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ISSN 2690-3644 (Print) ISSN 2690-3652 (Online) 

Vol. 5, No. 2, 2024 

www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/elsr 

24 
 

Original Paper 

An Ecolinguistic Perspective Study on Linguistic Resources 

Emotions of Migrants in Huizhou 

Yuxuan Cai1* 

1 Yunnan Normal University, Kunming, China 

* Yuxuan Cai, School of Foreign Language and Literature, Yunnan Normal University, Kunming, 650000, 

P.R.China 

 

Received: March 7, 2024         Accepted: March 27, 2024      Online Published: April 16, 2024 

doi:10.22158/elsr.v5n2p24          URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.22158/elsr.v5n2p24 

 

Abstract 

Mobility has received burgeoning attention in social science studies, and it is of great significance to the 

academic research to migrants’ dialects in China. Most research shows that individuals have a strong 

emotional attachment to their first language. However, in this study, from the perspective of ecology, 

semi-structured interviews were used to explore the experience and emotional attitudes of immigrants 

living in Huizhou city, Guangdong Province. Although immigrants take their native language as a symbol 

of their early life memories, other languages could also be a suitable medium for showing their inner 

world when they move to a new place and use another language. People’s positive or negative emotions 

towards their first or second languages depend on how they interact with their surroundings. Based on 

the results, this paper provides a deeper understanding of adult migrants’ language choices from an 

ecolinguistic perspective. 

Keywords 

ecolinguistics, immigrants, emotion, multilingualism 

 

1. Introduction 

In recent years, China’s economy has been developing rapidly. With the continuous progress of 

urbanization construction, the advantages of China’s resources are gradually appearing in some coastal 

cities in our country. Due to excellent social, economic and educational resources in coastal cities, the 

phenomenon of large population flow occurs in our country, for example, the population of the inland 

area goes to live in coastal areas. Immigrants make a significant contribution to the construction of the 

cities where they move to live, providing their expertise and even ordinary manual labor. In addition to 

housing, education and social security issue, migrants may face challenges between their own cultural 



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practices and traditions and the way of life of the local community. From the macro level, immigrants’ 

recognition of the cities they move to is conducive and significant for promoting local development; 

From the micro level, immigrants’ satisfaction with the city they move to is also conducive and significant 

to their personal physical health and mental pleasure. 

Huizhou City, with a permanent population of 4.75 million, and its numbers of population ranks ninth in 

the whole Guangdong Province. It covers an area of 11,000 square kilometers and is one of the six cities 

in the Pearl River Delta. Due to its unique advantages for development, Huizhou’s urban economic level 

is higher than that of the central and western regions in China, however, and there is still a certain gap 

compared with other cities in Guangdong. Even so, Huizhou’s urban competitiveness and attraction to 

migrants should not be underestimated. Firstly, Huizhou has convenient geographical and transportation 

advantages, it is close to two developed cities: Shenzhen and Guangzhou. Second, Huizhou has excellent 

land resources, beautiful natural scenery, fresh air condition and so on. In addition, the people in Huizhou 

are generally friendly and not exclusive, so that people from all over the nation could have a strong sense 

of belonging to the city and live in harmony with each other. 

According to the “China Urban Vitality Research Report” released in recent years, among all cities in 

China, Huizhou ranks at the front of the list in terms of population attractiveness. According to the census 

data released, Huizhou’s population increase could be thought to be very considerable. 

According to Krashen’s the Affective Filtering Hypothesis, learners’ affective factors play an important 

role in language learning. Positive emotions promote language acquisition, while negative emotions limit 

language input. Delightful emotions can improve learners’ agency in language learning. Linguist 

Dewaele indicate that emotions are at the basis of any learning or absence of learning. 

Emotions come from the environment, and the environment refers to the ecosystem in which people live. 

