Report on Language Life in China in 2010

First, the central government attaches importance to the cause of language and writing.

In 2010, the central government issued four important documents and regulations related to the cause of language and writing, namely

1. The Outline of the National Medium-and Long-Term Education Reform and Development Plan (2010-2020) issued by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council on July 29th. This is China’s first medium-and long-term education reform and development plan in the 21st century, and it is a programmatic document to guide the national education reform and development in the coming period, many of which involve the development of language and writing.

2. Notice of the Secretariat of the General Office of the State Council on Strengthening the Examination and Control of Letters and Words Involved in Official Documents of Administrative Organs (Guo Ban Mi Han [2010] No.14) issued on April 16th. In view of the increasing use of alphabetic words in official documents of administrative organs in recent years, which affects the seriousness of official documents, this letter puts forward four suggestions on standardizing the use of words in official documents of administrative organs, requiring: (1) the administrative organs should strengthen their awareness of using the national common language according to law, consciously use standardized Chinese characters when making official documents, and set an example for the whole society; (2) Administrative organs at all levels should strictly implement the relevant provisions, and generally do not use alphabetic words when issuing official documents. If alphabetic words are really necessary, they should indicate the Chinese translation names that have been approved by the the State Council Language and Literature Work Department or other relevant departments in the form of parentheses when they first appear in the text; (3) The language and writing department of the State Council shall, jointly with relevant departments, organize the formulation of translation and writing rules for foreign alphabet words, timely translate new alphabet words, and regularly recommend standardized translated names and Chinese abbreviations to the society; (4) Strengthen the examination and control of letter words involved in official documents, and correct them in time if they are found to be inconsistent with the regulations and requirements.

3. Opinions on Doing a Good Job in the Management of Minority Languages and Characters issued by the State Ethnic Affairs Commission on May 14th (No.53 [2010] of the Ethnic Affairs Commission). There are 21 opinions, including the significance, guiding ideology, basic principles, main tasks, policies and measures, and guarantee mechanism of doing a good job in the management of minority languages and characters. This is a guiding document for doing a good job in minority languages and characters in the future.

4. Notice on Further Standardizing the Use of Publications issued by the General Administration of Press and Publication on November 23 (No.11 [2010] of New Issue). The circular requires that attention should be paid to the standardized use of language and characters in Chinese publications.

Second, the language and writing work highlights.

In 2010, the language and writing work was outstanding and achieved remarkable results, which aroused widespread concern in society.

1. Develop the Outline of the National Medium-and Long-Term Reform and Development Plan for Language and Literature (2010-2020).

Since October 2008, the development and drafting of the Outline of the National Medium-and Long-Term Reform and Development Plan for Language and Literature (2010-2020) has been carried out, including 15 special investigations, 38 special seminars, 1 special seminar, many symposiums of provinces, autonomous regions and universities, 3 meetings of the National Language Committee and Advisory Committee, and 2 annual meetings on language and literature work. On this basis, it was revised more than 50 times, and the Outline (draft for comments) was formed. The Outline (draft for comments) systematically summarizes the achievements and experiences of language and writing work in the past 60 years since the founding of New China, especially in the past 30 years of reform and opening up, promotes the language and writing cause to the height of national strategy, puts forward the guiding ideology and corresponding working principles of "paying attention to the dialectical unity of subjectivity and diversity" and "building a harmonious language life", and puts forward the problem of improving the language ability of citizens and the country.

2 to carry out a series of activities to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the promulgation of the National Law on Common Languages.

The Ministry of Education and the State Language Commission have successively published commemorative articles in Guangming Daily, Language Newspaper, Language Application and other newspapers and magazines, and opened columns on the portal website of the Ministry of Education, China Language Network, China Education and Research Computer Network, China Education Online and other websites to introduce the language laws and regulations system, summarize and review the achievements and experiences of language work in the past 10 years, conduct a questionnaire survey on language-related knowledge, and collect hot issues in the language society that netizens care about.

On July 31st, Hainan Province promulgated the Measures for the Implementation of the Law of People’s Republic of China (PRC) on National Common Language and Characters, which increased the number of local laws and regulations to 32. In September, the State Administration for Industry and Commerce issued the Notice on Special Inspection of Advertising Language, requiring local industrial and commercial departments to inspect and clean up the use of language and characters in TV, newspapers, periodicals, printed advertisements and outdoor advertisements within their jurisdiction according to the documents.

3. Evaluation of urban language and writing and Putonghua proficiency test.

In 2010, the evaluation of urban language and characters continued to be solid, in-depth and steady, and achieved remarkable results. There are 1 first-class city (Xining City, Qinghai Province), 35 second-class cities and 119 third-class cities that have passed the assessment. Tianjin and Jiangsu provinces have completed the assessment and identification of all the first, second and third types of cities respectively, and achieved comprehensive standards within the provinces (cities). By the end of 2010, there were 33 first-class cities, 226 second-class cities and 359 third-class cities in China, accounting for 92%, 68% and 17% of the total number of first-,second-and third-class cities in China respectively.

