A Study Of Chinese/English Code-Switching On Campus-from An Adaptation Perspective

With the development of science and technology, people around the world have had more and more frequent contact with each other, consequently, languages or language varieties are getting in closer contact with each other than ever before. In bilingual or multilingual communities, code-switching is a frequent linguistic phenomenon of significant academic concern.This thesis is a preliminary pragmatic analysis with a focus on presenting the pragmatic adaptability that the campus speakers'Chinese/English code-switching can fulfill. Based on Verschueren's Linguistic Adaptation Theory and Yu Guodong's Adaptation Model on Code-Switching, this thesis mainly aims to carry out a detailed analysis on Chinese/English code-switching on campus from an adaptive perspective, which is understood as a linguistic choice of campus speakers and used as a linguistic and pragmatic strategy to successfully realize their communicative goals.Methodologically speaking, the present study is both theory-driven and data-driven, it will be carried out mainly as a qualitative study with a quantitative support. By saying the qualitative method we refer to the process of categorizing and analyzing the adaptability of campus Chinese/English code-switching and the functions it can perform; through the study and analysis of several typical code-switching instances, the following conclusions can be reached: (1)From the adaptive point of view, campus speakers' Chinese/English code-switching is selected by the code switcher as a linguistic and pragmatic strategy to fulfill specific communicative goals; (2)Campus speakers'Chinese/English code-switching is adaptation to three elements: the linguistic reality, social conventions and psychological motivations; among which the consciousness degree of campus speakers'code-switching as adaptation to the linguistic reality is comparatively lower, while the consciousness degree of their code-switching as adaptation to the social conventions and psychological motivations are comparatively higher.Besides, in order to be more comprehensive and objective, a quantitative method, including observation, recording, interviews and a questionnaire, is supplemented in the course of generalizing the frequency and form of campus speakers'conducting of Chinese/English code-switching, the motivations triggering campus speakers'code-switching and also campus speakers'attitudes towards Chinese-English code-switching. The questionnaire statistics show that the great majority of campus speakers have Chinese/English code-switching behavior and the main form of their code-switching is intra-sentential code-switching and most campus speakers take a neutral attitude towards Chinese/English code-switching, which testify to the value of this research.