A Study Of The Adaptability Of The Chinese-English Code-switching In Pop Music

Sociolinguists, syntacticians, psycholinguists and conversational analysts have conducted various researches on code-switching from different perspectives since the 1970s. Prolific achievements have been made in their studies.With the implementation of the reform and opening policy, English words and expressions have rushed into Mainland China. Studies of Chinese-English code- switching have drawn scholars'attention since the 1990s in China. Most of them focus on the code-switching phenomenon in conversations, advertisements, and literary works, while researches on code-switching in pop music are rare. Under the framework of the MLF model and Adaptation Theory, the present study combines qualitative and quantitative analysis to explore the linguistic features of and motivations for the Chinese-English code-switching in pop music with song lyrics as the data.In this study, 260 pieces of pop music with the Chinese-English code- switching are collected from internet, TV, VCDs and tapes. Firstly, 692 Chinese- English switches in the present data are categorized and analyzed under Myers- Scotton's the MLF model. Structures and distributions of each type of code- switching are analyzed in order to arrive at the structural properties and regularity of the Chinese-English code-switching. Data analysis will show the songwriters'adaptation to the linguistic structures of Chinese and English when they employ code-switching in song lyrics. Secondly, the motivations for code-switching are analyzed from the three aspects of adaptation: adaptation to the linguistic reality, the social conventions and the psychological motivations. The results of the study are as follows:(1) In the 260 pieces of song lyrics, Chinese is the matrix language, while English is the embedded language. English words and sentences appear most frequently.(2) ML + EL constituents, including English letters, letter clusters and words, follow the morphosyntactic rules of the matrix Chinese language. On the word level, EL nouns and interjections occur more frequently.(3) EL islands involve English phrases, sentences and discourses. On the phrase level, the use of EL noun phrases shows a higher percentage. The inner structures of the EL noun phrases still follow English grammatical rules. However, after being embedded in the ML Chinese, the head nouns of the EL phrases will lose their inflections and appear in the base form. EL phrases in the present data usually follow the Chinese syntactic structures and sentence order. In contrast, EL sentences and discourses remain unchanged and still follow the English grammatical structures.(4)The Chinese-English code-switching in pop music is not an arbitrary act, but a preplanned linguistic act to realize certain communicative purposes. Songwriters employ the Chinese-English switches to adapt to the linguistic reality, the social conventions and the psychological motivations. The linguistic reality includes the linguistic existence and the linguistic features. Adaptation to the linguistic reality indicates that code-switching can fill linguistic gaps and semantic mismatch. Songwriters also need to employ code-switching to adapt to the social conventions, avoiding taboo topics or expressing certain emotions indirectly. Adaptation to the psychological motivations refers to the fact that code-switching can perform various strategies such as song-organizing, rhyme-constructing, humor-creating, convenience, foreign flavor gaining and quotation.In a word, the Chinese-English code-switching in pop music is an adaptation to the linguistic structures of Chinese and English as well as factors including the linguistic reality, the social conventions and the psychological motivations. The increasing number of the Chinese-English code-switching in pop music is a reflection of society and participants'psychology rather than a pure language phenomenon. Research on code-switching in pop music should draw the attention of researchers from various fields, including linguistics, lyric writing, sociology and psychology.