In 2010, the assessment promoted the establishment of 23 urban language and writing institutions, with an increase of 23 administrative establishments and 5 career establishments, and newly established or increased office funds of 2.72 million yuan, and increased special assessment funds of 4.22 million yuan, which promoted 391,500 people in nearly 160 cities to carry out the Putonghua proficiency test for civil servants and 192,000 people to carry out the Putonghua test for window industry.

In 2010, a total of 4.179 million people were tested all over the country, including 178,500 civil servants, 413,600 teachers, 3.355 million students, 4,400 radio and television systems and 228,300 other people. Among them, 1.637 million people used computer-aided testing.

By the end of 2010, a total of 35,224,600 people had been tested all over the country. A total of 1,462 test stations have been established in China, including 419 municipal test stations, 997 university test stations and 46 industrial test stations. There are 1,283 test guides and 47,600 Putonghua proficiency testers in China, including 0.43 million national testers and 46,600 provincial testers.

4. Steadily promote the construction of language and writing standards.

Completed the revision and improvement of the Standard Chinese Character Table. According to the principle of "taking it seriously, analyzing it comprehensively, seeking truth from facts and handling it carefully", the experts organized a classification, analysis and research on 3,141 social opinions and suggestions collected in the public consultation in 2009, and further revised and improved the word list. The examination and publication of two Chinese international education standards, the Classification of Syllable Chinese Characters for International Education of Chinese and the Level and Test Outline of Spoken Chinese, play an important role in promoting the standardization of Chinese international education, enhancing the international influence of Chinese and promoting the international spread of Chinese.

5. Strengthen the management of scientific research on language application.

Solicit suggestions on topics of scientific research projects for the whole society. Held the 12th Five-Year Scientific Research Seminar of the State Language Commission, summed up the 11th Five-Year Research Work of Language and Characters, studied the 12th Five-Year Research Work of the State Language Commission, made clear the situation, guiding ideology, main objectives and key research directions of the application research of language and characters of the State Language Commission during the 12th Five-Year Plan, and formed the 12th Five-Year Research Plan of Language and Characters Application of the State Language Commission (Draft for Comment). Plan the construction of the scientific research base of the State Language Committee. The report on language life in China in 2009 was released, and the "Top Ten Popular Words in China Media in 2010" was jointly released with relevant institutions.

6. Promote Chinese chanting and classic reading activities.

In 2010, the Ministry of Education, the State Language Committee and the Central Civilization Office decided to jointly implement the "Chinese Chanting Classic Reading Action". Six traditional festival parties focusing on reading were held. In August, the "Chinese chant 2010 National Summer Camp for Primary and Secondary School Students" was held in Weifang, Shandong. Pilot work was carried out in 19 provinces (autonomous regions and municipalities) and 11 directly affiliated universities, involving 18,261 primary and secondary schools, 286 secondary vocational schools and 97 provincial universities. The pilot areas and schools will make the reading action an important carrier and platform to strengthen the patriotic education of young people, enhance the inheritance of national history and culture, and build a common spiritual home for the Chinese nation.

7. Develop the construction of audio database of Chinese language resources.

On the basis of extensive research and in-depth pilot, the "Survey Manual of Chinese Language Resources Audio Database Chinese Dialect" was compiled and published. The survey manual is divided into two parts: the survey specification and the questionnaire. The survey specification includes various provisions directly related to the field investigation and data collation of the construction of the audio database of Chinese language resources, and the questionnaire is the survey item of Chinese dialects and local Putonghua. Completed the acceptance of the second batch of pilot projects of "Construction of Audio Database of Chinese Language Resources" in Jiangsu, and started the third batch of language resources investigation.

8. Investigation on bilingual teaching of ethnic minorities.

In April, the Department of Ethnic Education, the Department of Language Information Management and the Department of Language Application Management of the Ministry of Education formed a research group and went to Guangxi, Guizhou, Yunnan, Qinghai, Inner Mongolia and other provinces to investigate the use of minority languages and bilingual teaching. It is found that it is necessary to carry out bilingual teaching in ethnic minority areas, which is conducive to overcoming language barriers, enabling children to better accept modern scientific and cultural knowledge and become talents who can speak both Chinese and Chinese.

9. Cross-strait cooperation in compiling Chinese language reference books

In 2010, in order to implement the "Common Recommendations" of the Fifth Cross-Strait Economic and Cultural Forum, the State Language Committee took the lead in launching the cooperative compilation of Chinese language reference books across the Taiwan Straits. Corresponding to Taiwan Province, four working groups were set up, namely, dictionary compilation group, information technology group, technical terminology control group and organization and coordination group, and the publishing units were confirmed. By the end of 2010, three rounds of talks and three group talks were held (one in the information technology group and two in the technical terminology control group), and many consensuses were reached.

10. The National Sign Language and Braille Research Center was established.

On July 16th, 2010, the Ministry of Education, the State Language Committee and the China Disabled Persons’ Federation held the joint construction and unveiling ceremony of the National Sign Language and Braille Research Center in Beijing Normal University. Wang Xinxian, Party Secretary and Chairman of China Disabled Persons’ Federation, and Li Weihong, Vice Minister of Education and Director of state language commission attended the meeting. Sign language and Braille, as the spoken and written languages used by hearing-impaired and vision-impaired people, are important parts of the national language and written work. The use of sign language and Braille involves the vital interests of 30 million deaf and blind people, with strong sociality, wide influence and strong professionalism. Under the background of information revolution and knowledge economy, strengthening the standardization of sign language and Braille will be an important task of national language and writing work in the Twelfth Five-Year Plan and in the future.

