in a series of UNESCO documents.

In the "Proposal for the Protection of Folk Creation" promulgated in November 1989,"folk creation" was interpreted as "all creations from a certain cultural community." Connecting folk creation with specific communities here is a reflection of an academic thinking that focuses on situation.

Another important document of the organization on the protection of intangible cultural heritage,"Intangible Cultural Heritage, a Mirror of Cultural Diversity"(2002), states:"Intangible cultural heritage is deeply rooted in the local history and natural environment, and is reflected in the many languages that embody many worldviews...

Intangible cultural heritage is a lively and constantly recreated whole that enables individuals and communities at all levels of society to express their worldviews through various systematic values and ethical standards." In the Convention for the Protection of Intangible Cultural Heritage issued by UNESCO in 2003,"Intangible cultural heritage" is defined as: "Refers to various practices, performances, forms of expression, knowledge and skills, and their associated tools, objects, crafts and cultural spaces that are regarded as their cultural heritage by various groups, groups, and sometimes individuals." Various groups and groups continue to innovate this intangible cultural heritage passed down from generation to generation as their environment, interaction with nature, and historical conditions change, while giving themselves a sense of identity and history, thereby promoting cultural diversity and human creativity." From the above definition, some characteristics of intangible cultural heritage can be summarized: First, its main part is not texts, products, etc.

that are divorced from the environment, but cultural phenomena in specific situations.

The two important documents,"Intangible Cultural Heritage, a Mirror of Cultural Diversity" and the "Convention for the Protection of Intangible Cultural Heritage", both define the main body of intangible cultural heritage as a living, vivid, procedural, and varying cultural phenomenon, showing a clear academic orientation that attaches importance to situation, and clearly points out several situational factors closely related to it: natural environment, historical conditions, cultural communities, groups, groups, tools, objects, cultural places, etc.

Second, its components also have static and solid forms such as "knowledge","skills","tools","objects", and "handicrafts", but its more important and expressive form is "practice" and "performance" and other dynamic and living behaviors and activities.

Third, it expresses the spiritual and conceptual content such as the values, ethics, and world outlook of a specific community, and shows the cultural characteristics of a specific ethnic group.

It can be seen that language, as an intangible cultural phenomenon, should not be mainly a static text or crystal that is divorced from context, that is, a symbol system such as pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar, etc., but an expression activity in specific situations; it is not divorced from social life, but the behavior of speaking in the soil of life; it is not without cultural connotation, but closely related to the spirit and culture of the speaker and the language community.

According to the internationally accepted concept of cultural heritage, it can be said that language and cultural heritage is an oral expression culture inherited and enjoyed by a specific nation, country or community.

It is not a simple sound and meaning symbol, but a modeled language activity carried out by the people in a specific cultural background.

It is a complex cultural phenomenon.

The complete meaning of this cultural phenomenon should include three levels: (1) the spoken language form and its application rules, including the sound and meaning symbol system established in a specific community and its condensation over the long historical process.

Fixed expression.

This is the basic, superficial and most significant part, mainly affecting our hearing.

(2) Typed language behaviors and their associated life situations, which mainly affects our vision.

In the process of language activities, it is inseparable from language forms, but it is easy to be ignored.

(3) The popular spirit or folk psychology that governs language behavior and is integrated with the meaning and function of language.

This is a deeper content that researchers from the external environment need to deeply understand local culture and people's concepts based on observation, experience and interviews to understand.

[1]Understanding language and cultural heritage in this way makes it impossible to separate language forms from speech activities and analyze them as a static specimen like language research that focuses on static forms.

On the contrary, we must restore the static language form to the language life form.

We must observe, record, and study language in specific communities and communities, pay attention to the situation in which language occurs, pay attention to the behaviors and activities of oral expression, and pay attention to the culture of life and people's concepts closely related to language.

In this way, language and cultural heritage is part of the historical culture and living culture of a specific community, and embodies the unique spiritual culture of a specific community such as its world outlook, values, and ways of thinking.

This definition of language and cultural heritage emphasizes the life form of language expression in specific situations, which largely overlaps in connotation with what sociolinguists call "language life", but there are also certain differences: the concept of language life in social linguistics pays great attention to the use of written language such as written language and media language, as well as the language issues of communities where Mandarin is spoken.