People all live in an ecosystem and form a language ecosystem within this environment. As large as the 

influence from the external social environment, the interaction between family members, as small as 

personal factors, are all indispensable parts of this ecosystem. Ecolinguistics reveals the interaction 

between language and environment through the study of language ecosystem and the relationship 

between language, natural ecology and social ecology. The current academic approaches could mainly 

be divided into two models, one is called “Haugenian Approach/Dogma”, and the other is “Hallidayan 

Approach/Dogma”. Previous Studies have shown that teachers can build a positive language ecological 

environment in terms of external factors such as suitable dressing, so as to mobilize the enthusiasm of 

lamguage learners to the greatest extent (Xie, 2023). American psychologist Urie Bronfenbrenner 

believes that the process of adaptation between human beings who is continuously growing organisms 

and their changing environment is called the Ecology of Human Development. He divides the 

environment we live in into five interconnected systems that affect us from direct to indirect. The first is 

the Microsystem, which refers to the environment in which humans are in direct contact, in which every 

factor has an impact on the development of individuals, such as peer groups and other close relationships; 

The second is the Mesosystem, which refers to the interaction between two or more systems. For example, 



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there are differences in the education methods of teenagers between two micro-systems, school and 

family. The third is the Exosystems, which refers to some factors in the individual development 

environment that could not be directly contacted by human, such as work units, schools, educational 

institutions, etc., they will have a recessive influence on the formation and development of individual 

thoughts; The fourth is the Macrosystem, that is, the cultural ideology that has existed for a long time in 

the whole society, such as national customs, people’s educational concepts and lifestyles. The fifth is the 

Chronosystem, which indicate the concept that all human development is within the dimension of time. 

As a native person of Huizhou, the author has been in contact with many immigrants from various 

provinces and cities in China since my childhood, and gets along with them harmoniously. In most cases, 

speaking individuals tend to have stronger feelings for their First Language, especially when people move 

to a whole now place where a different language is spoken. They have stronger and more positive 

emotions for their First Language due to homesickness or some others various external factors. However, 

in the study, immigrants living in Huizhou, Guangdong province, also demonstrate positive emotions 

toward languages which might not be their first language, such as Cantonese and Hakka. The immigrants 

who have a good memory during the period when they lived in Huizhou makes their acquisition of 

Huizhou dialects more smooth. In this article, I will show from an Ecological perspective that people’s 

emotions towards language depend on the interaction between people and their surroundings. 

 

2. Methodology 

2.1 Research Instrument 

In this study, a qualitative approach was adopted to explore how immigrants’ ecological environment 

affects their feelings towards different languages through semi-structured in-depth interviews. My 

research subjects are three migrants who have lived in Huizhou for a long time, and their First Language 

is not Cantonese. I used a method commonly used in social network research, that is, the Friends’ 

Introduction Method, to constantly look for people who meet the criteria of the survey objects through 

my familiar friends. Our face-to-face and one-on-one interview was conducted in Mandarin. I recorded 

the interview content with a recorder and then imported it into the computer for word by word analysis 

through software. 

Since it is impossible to predict the respondents’ answers to the questions, my interviews are not 

conducted by determined specific questions and then being answered by the participants. Instead, I design 

the main interview topics first, and then constantly raise questions according to the specific circumstance 

during the interviews. In order to find the relationship among the interviewees’ experience, language and 

emotions, my questions are usually some general ones, such as, “Tell me the story of your hometown and 

what happened after you came to Huizhou”, “What kind of city do you think your hometown and Huizhou 

are respectively”, “When you communicate with different people in work time or private life time, what 

language do you usually use?” These questions are more easy for people to understand and answer, which 

could release their feeling and I could get more effective information during the interview.  



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2.2 Background Information of the Participants 

The first interview subject, her name is Dalin, her husband is a native person of Huizhou, and she is 

proficient in Guangdong dialects. She is a native of Fuzhou, Fujian province, she came to live in Huizhou 

in the last century. And she is now 52-year-old. In Fuzhou, she worked as a laborer, after getting married 

she became a housewife briefly, and then make herself into a job as a preschool teacher. She can 

understand and use Cantonese fluently. 

The second interviewee is Xiao He, a 28-year-old physical education teacher from Yiyang City, Hunan 

Province. After graduating from university, she came to Huizhou to live and acculturate very well. She 

has many good friends in Huizhou and can understand Guangdong dialects. 

The third interviewee is Xie, a 31-year-old doctor who came to Huizhou in 2012 and has been living 

there for 12 years. She has a happy family of her own in Huizhou, with a handsome husband and a lovely 

daughter. When she was a young girl, she had known from the social media that Huizhou is a very 

inclusive and livable city, so she chose to move from her hometown of Guangyuan, Sichuan province, to 

live in Huizhou after graduating from university. She is also able to understand and skillfully use the 

Cantonese dialect, she also said that because of living in Guangdong for a long time,she has a deep 

emotional connection with Huizhou, even people said her Mandarin pronunciation have a strong 

Cantonese accent which makes her feel like a native, she is not bothered by this, but found it very 

interesting. 