Third, the public pays attention to language life

The public pays attention to language life, which often forms a social hotspot. 2010 is an important year for education in China, especially for Chinese education. The expectation brought by the Outline of the National Medium-and Long-term Education Reform and Development Plan (2010-2020) has triggered many discussions about education reform. From the cancellation of Chinese examination in colleges and universities to the replacement of Chinese textbooks in middle schools; From the decline of students’ Chinese ability to the deterioration of Chinese writing ability; There are also problems such as the weakening of mother tongue education and the decline of national language application ability, which have attracted more and more attention and concern. Main concerns:

1. Some colleges and universities independently enroll students to cancel the Chinese exam.

Some colleges and universities canceled the Chinese language test in the independent entrance examination in January. Public opinion believes that this move is hasty, short-sighted, irresponsible and quick success, which will make Chinese teaching in schools more marginalized. There have been calls for "Chinese education crisis", "mother tongue culture survival crisis", "Chinese crisis" and "Chinese extinction".

2. Replacement of middle school Chinese textbooks

At the beginning of September, Weibo wrote: The Peacock flies southeast, Medicine, The True Story of Ah Q, Remembering Liu Hezhen Jun, Thunderstorm, Back, etc. have been eliminated from the high school Chinese textbooks. This news has aroused heated discussion in all aspects of society.

Some people think that the social responsibility conveyed by Lu Xun’s articles is beyond the times and regions, and withdrawing Lu Xun’s articles is to cut off the blood of traditional culture. Others believe that the new era needs new classics, and Lu Xun’s works have the limitations of the times and are out of date now. Only the new works in the new era have more current value. Because many articles about Lu Xun were involved, public opinion also said that this discussion was caused by "Lu Xun’s retreat" or "de-Luxun".

3. Students’ Chinese ability is declining.

A test on the Chinese application ability of some college students in the capital shows that 30% of them fail, and 68% of them score below 70. The test results are not optimistic, and people have to question the students’ Chinese application level. According to a public opinion survey conducted by China Youth Daily, 80.8% confirmed that there was a crisis in Chinese application ability in the current society, and 19.2% thought that there was no crisis in Chinese application ability. 52.0% believe that the reason for the crisis of Chinese application ability is that "many people attach importance to foreign language learning and despise Chinese learning". 43.6% think that "now people like to deconstruct Chinese, and strange words emerge one after another", and 30.1% think that "image culture has an absolute advantage and characters are becoming less and less important".

The nonstandard and serious use of Chinese has aroused widespread concern in society, fearing that there will be a rift between contemporary Chinese and its own traditional civilization and the mother tongue culture will be weakened.

4. The writing ability of Chinese characters has deteriorated.

During the "two sessions" in March, 2010, some CPPCC members submitted the "Proposal on Strengthening Chinese Character Writing Education for Teenagers", and the survey results of many newspapers and websites confirmed that the Chinese character writing ability was indeed declining. These surveys also attracted the attention of the British Guardian and the American Los Angeles Times, and their reports spread to China, which triggered worries about traditional culture.

Most people believe that the widespread use of computers, mobile phones and other electronic products has reduced the chances of people generally writing Chinese characters. The requirements for Chinese writing are not strict, the calligraphy education is weak, and there is no clear stipulation on the writing standards, which leads to the marginalization of Chinese writing teaching and the decline of Chinese writing ability.

Experts call for the formulation of Chinese character writing grade standards for primary and secondary school students as soon as possible, and the requirements for standardized writing of Chinese characters should be appropriately increased in various examinations and recruitment, so that writing education can return to students’ classrooms and people’s daily work and life through mandatory standards.

5. The relationship between Mandarin and dialects

Putonghua is the national common language. The purpose of promoting Putonghua is to overcome the communication barriers between different dialect areas and facilitate communication and exchange, rather than discriminating against or prohibiting the use of dialects.

Guangzhou "Supporting Cantonese" Event In order to improve the soft environment construction level of Guangzhou Asian Games, Guangzhou CPPCC conducted an online survey on the broadcasting situation of Guangzhou TV station in June. Some netizens posted Weibo: "Guangzhou TV Station wants to cancel Cantonese", and immediately "Cantonese is in danger" came forth, causing a dispute about "Cantonese should be preserved or abolished". On July 5th, the Guangzhou CPPCC submitted a proposal on further strengthening the soft environment construction of the Asian Games, including a proposal on increasing the broadcast time of Putonghua programs in the comprehensive channel of Guangzhou TV Station. Weibo, a member of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, said that "mother tongue is in danger". There are some false propositions in public opinion, such as "popularizing and abolishing Guangdong" and "Cantonese is in danger", and then there are some activities to "defend Cantonese". The incident of "supporting Cantonese" in Guangzhou is an extreme example of the dispute between dialects and Putonghua, which is not only a language problem, but also a conflict between local culture and foreign culture.