The concept of language and cultural heritage is mainly concerned with oral expression activities in life situations, pointing to dialect and ethnic language issues as opposed to Mandarin.

The strong status of Mandarin is an important factor in the fact that dialects and national languages have become weak languages, and it also makes them intangible cultural heritage that needs to be protected.

2.

Characteristics of Language and Cultural Heritage As a language phenomenon of intangible cultural heritage, there are many characteristics, the most prominent ones are the following three points: First, language is not only the inheritance tool and main carrier of other cultural heritage, but itself is also an intangible cultural heritage.

Not only is oral literature inseparable from language, but most other types of intangible cultural heritage such as etiquette, festivals, performances, beliefs, etc.

are difficult to carry out without language, the most important means of expression.

All historical intangible cultural heritage will hardly be able to leave traces if it is not passed down from generation to generation in spoken language and recorded preservation in written language.

From this point of view, to protect intangible cultural heritage without protecting dialects and minority languages, the protection of most intangible cultural heritage will lose the necessary foundation and conditions.

Many forms of oral literature such as folk songs and opera lose their unique charm if sung in other languages.

Some oral literature, such as some ethnic epic poems, was passed down by a very small number of old artists in their national languages.

Others cannot make them pass down in other languages.

Researchers can only record and organize them in their national languages and then translate them into Chinese for preservation or promotion.

The UNESCO Convention for the Protection of Intangible Cultural Heritage also clearly identifies "language as a medium of intangible cultural heritage" as the object of protection.

Moreover, language phenomenon itself is also an important intangible cultural heritage.

Anthropology and folklore have always attached importance to the investigation and study of ethnic languages, or to explore ethnic culture through language.

Famous anthropologists Morgan, Humboldt, Boas, Sapir, Malinowski and others have written rich books on language and culture.

Folk scholars also list folk language as an important part of folk customs.

It should be noted that there are two perspectives on viewing language as a carrier of intangible cultural heritage and as intangible cultural heritage itself.

Most scholars can easily treat language phenomena as carriers in investigations and research, but there are few records or research on language itself as a part of folk phenomena or intangible cultural heritage, which is also difficult and requires specialized academic accumulation or training.

The protection of language and cultural heritage must not only pay attention to its side as a cultural carrier, but also pay attention to its own side as a part of cultural heritage.

Second, the inheritance of language needs to be based on communities, unlike cultural relics or skills that can be maintained by individual individuals; as a complex and subtle system, language is extremely difficult to acquire, and once extinct, it cannot be regenerated.

This is the biggest difficulty in the survival protection of language and cultural heritage.

This difficulty is almost insurmountable and tends to abandon survival protection for languages that are already seriously endangered.

Some intangible cultural forms, such as inheritors of epics, folk songs, stories, and handicrafts, can be effectively protected through honorary encouragement, financial subsidies, etc., and can even allow old artists to pass on their talents to their apprentices or the next generation.

For endangered languages, such protection is almost impossible.

Because language needs to be generated, maintained and developed within a community and community of considerable size, and in communication between people.

If no one else shares the same language, one cannot use the language, let alone pass it on; nor can we imagine a situation where only two or three people can speak a language and pass on it.

Certain handicrafts, such as paper-cutting, can even be passed down by folk artists individually through protective measures, but endangered languages obviously cannot do this.

There have been strong international interventions to maintain a critically endangered language in a community, but no successful case has been seen that can be replicated.

Each language variety comprehensively expresses its language community's understanding of the world and the various ideas in their lives.

It requires sufficient rich language components such as pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar, etc., thus forming a complex and exquisite system.

It is a gorgeous crystallization and precious achievement of human wisdom.

Each language is gradually created and enriched by the community in its long-term life and social practice, and is also transmitted and learned bit by bit in daily life.

It takes a lot of effort for people outside the language community to acquire the language, and ultimately they cannot achieve the same level of mastery as their own mother tongue.

Once a language is completely extinct, future generations will not be able to reproduce and pass it on in life based solely on written records or audio-visual materials.

Third, as a basic activity and necessary tool for human survival, language is subject to relative economic principles in its selection and use, and it is easy to "survive the fittest" situation.

The value of language exists first of all because it is people's means of expression and communication.

