A Pragmatic Approach To Chinese And English Code-switching In Advertising Discourse

Language is the tool for human communication. And it is also theproduct of human civilization and development. At the same time itdirectly reflects people's activities and social conditions. Media Language,as the most active tool in communication, is undoubtedly serving as amirror refracting change and development of language under a certaincondition of social economy, culture and education etc. Since ourintroduction of reform and open policy, Chinese and Englishcode-switching is a common occurrence in people's daily lives in HongKong, Macao, Taiwan, Mainland China and even in official newspapers,magazines, radios and TVs. At present, the studies on it remain at arudimentary stage. Researches made by western scholars are mostlylocalized in analysis of conversational code-switching patterns of ethnicminority groups or those found in the former colonies. However, littleattention has been paid to the phenomena of code-switching applicationsto some specific fields such as advertisements, literary works, or businessdocuments. It is worth mentioning here that some researchers in HongKong (e.g. Chan, 1993; Li, 1996, 2000; Luke, 1984,1992; etc.) havemade quite a lot of contributions in introducing new theories oncode-switching and exploring Hong Kong's bilingual and multilingualphenomena. However, little has been devoted to the studies ofcode-switching in ads on mass media in inland China, which has becomea common occurrence with the rapid growth of China's economy. In thisaspect, Prof. Huang Guowen is the only researcher in inland China who is the first to address the phenomena of code-switching in ads on China'smedia. He covers in his studies both switchings between a Chinese dialect(Cantonese) and standard Chinese, and between Chinese and English.From the perspective of discourse analysis he gives a brief description ofthe types of switching and discusses the reasons for their being. Besideshis approach, we fred that Chinese and English code-switching inadvertising discourse can also be studied under the frameworks ofpragmatics. Based upon the description and analysis of advertisements inChinese magazines, newspapers, radios, TVs and so on, and the findingsof the previous researchers, we adopt Verschueren's Adaptation Theory,which was put forward in his book Understanding Pragmatics publishedin 1999 to study the Chinese and English code-switching appearing in theadvertising discourse from the linguistic, social, cultural and cognitivefactors.Except for the introduction and the conclusion, the present thesis ismade up of four parts. The first part is an introduction to advertisingdiscourse and code-switching, and it also introduces a brief review ofrelated literature of code-switching. The second part is the theoreticalorientation of the present study. It discusses the pragmatic perspectiveand adaptation theory. Adaptability is one of the properties of languageand it enables human beings to make "negotiable linguistic choices froma variable range of possibilities in such a way as to approach points ofsatisfaction for communicative needs" (Verschueren, 1999:61). The thirdpart is a discussion of Chinese and English code-switching in advertisingdiscourse. It mainly talks about types and functions of Chinese andEnglish code-switching in advertising discourse. In the fourth part of the thesis, we discuss the main reason advertisers adopt Chinese and Englishcode-switching is to adapt to the linguistic reality, the social conventionsand the psychological motivations. Chinese and English code-switchingas adaptation to the linguistic reality mainly refers to the advertisers'adaptation to the linguistic existence and linguistic feature of Chinese andEnglish. Chinese and English code-switching as adaptation to the socialconventions mainly means the advertisers adapt to our social culture. Theadvertisers' consciousness in abidance by the social conventions isnormally much higher, because they understand the economic troublescaused by violations of the social conventions are very serious. Chineseand English code-switching as adaptation to the psychologicalmotivations is another important strategy the advertisers use. With theapplication of this adaptation, the Chinese and English code-switchinghas performed the following functions: foreign flavor gaining,humor-creating, emphasis, explanation, decoration and discriminating etc.In a word, we think that Verschueren's Adaptation Theory canprovide a good theoretical framework for a scientific explanation ofChinese and English code-switching in advertising discourse.