On February 4th, the "Gossip" page of Xinmin Evening News published an article saying: When you go to Pudong, especially Lujiazui, you all speak Mandarin, and it is uncultured to speak Shanghainese. Among them, the phrase "speaking Shanghainese is a manifestation of no culture" has aroused repercussions among the old Shanghainese who advocate "defending Shanghainese". Some people posted on the Internet and held negative opinions. The next day, the editorial department of the newspaper’s community edition issued an apology statement, saying that the abstract was from the book "Shanghai Town", and it hurt the feelings of Shanghai readers because of improper handling of text excerpts. "I sincerely apologize to readers."

These events triggered a great discussion on promoting Putonghua and protecting dialects. In fact, Mandarin and dialects have never been antagonistic. The purpose of promoting Mandarin according to law is to overcome communication barriers and facilitate communication and exchange, rather than discriminating against or banning dialects. Dialect exists objectively, has its own law of production, development and use value, and will exist for a long time in certain fields and specific regions. Mandarin is commonly used in the whole country, and dialects are used in dialect areas. They are interdependent and promote each other, and each plays its role to meet the needs of different levels. Dialects, especially some endangered dialects, should also be investigated, sorted out, studied, developed and applied by modern technical means, such as the construction of audio database.

Fourth, Weibo, new words and hot words have become new ways of information transmission.

In modern society, with the rapid development of Internet technology, information overload and the explosion of knowledge information, people increasingly prefer to use word media, hot words, buzzwords and "Weibo" to condense and transmit massive information, because this information transmission method can make the content more concise, the transmission speed faster and the transmission mode more convenient.

1. Weibo

Weibo has the characteristics of fast information transmission and strong fidelity. Ordinary people, public figures and even the media all felt the charm and influence of Weibo. Weibo can publish what the author sees, hears, thinks and feels anytime and anywhere, which is very appealing to netizens. The above-mentioned incidents of "supporting Cantonese" and Chinese textbooks in middle schools were first reported by Weibo, followed by public opinion, and then heated up the discussion.

In 2010, China Internet launched the "Weibo" service, which can be called "the first year of microblog" in China. With the rapid development of Weibo from online to offline, and with the increasingly important position and role of Weibo in people’s lives, a series of words have emerged around "Weibo", reflecting the influence of Weibo on people in various fields. In political circles, no matter the deputies to the National People’s Congress or ordinary netizens, as long as they are "micro-citizens", they can "Weibo ask about politics and Weibo discuss politics". The public security organs have set up "Weibo 110" on the Internet, and people can make "micro-complaints", which shows that the "micro-power" of Weibo’s public opinion supervision is increasingly showing great power; The cultural field has shown a "micro-cultural" trend: Weibo control people use "Weibo style", write "micro-novels", watch "micro-comedies", read "micro-news" and conduct "micro-interviews". Of course, due to the virtual community in Weibo, there are many "micro-rumors" and "Weibo Gate", which have formed one. In daily life, people are experiencing "Weibo Tour", employers can recruit in Weibo, students facing employment can submit "micro-resumes", web surfers can register "micro-domain names", and people who are in love with each other write "micro-love letters" and enjoy "micro-love". Microtube, which is responsible for the management of Weibo, has become a new type of professional post. Indeed, people living in the "micro-era" are experiencing a "micro-revolution" in terms of transmission mode, lifestyle and social ecology triggered by Weibo.

2. New words

In 2010, 500 new words were extracted from the corpus. From the new words of the year, we can see the influence of the changes in media and communication methods on language and new words.

The characteristics of "self-media"-grassroots highlight that the network era has changed the traditional mode of mass communication, especially with the emergence of online forums-blogs-Weibo in turn, people have entered a self-media era in which there is no longer a strict gatekeeper, and everyone has become a language creator and a word-maker. In the history of human development, the people’s language creativity has never been so publicized, the language life has never been so fresh and lively, and new words have never been so active, especially those with distinctive grassroots colors have never spread rapidly and had a wide influence. In recent years, the usage rate of several kinds of affixes, such as ~ clan, ~ door, ~ slave, ~ male, ~ female, ~ guest and ~ second generation, has remained high, showing a herding effect. It is for this reason that in recent years, several large "word groups" of new words have been formed every year.

　"Word Media"-Word Event and Information Concentration With the establishment of the Internet, we have entered the information society era. The characteristic of this era is that information explodes towards us. Time is limited, space is limited, human brain is limited, and resources are limited. In order to transmit information efficiently and conveniently, to store information for a long time, and to maximize the value of information, the language as an information carrier is also changing quietly. When an event or a social phenomenon appears, people no longer use a bunch of old words to tell it, but code it-summarize it into a new word, thus forming three characteristics of new words in this era. First, there are many new words to express events and social phenomena; Second, the information expressed by new words is highly concentrated. Every new word has a story behind it and a special social landscape. Third, the new words retreat and die out relatively quickly. It has become the characteristic of our times to use words to record history, describe society and reflect life. It is also for this reason that Chinese Interactive Encyclopedia has positioned its website as "word media". The appearance of word media reflects the characteristics of language changes in the information society from one side, and also reflects the characteristics of new words that highlight language changes.