From the perspective of practicality and effectiveness, there is an economic principle in language construction, that is, two elements with exactly the same function will not coexist at the same time.

If it were not for the need for expression and communication, people would not use two language systems at the same time.

In places where the language community lives in isolation, there is no need to learn languages other than the mother tongue in the local living area.

However, in some areas with relatively backward economy and technology, people suddenly come into contact with the external world with relatively advanced economy and technology, or when communicating with people from the external relatively developed world, they will develop a strong sense of cultural inferiority.

While learning other aspects of the latter's culture, they often think that their language is also backward and inferior.

When switching to other languages, they abandon their own language, thereby endangering the community's mother tongue.

In fact, the difference between good and bad languages is mainly the extreme subjective feelings generated by local people under specific circumstances.

Linguistics holds that there is no distinction between languages.

In language contact and competition, it is often the economic and cultural background factors behind the language that play a decisive role.

This kind of "survival of the fittest" caused by the prejudice of the language community has caused serious harm to the survival of the local mother tongue.

Because it is the language community itself that makes the language choice, it is difficult for people outside the community to make strong obstacles.

Of course, relevant government departments can also take certain measures to arouse people's awareness of cherishing their mother tongue, or try their best to delay the extinction of languages and curb the tendency of languages to decline.

3.

The value of language and cultural heritage and dialect protection debate Language and cultural heritage have particularly important protection value.

This first lies in the dual attributes of language and culture as intangible cultural heritage: it is not only a carrier of other intangible cultural heritage, but also an intangible cultural heritage itself.

Language is an important part of the culture of a specific ethnic group.

It reflects an ethnic group's basic cognitive way and achievements of the world.

It is often regarded as one of the iconic elements constituting a nation.

At the same time, language, as a carrier of other cultures, carries a large amount of cultural information accumulated by a ethnic group over the long historical process.

In China, the survival of ethnic minority languages is the basis for protecting the cultural heritage of ethnic minorities.

Various dialects of Chinese are important carriers and manifestations of regional culture, and are also resources and guarantees for the healthy development of Mandarin.

These basic arguments about the cultural value of language have been discussed in many documents.

Due to space limitations, we will not discuss them in detail here, but only quote a vivid statement by writer Wang Meng.

Wang Meng once talked about how complex and difficult Uyghur language is to learn, and further talked about his insights into the language: "How complex it is! And they fascinated me and fascinated me.

They are connected to all Uyghurs who are good at singing and dancing.

I appreciate the sonorous and powerful pronunciation of Uyghur, its exciting tone, and its unique expression process...

A language is not only a tool, but also a culture.

It is a living crowd, a charm of life, a wonderful scenery, a natural scenery and a cultural landscape." [1]This passage is said by the writer based on his own direct feeling, not academic language, but his opinions are very close to our definition of language and cultural heritage and understanding of the value of language and culture.

Internationally, the protection of linguistic and cultural heritage, especially endangered languages, has become the consensus of relevant government departments and all sectors of society.

There have been many organizations, funds, projects, and conferences in this regard, and a lot of work has been done.

[2]However, in society and relevant academic circles, there has been heated debate in recent years over whether to protect language heritage.

Not only do many people in society do not understand the protection of dialects, but some non-professionals have made many remarks criticizing the protection of dialects.

Even some senior experts in related disciplines such as linguistics and folklore also sometimes oppose the protection of dialects.

Regarding the protection of endangered minority languages, there is not strong opposition to protection, mainly because the country's ethnic policies play a supporting role.

However, on the issue of dialect protection, not only has the state not issued formal regulations, but many people also think that it is contrary to the state's policy of promoting Mandarin.

Whether from the academic level or the policy level, more in-depth and appropriate research is indeed needed in some aspects on how to deal with the relationship between dialect protection and the promotion of Mandarin.

In general, there is no consensus in the country on how to treat dialects, the protection of language and cultural heritage has not yet been officially launched, and the two batches of national intangible cultural heritage lists issued by the State Council have not been included in language heritage protection projects.

This is also closely related to the fact that language heritage is very special, complex and difficult to handle.

The author believes that dialects, like endangered national languages, are also valuable intangible cultural heritage and also need to be protected.

my country's Chinese community has a large population and is distributed over a vast area.

There are many varieties of dialects, which are often very different from each other.

