Influence Of Social Variables On Code-switching

Multi-codes are inevitable in modern society. Since 1970s, Code-switchingphenomenon in bilingual or multilingual communities aroused attention widely inacademia, especially in the field of linguistics. Early researches mainly focused onfour aspects: grammatical, psycholinguistic, sociolinguistic and pragmatic approaches.Grammatical approach dealt with the structure and some rules in grammatical aspectof code-switching. Poplack proposed "constraint" principle to testify somecharacteristics on the level of syntax; psychologists like Clyne tried to investigate thethinking mode of those codeswitchers and put forward the theory of "trigger";Gumperz & Blom probed into the social significance of code-switching, distinguishedtwo kinds of code-switching and concluded types of functions of code-switchingmostly; Verschueren put forward the adaptation theory in "understanding pragmatics".Yu Guodong made use of this model to work over code-switching, and advanced thatthe use of code-switching is to adapt to linguistic reality, social convention and mentalmotivation, therefore revealed the causes and functions of code-switching moreappropriately from the cognitive, social and psychological angles; he advanced a goodpsychological model further to explain code-switching, and also demonstrated otherfactors which may influence code-switching and other functions of code-switching incommunication. Code-switching study at home began in the 1980s. Domesticlinguists such as He Ziran have done much work in introducing western achievementsin the field of code-switching, but few of them study the first-hand code-switchingdata in China in aid with the adaptation theory, let alone in the degree thesis.This paper studies the sensitivity of the three variables: age, education, gender tothe code-switching use and how those variables influence code-switching by drawingon the first-hand data collected in China and the Adaptation Theory. Research on theinfluence of social variables on code-switching helps understand how code-switchingadapts to linguistic realities, social conventions and psychological motivations. It is ofgreat theoretical and practical significance to help people probe into the essence of code-switching and to direct the language teaching and students' communicativeabilities' cultivation.The instruments of group interview and questionnaire have been applied in thisstudy. Stratified-random sampling is adopted here according to subjects' ages(above60, between 36-60, under 35 age), genders(female, male) and educationallevels(college and above, below college and above middle school, primary school andilliteracy). Therefore, the author groups the people first, selects samples randomlyfrom Anhui University, Hefei University for the Elders, the NO. 45 middle school,Nanyuan primary school as well as people met in the streets. In all, 550 valid answersare collected. The detailed investigation and the application of SPSS by the diagramsfacilitate the quantified study of the collected data to investigate the sensitivity ofthree social variables to code-switching and their influences on it. The paper isconstructed on the following two hypotheses: Since age, gender and education areamong the important factors in sociolinguistics, codeswitchers might be influenced bythem and the extents to which they are affected respectively might vary; according toVerschuren's Adaptation theory, codeswitching is considered as a process of choicemaking, and the change of code is made to adapt to linguistic reality, socialconvention and mental motivation, thus, strategies of those codeswitchers' choice ofcodeswtiching in different situations might fit to the adaptation models.In terms of major findings, we have come to the following findings: firstly, mostpeople hold a positive attitude toward code-switching, but the older the people are, theless positive view they hold to code-switching; secondly, younger females with highereducation background use code-switching more frequently; thirdly, code-switchingfulfills diversified communicative functions, which cannot be achieved by othercommunicative strategies. The codeswitchers' performance of code-switching ismainly based on three elements of adaptation: the linguistic reality, the socialconventions and the mental motivations. These three categories are whatcodeswitchers adapt to in the process of achieving their communicative goals. Duringthe process of codeswitchers' adaptation various communicative functions ofcode-switching are realized, leading to the success of communication. code-switching are realized, leading to the success of communication.This thesis consists of six parts with the arrangement as follows: in the firstsection, a brief introduction about the research topic, some conceptual distinctions,aims and significance of the study are presented; in the second part, it gives aliterature review on studies of code-switching both at home and abroad and fourapproaches to code-switching; the third chapter clarifies the theoretical framework ofthe study, namely, Verschueren's adaptation theory; in the fourth segment,methodology of the study is provided including the specific methods like observation,group interviews and questionnaires and SPSS analysis to be applied in the research,details of the procedures of data collection and types and scopes of the obtained data;then an analysis is conducted of the collected data with discussions on the influence ofthe variables on code-switching and motivations behind code-switching; the last partoffers closing remarks to the study and its limitations as well.It is a pity that due to the limitations of objective conditions, the subjects areconfined to people in Hefei, and the possible relations between code-switching,language borrowing and language change are not discussed, although they are alsovery interesting linguistic phenomena worth studying. In this study, borrowing isincluded as code-switching to be studied. More research on this topic bothqualitatively and quantitatively will be needed to develop the present study.