 

3. Result 

3.1 The First Interviewee 

Dalin is the mother of Liu Qianhui, a good friend of the author when I was in college. Due to the factors 

of her growing environment, Liu Qianhui could proficiently master Mandarin, English, Cantonese, 

Hakka dialects and Fujian dialects, which is in line with the author’s research on immigration and 

multilingual environment, so I immediately contacted my friend’s mother. Born in Fujian province, Dalin 

lived in Huizhou after she got married with her husband. They had a very harmonious romantic 

relationship and a happy family. In her household with her husband and two daughters, she communicates 

most frequently with her family in Mandarin, and exclusively with her own family who are living in 

Fuzhou in Hokkien. She said that after coming to Huizhou to live, the neighbors who are near where she 

lived and her husband and his family all spoke Hakka dialect, so she gradually learned Hakka dialect in 

the process of communicating with everyone. For her, learning Cantonese is a very convenient and happy 

thing. For example, in daily life, when she needs to go to the supermarket to buy goods, she can 

communicate with people in Cantonese. When she is chatting gossip with her family and friends here, 

the Cantonese dialect can also accurately express her mood. Dalin is a middle-aged woman with a 

relatively introverted personality. She has a different situation from Xiao He, our second interviewee, 

who acquired Cantonese dialect through active communication with friends. She can fully master the 

Cantonese dialect, mainly because of the Chronosystem under the theory of the Ecology Development 



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System, since she has lived in Guangdong for nearly 30 years; The second is the significant role of the 

Exosystem and the Microsystem, which prompted Dalin to learn the Cantonese dialect out of the 

emotional need to communicate with everyone around her. Even so, she also said that her Family 

Language Policy management for the future generations of her is more hoping that her children could 

learn several foreign languages, and for the language awareness of dialect acquisition, she believes that 

it is better to let go. 

Dalin has deep feelings for her hometown. When she spoke of her hometown during the interview, her 

emotion were full of pride. After coming to Huizhou to live, all her living habits also tend to be localized. 

She also mentioned that one of the most regrettable things after marriage is to become a housewife after 

giving birth to her children, if she had not resigned, perhaps her career would have had better 

development now, but she has not regretted having children, she thinks that her two daughters are the 

proud of her. 

However, in daily life, when Dalin encounters some emergency situations, she prefers to express her 

emotions in Mandarin, perhaps out of instinct, or perhaps Mandarin is a better choice for her in a complex 

multilingual environment of Guangdong. 

3.2 The Second Interviewee 

Xiao He, a PE teacher from Hunan, shared her story in Huizhou with me. She is a very positive and 

optimistic person. Even though she lives in a place where is totally different from her hometown, she still 

maintains her positive and optimistic attitude towards life, which had been totally reflected during the 

interview with her. As soon as she graduated from university, she came to Huizhou to find a job. In 

addition to eating habits in her life, she adapted well in other aspects. The language she uses in her 

hometown and her family is Hunan dialect. After coming to Huizhou, she usually uses Mandarin to 

communicate with people at work. During her spare time, since there are a lot of local friends in Huizhou 

for Xiao He, and people often use Guangdong dialect when they play with each other, so she have learned 

the language from that moment. 

She has a strong sense of pride in her hometown of Yiyang city. As a native of Yiyang, she says that she 

remembers her hometown as having a lot of delicious food and rich cultural resources. If she meets 

people from her hometown in Huizhou, she prefers to communicate in her hometown dialect, which is 

more cordial for her. She is the only child in her family, so every year she goes back to Hunan to visit 

her family when there is vocation from work. 

I tried to ask her if there were any her own stories in Hunan or Guangdong that impressed her deeply. 

She said that since she had have been an independent and optimistic person since childhood, she rarely 

felt unhappy. After coming to Huizhou, she also made a lot of local friends in Huizhou, and Huizhou is 

a very livable city for her, so she is very satisfied with her life from the past until now. 