Their value in reflecting the cultural diversity of the community is no worse than that of the national language.

However, the author is not an admirer of dialects or an absolute dialect protectionist.

Instead, he believes that there are two types of dialect protection: one is survival protection, that is, while vigorously promoting Mandarin, try to allow dialects to be used orally in the community., maintain and inherit; the second is record-based protection, which records and preserves cultural materials of dialects, especially endangered dialects, as well as possible.

However, some arguments in society that oppose the protection of dialects also seem to be conclusive and can win the approval of some people who lack the concept of cultural diversity.

Here, we will briefly comment on the most representative views [2] of the opponents.

The first view is that dialects are the product of local closure and community isolation.

Continuing to maintain dialects will hinder social mobility and interpersonal exchanges, hinder the promotion and learning of Mandarin well, and is not conducive to personal future and social development.

This is a reason that is often mentioned by people.

It sounds reasonable at first glance, but in fact it is a radical conclusion made based on intuition.

Its rationality is based on the premise that Mandarin cannot be spoken if you maintain dialect.

According to the principles of linguistics and the language conditions of other countries and regions, there is no contradiction in maintaining dialects and speaking the common language.

Nowadays, when we go to some areas where dialects are difficult to understand, there are indeed some language barriers when communicating with local people.

This is mainly caused by the fact that older people with low education in various places cannot speak or are not accustomed to speaking Mandarin.

However, Mandarin can be used in local official occasions or when communicating with local people under middle age.

In the future, when people in society generally have a higher education level and can use Mandarin proficiently, There should be no communication barriers when we communicate with people in dialect areas.

Even in Hong Kong, where Cantonese and English are respected, since the return to the motherland, the status of Mandarin has gradually improved for practical purposes.

Now northerners can basically communicate with local Chinese in Hong Kong in Mandarin on various occasions when they come to Hong Kong.

People in dialect areas may speak Mandarin with an accent.

This is indeed a real problem, but it only has a substantial negative impact on their pursuit of certain occupations.

It also brings convenience to other occupations such as dialect research, regional culture research, performing arts work with local characteristics, and various social work in the dialect area.

What's more, facts have proved that people who have learned Mandarin since childhood can often speak Mandarin well while having dialect skills.

The second view is that children must master Mandarin, foreign languages and other languages that are more conducive to personal development, and do not have more energy to learn dialects of less practical value.

Learning a language does take a lot of time.

However, the ways and occasions of learning dialects are different from those of learning Mandarin and foreign languages, and there is no problem of not having the energy to learn dialects.

Dialects can be learned from parents, neighbors, relatives and friends since childhood, and are mainly used for oral social interaction in daily situations and private occasions; Mandarin and foreign languages are learned through radio, television, schools, literature, etc., and are mainly used for official business, academia, and social affairs abroad.

As children grow up, they can learn dialects and Mandarin at the same time without conflict; later, they can learn a foreign language.

Developed societies are not necessarily societies with only one common language.

On the contrary, many developed regions today are multicultural and multilingual.

[3]Mastering multiple languages is also a manifestation of the people's good cultural quality and survival skills, and will not have a great adverse impact on their future.

Moreover, according to expert research, learning multiple languages from an early age is conducive to their intellectual development.

Koichiro Matsuura, Director-General of UNESCO, believes that implementing bilingual education in the official common language and the local mother tongue can promote the development of children's cognitive abilities, enhance children's learning ability, and help children achieve greater achievements in adulthood.

Although this statement still needs to be demonstrated, what is certain is that since childhood, using Mandarin with his parents and giving up the local mother tongue, he has lost the opportunity to naturally learn a dialect and a regional cultural perspective to observe and understand the world.

The third view is that dialects have been rising, falling and blending since ancient times.

Today's replacement of dialects by Mandarin is just a stage in the process of language evolution and should conform to the natural process of language evolution; if language evolution is to be prevented to protect a certain primitive state of language, I am afraid it will have to return to ancient times.

This statement is mainly due to a lack of clear understanding that today's modernization and globalization have caused unprecedented fatal harm to cultural diversity.

In fact, cultural changes in any era do not fundamentally threaten the basic pattern of cultural diversity, including language diversity, as it does now.

Those who hold this view are actually looking at issues in the era of globalization from the perspective of traditional society, and do not realize the importance of cultural diversity to the healthy development of human civilization.