3. Hot words

In recent years, all kinds of media have taken stock of the major social life of the year through hot words, hot words and buzzwords, which has become increasingly fierce. The Internet in China has entered the era of "hot words" or "word media".

Hot words, hot words or buzzwords in 2010, from the real world to the virtual space, covered almost every corner of social life, like a "meteor shower". Among them, the word "geili" is probably the one that attracts the most social attention, has the widest popularity and has the most annual characteristics.

As a network word, "Geili" first appeared in the Chinese dubbing and subtitles of a Japanese cartoon Journey to the West-the End of the Journey uploaded by netizens in May 2010. During the World Cup in South Africa, the word was popular among netizens and began to be widely used. On November 10th, the word was used in the headline of People’s Daily, "Jiangsu is a strong cultural province", which triggered a shock of public opinion. Most netizens and the media believe that this move will become a landmark event to be remembered by future generations. It shows that the party newspaper is close to netizens and accepts network culture, and it also reflects social progress. There are also articles that believe that just because People’s Daily uses online language flexibly, online language can be used for special purposes in media language.

The renewal of information transmission means and the change of language media and communication methods may change people’s social life style.

V. Language assistance in natural disasters and humanitarian relief has aroused concern.

Language assistance is needed in both natural disasters and humanitarian relief. After the earthquake in Yushu, Qinghai in April, 2010, since Tibetans account for 94% of the local residents, most of them do not know Chinese, language barriers and language assistance problems have become a major focus in the history of earthquake relief in China.

Six hospitals in Lanzhou have received 128 Yushu victims, but 80% of them have difficulties in Chinese communication. Many doctors in these hospitals don’t understand Tibetan and can’t communicate well with patients.

The State Ethnic Affairs Commission and relevant departments organized a team of nearly 1,000 ethnic language volunteers from teachers and students who know Tibetan and are in good health in ethnic colleges all over the country, and rushed to Yushu to participate in language rescue work. In addition to being translators in search and rescue sites and hospitals, they also took on the work of psychological counseling and taking care of patients, which played a vital role in Yushu humanitarian rescue.

The primary school students who have just been dug out of the ruins are even more loose and Zhuo-yi. They turned around and joined the volunteer team, using their own language advantages to serve as translators for various medical teams in Yushu Prefecture Stadium. In Yushu, some primary school students, mostly between grade 3 and grade 6, also actively acted as translators to assist in the rescue.

In natural disasters and international humanitarian relief, how to implement appropriate language assistance in time should attract the attention of relevant state departments, make scientific plans, study pre-plans and take countermeasures.

Sixth, pay attention to international language life

China is going to the world. With regard to the experience and lessons of international language planning, the research on international language planning and language life gradually increased in 2010, and timely introduced the international language conflicts, language education, language ability, language communication, language norms and the protection of endangered languages to China. The reference articles in the Report on Language Life in China have played a leading role in this respect.

VII. Words and expressions in the media

Investigation on the use of words and expressions in the media is the basic content of language monitoring. The annual usage of Chinese characters in newspapers, radio and television, and internet (news) can reflect the actual language use of the media in the year; The frequency change and the relative change of frequency order of words and expressions are due to the constant change of media’s attention to social life, which is manifested in the change of language level. Through the use of these words, we can see the social life and current affairs of the year. At the same time, the influence of social life on language life is also recorded through the investigation of words and expressions.

The survey of Chinese characters in 2010 was conducted on the corpus of the National Language Resources Monitoring Corpus in 2010.

1. The use of Chinese characters

There are 10,613 words in all the corpus of this survey, and the number of words with coverage rate of 80%, 90% and 99% is 601, 972 and 2,431 respectively.

The use of Chinese characters in the media has the following characteristics:

(1) The number of high-frequency Chinese characters with coverage rates of 80%, 90% and 99% is basically stable.

(2) Among the high-frequency Chinese characters, the Chinese characters with great frequency changes reflect the characteristics of using Chinese characters every year and record social life. For example, in mid-2010, the Chinese characters with a significantly higher frequency of use are: Bo, Shi, Cup, Living, Controlling, Rising, Jade, Tree, Disaster, Micro, Garlic, Carbon, E, Island, Shrimp, etc., which are similar to the 2010 World Expo, World Cup, Social Security Housing Regulation, Yushu Earthquake, Rescue, Chang ‘e II Spaceship, Weibo, and Washing.

(3) Low-frequency Chinese characters are widely used. Most of the Chinese characters with occasional low frequency appear in the names of people. Looking at the survey of Chinese characters over the years, the number of Chinese characters used in 2010 is the largest, and the number of Chinese characters used is increasing when the corpus size is roughly the same. The increasing number of low-frequency Chinese characters, and the media language characteristics and social changes it reflects deserve attention.

2. Usage of words

In 2010, a new word segmentation system was adopted in the investigation of the usage of media words. The total corpus is 601,649,583 words with 2,175,837 words. Among them, there are 218 275 words in newspapers, radio and television, and internet (news), accounting for 10.03% of all words. The usage of words in the three media is quite different, which shows that different media have their own topics of concern except Chinese words and hot events.

