Language and Poverty: Theory and Practice
Wang Chunhui
Chinese Journal of Language Policy and Planning ›› 2019, Vol. 4 ›› Issue (1) : 12-21.
Language and Poverty: Theory and Practice
Poverty is a complex phenomenon involving many factors, and it manifests in multiple dimensions and multiple levels. Theoretical exploration of language and poverty should also be a dynamic and complex adaptive system. Poverty has an impact on the development of both children’s language and the use of adult language. The factors aff ecting the former include social environments as well as neural mechanism, while the latter can be examined from the perspective of social networks and scarcity. From both diachronic and synchronic perspectives, the infl uence of language ability on economic and social conditions is crucial. Language is believed to be a probabilistic condition for the improvement of economic and social conditions. The role of language in poverty alleviation practice in China’s anti-poverty cause has become increasingly important, and the meaning of targeted poverty alleviation via language planning has been becoming ever clearer. This study shows that the scarcity theory can provide inspirations for poverty alleviation via language planning. China’s experience from poverty alleviation practice off ers a rare opportunity for the study on topics related to language and poverty, and it is reasonable to expect that China’s theory and practice will have wider implications for the international community.
language ability / poverty / language poverty alleviation / scarcity
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