Lexical variation in Dongxiang: a sociolexicographic study

Abstract

Following the Great Western Development Strategy (GWDS, 1999) and the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI, 2013), Lanzhou has become the central Western business hub and the embodiment of China’s dream of catapulting its poorer Western regions into the economic mainstream. The unprecedented wave of urbanization has caused a noticeable linguistic adaptation to the shifted linguistic ecosystem. This paper studies the case of Dongxiang, a Mongolic language of Southern Gansu, focusing on the lexical variation over the last four decades, the proportion and distribution of Sinitic borrowings resulting from the Language Planning and Policy (LPP), and the economic marginalization of the non-Sinitic languages. The research compares three dictionaries, respectively published before (1983) and after (2001) the GWDS and after (2014) the BRI. The temporal proximity between the economic changes and the publication years allows focusing on the standardization proposed for Dongxiang, while the timeframe considered allows analyzing the impact of the economic changes brought by aforementioned initiatives.