There are 13,672 high-frequency words with a coverage rate of 90%, accounting for 0.63% of the total number of words. These words use 2,770 Chinese characters, of which 2,683 appear in the top 3,000 high-frequency Chinese characters in the annual vocabulary list, and the rest are distributed between 3,001 and 3,453 characters in the vocabulary list. The use of high-frequency words in the three media has a strong commonality.

The use of words in the media has the following characteristics:

(1) The number of high-frequency words and the number of words used in high-frequency words are relatively stable. The number of high-frequency words is stable at more than 10,000, and the number of words used in high-frequency words is stable at around 2,700. These high-frequency words are used stably in the media, mainly Chinese words, but also a few proper names and time expressions.

(2) Among the high-frequency words, words with great frequency changes reflect the social life of the year. For example, compared with the words in 2009, the frequency of use of the following high-frequency words increased significantly in 2010, which reflected the social picture in 2010: Weibo, low-carbon, group purchase, interest rate increase, second-hand housing, mortgage, high-speed rail, central enterprises, reserve ratio, entanglement, geili, Shanghai World Expo, Asian Games, Haiti, Yushu, Zhouqu, Chile, Greece, mudslides, volcanoes.

(3) The frequency of a large number of words in the media is low, and the low-frequency words, which account for about 92% of all the words in the year, only cover 1% of all the corpus. These words are mainly names of people, places, organizations, time and numbers.

New words. In 2010, 500 new words were extracted from the National Language Monitoring Corpus. As far as the length of words is concerned, the order of quantity is three-character words, four-character words and two-character words; Three-character words account for 52.80%, which is more than half of all new words in the year, and they have been rising in recent years, which is related to the use of popular formats to create words in recent years. In 2010, in addition to the "Bei×××, Lou×××, ~ door and ~ clan" that continued in 2009, ~ elder brother, ~ elder sister, ~ emperor and ~ body "and" Wei ~ "derived from" Weibo "were particularly active. As far as the structural mode is concerned, the compound type still has the highest formal productivity, accounting for 59.40% of the total number of words, followed by post-additive compound words, accounting for 27.60%. As far as the frequency distribution is concerned, the frequency distribution of new words in 2010 is similar to that in 2009 and 2008, both of which are small at two ends and large in the middle, but this situation is more obvious in 2010, and there are few words with special high frequency and special low frequency. This also reflects the characteristics of the new words of the year: in use, most of them have the characteristics of minority, and they are still in the stage of slow growth and gradual development.

3. Last name

This time, the use of surnames in the media was investigated. There are 693,174 different names (including titles with surnames, such as Mr. Zhang) in all the corpus, and these names appear 13,007,067 times. There are 752 surnames, including 492 single surnames, 250 two-character surnames and 10 three-character surnames. Some of the two-character surnames and three-character surnames are foreign.

The top 100 single surnames are: Wang, Zhang, Li, Chen, Liu, Huang, Zhou, Yang, Zhao, Wu, Ma, Sun, Hu, Xu, Guo, Lin, Zheng, Zhu, Jin, Luo, He, Han, Yao, Liang, Cao, Song, Feng, Xu and Xie. Zhang, Meng, Hong, Lei, Lu, Qian, Yi, Xia, Yin, Dai, Gu, Long, Hou, Xue, Liao, An, Hao, Tang, Qi, Shao, Yu, Qiu, Qiao, Mei, Hua, Niu, Mao, Tao, Kong, Ai, Kang.

The surnames of the Han nationality are Ouyang, Zhuge, Sima, Situ, Ximen, Shangguan, Huangfu, Gongsun, Murong, Xiahou, Weichi, Duanmu, Dongfang, Shen Tu, Hu Ling, Dongguo, Huyan, Tuoba, Changsun and Wanxiong.

Eight, the status of minority language teaching materials

The National Language Resources Monitoring and Research Center conducted a survey on the Chinese textbooks for basic education in Uygur language and the Chinese textbooks for Tibetan middle schools.

1. Investigation on Chinese Textbooks for Basic Education in Uygur Language

The teaching materials selected for the survey of Uygur language are the experimental textbook of the new curriculum standard for nine-year compulsory education for ordinary classes (referred to as "the ordinary class version") published by Xinjiang Education Press and the experimental textbook of the new curriculum standard for nine-year compulsory education for bilingual classes (referred to as "the bilingual class version"). Because the first-grade textbooks mainly focus on literacy, the vocabulary is very small, which is not included in the survey. The two versions of the textbooks surveyed, from the second grade of primary school to the third grade of junior high school, consist of eight grades. The textbooks of each grade are divided into two volumes, and the two sets of textbooks total 32 volumes and 1,270 texts, of which 656 are for ordinary classes and 614 are for bilingual classes. Text genres are divided into three categories: narrative, lyric and drama, and 15 sub-categories; The source of subject matter is divided into China literature genre (Chinese literature, Uygur literature and other minority literature) and foreign literature genre.

The survey data of words and stems in each volume of the two sets of textbooks show that with the increase of grade, the use of stems and types of words in the text are steadily increasing, which is in line with the students’ cognitive law. Compared with the two sets of textbooks, the change curve of text words in the ordinary class edition textbook rises relatively steadily with the number of grade books, and the number of text stems and words is relatively large, while the change curve of text words in the bilingual class edition textbook, especially in the middle school stage, fluctuates relatively, and the number of words is relatively small.