When she first came to Huizhou, even when she the heard locals speaking Cantonese that she could not 

understand, she would ask directly for the meaning of the conversation. In her impression, most of the 

Huizhou locals she has got along with were Hakka people, and she thought that the Cantonese people 



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were friendly, so even if she did not understand the Cantonese dialect at the very first time, she would 

directly ask its meaning. She has learned her Cantonese through communication with friends, which is 

the Microsystem under our ecological environment. Xiao He said that staying with her friends is very 

happy, so she is willing to take the initiative to learn how to speak Cantonese, and she thinks that it is 

very easy to learn it.When playing with friends, using the Cantonese dialect to communicate with 

everyone is also very interesting for her. 

3.3 The Third Interviewee 

The last interviewee is Xiao Xie from Sichuan Province. More than ten years ago, she saw the propaganda 

clip of Huizhou Cultural and Tourism Bureau, and she indicated that she was at that time particularly 

longing for the cultural scenery of Huizhou. So she chose to come to Huizhou to find a job after 

graduating from university. She said she learned the Huizhou dialect through daily contact with her 

husband and his own family. Therefore, the language ecological environment have played a very 

important role in the process of her acquisition of Cantonese dialect. Her husband’s mother who is also 

her mother in law is an elderly woman who speaks only Hakka, so she uses the Hakka dialect entirely 

when communicating with her mother in law. 

During her interview, I can see that she is very satisfied with the city of Huizhou and has a high degree 

of recognition of her family happiness. Her memory of her hometown Guangyuan city in Sichuan 

province is that it is a city with a relatively slow pace of life and people feel relaxed here, but after coming 

to Huizhou, her life began to become busy and personal leisure time decreased, which is also due to the 

nature of her doctor work. But she said that even though life in Huizhou is very busy, it is part of her 

personal life plan, so she enjoys it. In her own point of view, she believed that Huizhou people are warm 

and simple, so even if Huizhou dialect is not her first language, she is very happy to learn it and 

communicate with the locals in this language, which is a very delighted thing for her. In the second half 

of the interview, Xiao Xie also shared the story of a turning point in her work. She once worked in 

different hospitals in Huizhou, and she was deeply touched by this memory. Most of the colleagues in 

the hospital where she worked were the Huizhou locals, and she quickly integrated into the new 

environment because they were very friendly to her. 

In her work as a doctor, she also meets many patients who speak only Huizhou dialect, and she is also 

very happy to communicate with them in Huizhou dialect, which has been integrated into her life. 

According to the theoretical framework of this study, Xiao Xie’s language ecological environment has 

brought her a nice experience and promoted her second language acquisition. Firstly and foremost, from 

the aspect of the Microsystem level, Xiao Xie learns the Cantonese through contact with her intimate 

family members. Secondly, from the Exosystem level, Xiao Xie’s work allows her to have more exposure 

to the Cantonese dialect, and she always uses the Cantonese dialect intentionally or unintentionally. 

Thirdly, from the Macrosystem level, Xiao Xie’s recognition to the culture of Guangdong region since 

her seeing the propaganda film of Huizhou Cultural and Tourism Bureau, and then it started to promote 

her process of formally contacting the Guangdong dialect. Last but not least, it is also because Xiao Xie 



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has stayed in Huizhou for a long time. From the perspective of the Chronosystem, the development of 

Xiao Xie’s second language acquisition depends on the latitude of time. She also said that she will 

cultivate her children’s acquisition of the Cantonese in their daily life, consciously or unconsciously. 

From this demonstration we could see that Xiao Xie, as an immigrant, has a very positive attitude towards 

Hakka dialect. 

 

4. Discussion 

The author herself has grew up in a multilingual environment, and my feelings towards different 

languages led me to study the relationship between language and environment. For the three interviewees 

in this study, their feelings towards language are closely related to the surrounding environment. During 

the interview, they all said that Huizhou is a multi-lingual city with strong inclusiveness, so they have no 

psychological burden toward the dialect acquisition. It could tell that building a good social interaction 

environment could well increase immigrants’ positive emotions towards the local language. 

The author has had a lot of immigrant friends who have came to Huizhou from other cites since my 

childhood. When I am taking my master programme, I have known that especially immigrants have 

strong emotion to their First Language. Therefore, I hope this article can show that people’s emotion 

towards a language could depend on their life experience, and also hope to make better understanding 

toward the multilingual resource and the acculturation practice of immigrants. 

 

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