การเลือกภาษาและการธำรงภาษาของคนไทยเชื้อสายมอญบางขันหมาก จังหวัดลพบุรี / พิมพ์ชนา พาณิชย์กุล = Language choice and language maintenance of Thai-Mon people in Bang Khan Mak, Lop Buri Province / Pimchana Panichakul
This study investigates language choice and language maintenance among Thai-Mon people in Bang Khan Mak, Lop Buri Province, Thailand. The social context taken into account consists of domains of language use, the speaker’s age and sex, the addressee’ s sex, and the activities Thai-Mon people in Bang Khan Mak are involved in for maintaining their indigenous language.
The data was collected by observing and recording the patterns of language choice in real-life conversations of 180 Thai-Mon people in seven purposely selected communities in Ban Khan Mak. Six domains of language use were focused: tradition domain, religion domain, family domain, friend domain, work domain and market domain. Moreover, three important local people were deeply interviewed concerning activities leading to the maintenance of Mon in Bang Khan Mak.
The findings show that in general Thai-Mon people in Bang Khan Mak choose to speak Thai most frequently, Mon second most frequently and code-switching (Thai-Mon) least frequently. Taking the domains of language use into consideration, it is found that Thai-Mon people use Mon most frequently in tradition and religion domains, followed by family domain, friend domain, work domain and market domain, respectively. With regard to the speaker’s age, Mon is used most frequently by the oldest group of speakers (46-65 years old), followed by the second oldest group (25-45 years old), and least frequently by the youngest speakers (5-25 years old). The differences between the patterns of language choice according to the domains of language use and the speaker’s age are statistically significant ; however, they are not statistically significant according to the speaker’s and the addressee’s sex. Regarding language maintenance, it is found that there are various activities for preserving Mon culture in Bang Khan Mak and most of them, particularly the codification of the Mon language, seem to lead to Mon language maintenance.
Even if it is found that young people used Mon less than old people, the researcher believes that language shift from Mon to Thai in Bang Khan Mak may not occur in the long run because of the well-planned maintenance activities and the Thai-Mon’s pride of their ethnicity.
SUBJECT
Ethnology -- Southeast Asia
Mon (Southeast Asian people) -- Thailand -- Lop Buri
