Abstract:

Language conflict constitutes one of the central concerns in research on national language security. Under the holistic view of national security, the development of national language security capabilities should encompass not only an exploration of national language capabilities and language resources but also a significant focus on investigating language conflicts in China's neighboring countries. This expanded perspective serves to enhance the construction of holistic national security. This study first clarifies the concept of language conflict, and then conceives an analytical framework based on relevant theories of language planning. A language security database is then built through corpus method. The study finds that: in terms of characteristics, language conflicts arising from status planning and minority language education demonstrate complex inter-level oppositions of orientations in language planning, while cases related to corpus planning and foreign language education primarily reflect intra-level contradictions of these orientations. In terms of causes, the primary sources of language conflicts in China's neighboring countries include the language-as-problem orientation held by dominant ethnic groups, certain elite groups, and manifested in acquisition planning of minority and foreign languages. Paying attention to language conflicts in neighboring countries and strengthening the construction of national language security capabilities will help improve and expand holistic national security capacity.

Key words: China's neighboring countries, language conflict, language security, language planning, holistic view of national security