Southern Students' Use of Local Dialects Thai

Abstract

Objectives of this thesis were to examine the trend of Southern Thaidialect usage, the speakers' attitudes toward dialect selection, the determinants ofSouthern Thai dialect switching in daily life, and the context of the central Thaiused in the southern region of Thailand. Methodology was the mixed methods withQuantitative and qualitative research methods as well as individual interviews wereused in conducting the study. The data were collected from 1,400 primary andsecondary students. The students were from 14 schools in Southern provinces.The findings were that 77.749 of the dialects spoken in daily life bystudents in the southern region belongs to central Thai and age was a crucial factorin dialect selection among standard Thai, Southern Thai and the Jawi dialect ofMalay. Standard Thai is used by elementary school or Prathom students more thanthe secondary school or Matthayom ones. This bears a correlation between the userate of standard Thai and age which meant that the younger age group was, thehigher rate of standard Thai was used. On the contrary, the older an age group was,the higher rate of Southern Thai wasspoked. The students hold a positive attitudetoward the use of Southern Thai dialect and regard it as a practical mean of daily-life communication. The students used Southern Thai dialects decreasingly, for theirdaily-life contexts did not provide opportunities to do so. The findings from thestudy about the use of standard Thai in Southern was that even though there werechanges in context nowadays that pave the way for standard Thai being spoken farmore than Southern Thai and have resulted the students in the southern regionusing standard Thai rather than Southern Thai. The students along with theirparents and teachers still demanded for the ongoing use of Southern Thai.