Today, the rapid momentum of weak languages being impacted and even replaced by powerful languages around the world is caused by the wave of globalization, which has broken the natural process of slow language evolution since ancient times.

From this perspective, some appropriate protection measures for dialects are actually taken to a certain extent to reduce the severe impact of Mandarin and foreign languages on dialects, and strive to maintain the natural evolution of dialects since ancient times.

The fourth view is that compared with Mandarin, dialects are vulgar and unbeautiful, which hinders the expression of beautiful feelings, or may cause a crude writing style.

For example, a certain dialect describes "tears" as "eye shit".

This view is obviously biased.

By investigating and comparing multiple languages, anthropologists and linguists believe that there is no distinction between good, bad, beautiful and ugly.

Even languages in remote and backward places with a small number of people spoken have complex and subtle language structures and rich and powerful expression potential.

It is difficult to say which dialect is not pronunciation beautiful.

As for vocabulary, since dialects are mainly a spoken language system, they are generally vulgar, and there are indeed many unrefined words.

However, dialects are mainly used for oral expression.

It is the large number of vulgar words in the dialect that well meet people's oral expression needs in various daily life occasions in specific places.

Mandarin is better at written and more elegant expressions, while Mandarin is not suitable for some oral communication occasions with local characteristics.

Therefore, it should be said that dialects and Mandarin are used differently and each has its own strengths, and the two can complement each other.

We cannot just use the shortcomings of dialects to compare the strengths of Mandarin to conclude that Mandarin should replace dialects.

The fifth view is that since the protection of dialects is to protect the cultural value of dialects, it is better to let scholars who are interested in this do archaeology and collection of dialects, and ordinary people can use Mandarin with greater practical value.

This is a distortion of dialect protection.

On the one hand, dialects are living intangible culture, which is fundamentally different from the protection of static cultural relics in terms of protection.

Their survival protection needs to be carried out during use; on the other hand, the cultural value of dialects is not the value of interest to a few experts, but part of the group culture of the language community to which they belong.

They cannot be protected in personal collections by a few experts.

There are other arguments against the protection of dialect culture, which will not be discussed here.

In general, various views against the protection of dialects are mostly based on the fact that language is first and foremost a tool of communication, but there is a lack of understanding of the importance of its cultural value.

It goes without saying that the reasons for protecting dialects and endangered minority languages are indeed based on their cultural values.

As a crystallization of a broad and subtle civilization with a long history, the great cultural value of language is irrefutable.

If the owner of the language abandons it like an old shoe, it will be unreasonable in any case.

Nevertheless, we must admit that the primary value of language is not its cultural value, but its value as a tool for expression and communication necessary for human survival.

The problem is that no matter how important it is to value its tool value, its cultural value cannot be ignored.

In today's highly modern and accelerating globalization world, we are facing an unprecedented crisis of cultural convergence, and we must have different concepts and attitudes towards language and cultural heritage from traditional societies.

When formulating language policies or studying related issues, efforts should be made to take into account the instrumental value and cultural value of language.

Any one-sided approach is inappropriate and irresponsible.

4.

Protection strategies for language and cultural heritage Language and cultural heritage not only has great protection value, but also has great particularity.

Therefore, special and sufficient attention should be paid to the protection of language and cultural heritage, and it should be studied, deployed and implemented as a special part of the intangible cultural heritage protection project.

How to protect language and cultural heritage is a very policy-oriented and complex issue.

Here, the author only puts forward a few suggestions based on his academic vision.

First, for endangered languages, data recording protection should be the main focus; for languages with weakened communication functions but not yet endangered, active measures should be taken to encourage them to be naturally passed down in their language communities rather than being rapidly endangered under the impact of the wave of modernization and globalization.

Language cannot be protected by protected areas like natural species; once it declines to an endangered situation, its fate of extinction is independent of human will.

The main effective work that language conservators can do is to memorize language data.

It is also possible to experiment with survival protection and revitalize it with strong external intervention.

However, given the special nature of language heritage, the effectiveness of this approach is not expected to be optimistic.

Language endangerment generally occurs due to the rapid weakening of the social function of the language in the context of modernization.

Language users actively choose to switch to language for the needs of survival and development.

