A Shanghai Case Study On Code Choice

This paper introduces a macro-sociolinguistic study on code choice conducted in Shanghai. This study offers a substantial amount of systematically collected empirical data through questionnaire and telephone survey. Code choice in the home, work and public domain is investigated focusing on four aspects: the subjects' code choice preference, particularly the chance for Putonghua and Shanghainese; the possible functional distribution of each variety; and social and personal factors in their choice-making. With questionnaire and ethnographic approach adopted here in this research, the author achieves the following conclusion: the popularization of Putonghua has achieved great success in Shanghai and still there is room for improvement; there does exist a remarkable difference in the use of Putonghua and Shanghainese at work and home, and with friends and strangers; and there is an overall awareness among speakers to use Putonghua with Strangers despite that it may not be actually implemented accordingly and Shanghainese is usually the code in actual use; social factors such as domain and formality do have influences on people's code choice while other possible personal factors in relation to code choice do not prove to be of much importance.