Campus vitality of languages in a Chinese university: evaluation, comparison and reflection.

This paper proposes a concept of campus vitality of languages: the ability of a language to maintain its prestige, visibility and continuity on university campuses. A seven-factor framework is developed for on-the-ground investigation of the relevant languages in a given campus context. These indexical factors are the number, distribution, and proportion of users; usage and visibility in campus domains; and institutional and user attitudes toward the languages. The application of this framework in a second-tier university in China reveals some sociolinguistic information: the presence of more languages on campus does not necessarily increase students' diversity experiences; English supremacy in higher education in China is posing a threat to the status of the national language in the academic domain, an issue that has drawn administrative attention from the government; a more balanced ecology is not only desirable but also achievable if the seven-factor framework is followed by government and by university management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]