This survey is the first survey on the use of textbooks for nine-year compulsory education in Uygur language in China. It provides a quantitative reference for the objective evaluation of the teaching materials, creates conditions for the scientific planning and formulation of the ordinary and bilingual teaching materials of Uygur language in Xinjiang, and lays a certain foundation for further improving the compilation quality of Uygur language teaching materials in the future.

2. Investigation of Chinese textbooks in Tibetan middle schools

On the basis of a survey of Chinese textbooks for primary schools in 2009, a survey of Chinese textbooks for Tibetan middle schools was conducted in 2010. Among them, the junior middle school textbook is the Chinese textbook compiled by the Tibetan Language Writing Committee of five provinces (autonomous regions) and approved and published by Qinghai Nationalities Publishing House in 2006-2007. The senior high school textbook is a full-time senior high school Chinese textbook compiled by the Tibetan language textbook compilation group of five provinces (regions) and approved and published by Qinghai Nationalities Publishing House in 2001-2002. The survey includes two aspects: text words and vocabulary of "reading and writing" exercises.

The statistics of words used in the text show that there are 191,062 words and 12,920 kinds of words in Tibetan junior middle school textbooks. There are 205,072 words and 14,593 words in senior high school textbooks. In addition, we also investigated the word types and word orders from different sources, the word types and word orders in each volume, the word types and word orders used alone, and the top 500 high-frequency words.

The survey results show that there is consistency in the distribution trend of the number of words, the number of new words and the number of words in the previous book between junior high school and senior high school; The number of words in each volume of junior high school shows a small wave-like change and the distribution is relatively uniform. In senior high school, the number of words in the first three volumes showed a linear increasing trend, the fourth volume decreased slightly, the fifth volume increased again, and the sixth volume decreased greatly. In junior high school and senior high school, the repetition rate of words in the first volume shows an increasing trend, which shows that with the increase of grade, the accumulated vocabulary increases continuously, reaching the peak in the fifth volume, and the new words in each volume decrease linearly.

This survey provides an idea for objectively and quantitatively evaluating junior and senior high school textbooks, and also provides a basis for setting quantitative word teaching objectives for Tibetan in middle schools, laying a certain foundation for better improving the quality of compiling Tibetan middle school textbooks in the future.

Nine, overseas Chinese textbooks and Southeast Asian Chinese textbooks.

1. A survey of words used in overseas Chinese textbooks and their pragmatics.

(1) the purpose and object of investigation

The Report on Language Life in China in 2006 published a survey report on Chinese textbooks used as a foreign language in China. This survey is about Chinese textbooks used overseas, that is, Chinese textbooks compiled by foreign scholars, published abroad, for non-native Chinese learners and used in regular schools. According to the characteristics of time, scope, representativeness and comprehensive textbooks, this survey selected four sets of textbooks, namely, American Chinese Listening, Speaking, Reading and Writing, Indian Edition (including Interactive Chinese and Heart for China), British BBK Chinese and Australian Hello.

In order to better meet the needs of students, overseas Chinese textbooks use several different language forms to express the same text content. There are simplified Chinese characters/pinyin, simplified Chinese characters/traditional Chinese characters/English/pinyin, traditional Chinese characters/English/pinyin and simplified Chinese characters. Explanatory contents such as explanation, introduction, explanation, reading guide and problem solving are basically in English, and examples are in Chinese characters or pinyin. The simultaneous use of simplified and traditional Chinese characters takes into account the fact that traditional Chinese characters are still quite used in overseas Chinese society, which can facilitate the use of different groups of people.

(2) word survey

There are 1680 Chinese characters used in the four sets of textbooks, including 627 "common characters", 599 "partial common characters" and 454 "unique characters", which account for 27% of the total number of characters.

The number of words used in overseas textbooks is controlled in a relatively small range, and the total number of words is small.

Common word set. Only 68 words were used for 50% of the four sets of textbooks, and 484 words were used for 90%.

Compared with the vocabulary of Chinese textbooks for primary and secondary schools in China (hereinafter referred to as the vocabulary of primary schools), the commonly used words in the four sets of textbooks reflect to some extent that the textbooks are aimed at adult learners who are not native speakers and are closer to the life characteristics of overseas learners. For example, the words composed of the word "rot" are all related to "tofu", which is because the teaching materials talk more about China’s food culture, but there is no "rot", "corruption" and "corruption" in the vocabulary of primary schools; The word "appropriate" is only "cheap", which is related to shopping, but there is no "suitable" or "matter"; The word "sign" consists only of "visa", which is related to students’ transnational life, but not "sign" and "sign"; The word "endowment" consists of salary, postage and seniority, but there is no resource, qualification, talent and capital. The word "card" consists of "registration card" instead of "playing card" and "gold medal". The latter is often more abstract or far from daily life. "Poker" is a word that is especially commonly used in Chinese mainland.

Many characters used in Chinese characters are rarely used in word lists or textbooks in mainland China.