In the situation where language functions have been very weakened, external forces cannot and cannot strongly intervene and stop this.

For languages that are not yet endangered but show characteristics such as weak social prestige, reduced number of users, and reduced scope of application, appropriate and effective measures should be taken to encourage the language community to maintain the language, such as advocating bilingual policies so that people can learn the common language without abandoning the local language, promote the value of local weak languages, and change local people's sense of language inferiority and attitude of denying the local language.

Second, the recording of language and cultural heritage materials should pay attention to the integrity of language and cultural phenomena.

It should not only record its pronunciation, basic vocabulary, grammar and other language forms, but should also record a large number of characteristics formed by the community in the long-term historical development process.

Expression methods, speech situations, cultural connotations, closely related community life, etc.

This involves the fundamental understanding of language and cultural heritage.

As mentioned above, language protection is a kind of intangible cultural heritage protection.

Its protection object is not only language as an object of communication and expression symbols, but also language as a cultural carrier and cultural phenomenon.

The concept of linguistic and cultural heritage defined above is basically what anthropologist Malinowski calls "Primitive Language." [4]If according to the traditional concept of linguistic research, only linguistic data are recorded, then such records are imperfect and do not comply with the work norms for the protection of intangible cultural heritage.

The data recorded must be dry and cannot better reflect the cultural value of the language.

Professor Gu Yueguo, who advocates studying language as living bodies with flesh and blood, calls this kind of language material lacking situational content a "language skeleton", and calls a living language body with flesh and blood a "language beauty." [5]Then, as a language record for the protection of intangible culture, it is to record and preserve living languages that represent the cultural style of the community and have a strong flavor of life.

This kind of recording can be carried out by various means such as note taking, recording, video recording, and computer data processing.

Third, actively advocate bilingualism or multilingualism.

Language life in many countries shows that promoting and maintaining bilingualism or multilingualism is the best response to survival protection of vulnerable languages.

[6]In the process of modernization, language communities can use the international, domestic or inter-ethnic common language in order to facilitate communication with the outside world, and at the same time use their own or local language in internal social situations.

At the beginning of the founding of New China, the language policy formulated by our government was to fully promote Mandarin.

This was a correct decision that was in line with the social situation at that time.With the deepening of the modernization process, learning and using Mandarin has become the personal development strategy and active pursuit of ordinary citizens in recent years, while many ethnic languages and Chinese dialects are in a state of abandonment.

Therefore,"people have begun to realize that multi-lingual and multi-dialect are The country's precious social and cultural resources should not be regarded as obstacles on the road to national unity and social and economic development"[7](P2).

Against the background of rapid globalization and rapid modernization, promoting Mandarin and promoting bilingualism should be parallel language strategies.

Fourth, engaging in the protection of language and cultural heritage requires mastering professional knowledge and skills in linguistics such as pronunciation recognition and recording, as well as academic literacy such as culture and ethnology.

We should combine the academic strength of multiple disciplines such as linguistics, folklore, ethnology, and anthropology to strengthen research, create systematic and scientific language protection strategies, and formulate comprehensive and thorough protection measures.

References [1] Wang Meng: "My Other Tongue", published in Wang Meng: "April Muddy", Shenyang: Chunfeng Literature and Art Publishing House, 1994.

[2][3][6] Xu Shixuan: "Research on Endangered Languages", Beijing: Central University for Nationalities Press, 2001.

[4] Bronislaw Malinowsky.The Problem of Meaning in Primitive Languages。C.K.OgdenandI.A.Richards，The Meaning of Meaning.New York and London: Harcount Brace Jovanovich，1923.

[5]Gu Yueguo: "Language Learning: Carrying on the Ground, Air and Internet", Hong Kong: Keynote Speech Paper at the 6th China International Symposium on Sociolinguistics, March 2008.

[7]"Report on Language Life in China" Research Group: "Report on Language Life in China (Published by the National Language Working Committee)", Beijing: Commercial Press, 2006.

(Published in Journal of Renmin University of China, No.

4, 2008)---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- See my book "Language Folklore and China Culture", 3 pages, Beijing: People's Publishing House, 2002.

[2]These views are expressed in a concentrated manner in Mao Han's article "What is Protecting Dialects?" This article is published in Hong Kong's 21st Century, 2004 (6).