RESEARCH ON LANGUAGE POLICY AND LANGUAGE PLANNING BASED ON CITESPACE (2000–2020)

Abstract

A special place among the problems of sociolinguistics is occupied by a problem of language policy, it plays an important role in the field of cultural inheritance, ensuring social stability and unity of the country. So, the interest of researchers in the problems of language policy in China has increased in the last 20 years. This article, on the basis of researching publications in the CNKI (China National Knowledge Infrastructure) from 2000 to 2020 and using Citespace visualization technology describes and analyzes the topical issues, hotspots and trends of China’s language policy and language planning. The relevance of this article is due to the following factors: the growing interest in studying language policy in China, both of the Chinese and foreign researchers; the lack of comprehensive studies of language policy in China from the standpoint of bibliometric analysis. The purpose of the research is to identify current issues, “hot spots” and trends in the development of scientific research on language policy in China from the point of bibliometric analysis. The paper fulfills the following tasks: analyzes the collected data from the CNKI database; studies works of specialists in the field of the research. The scientific novelty of the work lies in the fact that using the method of bibliometric analysis, a comprehensive analysis of scientific research on language policy in China has been carried out, and trends in its development and current state have been identified. The theoretical significance of the study lies in the fact that its results can be used to describe the review of research on language policy in China, as well as in solving problems related to the analysis of data and trends of the language policy studying in China. The practical significance of the study is a significant increase in the field of studying language policy in China, and the results obtained can be applied in describing the full picture of the language policy studying in China. The study finds out that the research of China’s language policy and language planning has generally witnessed an upward trend in China; the high frequency and high centrality keywords and the keywords with strongest citation bursts tables help keeping tracking current research topics, among which bilingual education, teaching foreign languages, language ecology, language landscape, language life act as the main ones.