(3) word survey

There are 4,497 words used in the four sets of textbooks, including 557 "common words" and 1,315 "partial common words". There are 2625 "unique words", and "unique words" account for 58.37% of the total words.

Compared with the survey data in previous years, the independent words in overseas Chinese textbooks are higher than those in domestic textbooks for teaching Chinese as a foreign language, and the latter is higher than those in basic education textbooks for mother tongue.

Disyllabic words account for 2/3 of the total words, but monosyllabic words are still the most frequently used, and monosyllabic words are five times as frequently used as disyllabic words.

There are 1687 single-frequency words, accounting for 37.51% of the total number of words. The use of display words is sparse and the recurrence rate is low.

There are 88 words when covering 50% of the total corpus and 624 words when covering 80%.

How to deal with the relationship between country words, core words and common words in Chinese as a foreign language is a problem worthy of attention. On the one hand, we should not only consider the differences, such as the differences of countries, nationalities, regions and teaching objects, but also consider how to strengthen the teaching of Chinese core words and common words. The number of Chinese core words and common words should not be too large, but they must be there, so as to ensure better learning effect and better communication effect in a wider range. It is worth studying how to determine the core words and common words in Chinese, what standards to use and how much words to use.

2. Investigation on the use of characters in Chinese textbooks for primary schools in Southeast Asia

The language situation of overseas Chinese textbooks is one of the important contents of overseas Chinese social language life, which deserves attention. The survey selected eight sets of Chinese textbooks for primary schools in Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia and Vietnam as the survey objects. Among them, Singapore, Thailand and Indonesia each have two sets, and Malaysia and Vietnam each have one set.

Word order and word type are the most basic information of using words in each textbook, which reflects the nature of Chinese teaching in different textbooks. The Chinese language in Malaysia has the largest number of words, far exceeding the other seven sets of textbooks. Its Chinese teaching belongs to the first language education, with a large amount of literacy and a large number of words. Chinese teaching in Vietnam, Thailand and Indonesia focuses on second language teaching, with less literacy and word types. Singapore is between the two, which belongs to the nature of bilingual teaching, so the number of characters is also in the middle.

High-frequency words and common words in Chinese textbooks for primary schools are mainly spoken words and daily words, which are in line with the psychological characteristics and real life of primary school students. For example, "Dad, Mom, Lao, Teacher, Xue and Sheng" are the most commonly used appellation words for children, and "Li and Li" are the names. In addition, "Shang, Xue, Kai, Xin, Huan, Xi, Love and Dian" are the names.

The comparison of different grades shows that the commonness of characters used in the six grades is the most in the initial stage. With the increase of learning time, the differences of characters become more and more obvious, and the personality of characters used in teaching materials becomes more and more distinct. However, although the proportion of common words in different grades is quite different, the proportion of common words in different grades is surprisingly consistent, which shows that common words account for the vast majority of coverage in all grades, and the utilization rate of independent words in senior grades is very low.

The comparison of Chinese characters in textbooks for primary schools in Southeast Asia and mainland China shows that there are 4,230 Chinese characters in primary schools in China and 3,048 Chinese characters in primary schools in Southeast Asia, and the number of common characters is 2,927. The unique characters in Chinese textbooks for primary schools are mainly names, places, things and cultures in Southeast Asia. The comparison of the frequency sequence of the first 3000 words between the two shows that the characteristic words in Chinese textbooks for primary schools in Southeast Asia are mainly appellation words, place names words and daily things words. This shows that, unlike the Chinese textbooks for primary schools in China, the Chinese textbooks for primary schools in Southeast Asia focus on the second language and bilingual teaching, emphasizing the cultivation of listening and speaking communication skills. Therefore, the textbooks are mainly dialogue, and the text content is mainly daily life or virtual daily life.

X. Language Status of Chinese Blogs

The data of blog survey comes from Sina, Netease and Sohu, all of which have published a list of famous blogs. This survey counted 176,089 blog posts published by 1,929 blog users in these lists throughout the year. The contents of the survey include the posting of blog users, the use of words in blogs and the use of blog tags.

1. Posting volume

Users who post less than or equal to 50 per year account for about 60% of the total number of users, and users who post less than or equal to 200 account for 88.44% of the total number of users. The users who posted the most posts posted 3,076 posts throughout the year, and 72 users posted 1 post throughout the year, with an average of 91 posts per user. The users who posted the most posts were mainly some institutional users.

2. Length distribution of blog posts

Blog posts with a length between 1,000 and 2,000 characters account for the largest proportion, accounting for 34% of the total; Blog posts with a length of less than 4 000 account for 88.63% of the total.

3. Usage of blog tags

Blog tags usually reflect the topics concerned by blogs, some of which are filled in by users themselves, and some are automatically added by blog websites. A total of 421 308 tags were extracted from the blog corpus, and 69 029 tags were removed after duplication. The length of most tags is 2 to 7 characters, accounting for 99.26% of the total. Most tags are only used by one user, accounting for 76.28% of the total tags, which shows that blog tags are highly personalized. Among the top 150 tags with the largest number of users, entertainment-related tags are the most, most of which are entertainment names and movie and TV names.

(Report on Language Life in China (2010) will be published by the Commercial Press)