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(2022)ThesisThis thesis addresses language maintenance and shift (LMS) in the Blang community in China. Drawing on interdisciplinary theories including the sociology of language, the social psychology of language and linguistic anthropology, this research examined Blang people’s language practices, their attitudes towards the complex ecology of Blang, Putonghua, the Yunnan dialect, and English. These attitudes inform the research about their perceptions of Blang vitality and their motivations for maintaining Blang for future generations. The study used a qualitative approach and conducted semi-structured interviews with 61 participants representing three generations. The study was also informed by ethnographic observations during fieldwork in the Township of Blang Mountain, Southwest China. The numerical data on language practices was analysed using descriptive statistics, and the discursive data on language perceptions was analysed through thematic analysis. The data analysis identified that the Blang language has been undergoing language shift. This shift was found to have been mediated by social structures that provide limited affordance for the use of Blang in public domains. Blang people’s ideological beliefs about the reduced utility of Blang have further marginalised the language. However, the findings also revealed that language shift did not occur in a uniform pattern in the community, and it was contingent on individual agency. Blang people deployed their agency to either adapt to or resist structural constraints through different linguistic practices, which resulted in varying degrees of LMS. In addition to the interplay between structure and agency, there were contests between parental and child agency. Blang youth responded to the parental agency in varied ways through negotiating their family language policy and their own language preferences. The findings support theories of LMS which recognise that language shift has variation within speech communities. This study provides empirical evidence for the benefit of using qualitative approaches to the study of LMS to have a deeper understanding of structure and agency at play. This study also draws attention to the unequal power relations between languages and calls for language policies which support minority groups to maintain their language.