The Analysis Of Chinese-English Codeswitching And Its Functions

Lanuguage, an important part of culture, is the reflection of social and economic development in immaterial field. Because of the continuous development of reform and opening of our country, the continuous communication with the cultures of other countries, and more attention that the government pays to the foreign language education especially English education, more and more people master English and get the opportunity of using Chinese- English codeswitching. Just like Sapir, a famous linguist has said, "language, like culture, can seldom supply itself. In order to meet the need of communication, people who speak one language must contact directly or indirectly with the people who speak a similar language or a language with prestige in culture." Just for this reason, we can say that Chinese-English codeswitching is the inevitable result of language communication. As an important field in sociolinguistics, codeswitching phenomenon was first put forward in 1970's, and has continuously appealed to academic circle. Later, linguists further research it from different angles, such like psycholinguistics, pragmatics, systemic functional linguistics, discourse analysis, and has got some achievements. In our country, many scholars have also analyzed this phenomenon, for example, He Ziran, Huang Guowen, Zhu Wanjin, and so on, whose analysis enlightens following research. Though analysis of others is fruitfull, the author finds that the analysis of codeswitching can be further implored. For example, in the past, researchers always paid attention to the analysis of the codeswitching in colonial countries, and ignored the researches of the codeswitching phenomenon in other areas. In this essay, on the basis of the analysis of the general codeswitching phenomenon, the author will approach the types and functions of Chinese-English codeswitching phenomenon through researching the famous literary works, newspapers and lyrics, in order to give a comprehension in a deeper level and contribute her humble effort to Chinese-English research.At first, the author introduces the scientific and persuasive definitions of code and codeswitching. Based on some influential theories of the structure analysis of codeswitching, such as free morpheme constraints, equivalent theory and matrix language frame model, and so on, the author puts forward a pattern, which takes the MLF Model as the basic theoretical frame, considers the concrete situations, and divides the Chines-English codeswitching into intrasentential codeswitching, intersentential codeswitching, and diglossia codeswitching.Secondly, through the analysis, the author finds that the key factors that differentiate codeswitching from other similar language phenomena are the predictable structure and the motivations of CS speakers. On the basis of the researches on some theories with authority of the motivations of codeswitching, including situational & metaphorical codeswitching, speech accommodation theory and markedness theory, the author further analyzes the functions of Chinese-English codeswitching, such like facility and economy, decoration, explanation and emphasis, creating a certain image, avoiding embarrassments, creating a romantic and foreign atmosphere, etc.At last, the author also analyzes the scientific attitude towards codeswitching which arouses lasting discussion in the academic circle, that is, we cannot simply take a positive or negative attitude. We should make a concrete analysis of concrete conditions, maximize its favourable factors and minimize its unfavourable factors.