Constructing sociability through code switching in Mandarin-English family conversations

This research illuminates processes of code-switching as integral parts of family dynamics in the construction and maintenance of sociability in bilingual conversation. No research to date has examined use of code-switching in the intimate contact situations of same-generation bilingual conversations that include native and non-native speakers of the dominant language, Mandarin. This study is important because Chinese and English are two dominant languages in the world and contact between them on all levels, including the personal level of intermarriage, will increase. The study provides a detailed description of switching between Mandarin and English in the intimate language contact situation of family conversations as it serves to build sociability among interlocutors. In the conversations examined, Mandarin is the dominant language and switches are made into English, the non-dominant language. Gathered over a period of a year, my data includes 8.5 hours of audio-taped conversations in which four family members informally discuss a variety of topics in a series of roughly thirty minute conversations. The focus of this dissertation is on three of these conversations. Three interlocutors speak Taiwanese as a native language and Mandarin as a second native language, and one, a participant observer, speaks English as a native language and Mandarin as a second language. Using an interactional framework and drawing on Gumperz' notion of the emergent, socially co-constructed quality of conversation, I use discourse analysis to examine dynamics of the conversations. Findings show that code-switching is a positive, additive strategy that bilingual interlocutors use to construct sociability through politeness and face work within a Confucian-based framework in a crosscultural language contact situation.