A Study Of Chinese-English Code-switching In Fashion Discourse

Language is the product of human civilization and historical development. It directly reflects people's activities, interactions and social conditions. The frequent contact among different speech communities for the political, economic and cultural purposes unavoidably leads to the language contact. Code-switching is one of the outcomes of this language contact. It frequently appears in people's daily communication of native bilingual or multilingual communities. With the rapid growth of Chinese economy and the increasingly frequent contact with the western culture, Chinese-English code-switching has come to be a common occurrence not only in people's daily conversations, but also in some Chinese written discourses such as literary works, newspapers and magazines.In the field of code-switching studies, researches made by western scholars are mostly localized in the analysis of conversational code-switching. The main approaches that have been adopted include sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, structural linguistics, pragmatics and conversational analysis. However, little attention has been paid to the study of written code-switching. Even such limited studies mainly focus on the application of code-switching theories in some literary works or newspapers.At present, the studies of Chinese-English code-switching in fashion discourse such as dresses, make-ups, furnishings etc. remain at a rudimentary stage. Therefore, this thesis chooses this genre to study code-switching, aiming to make a detailed analysis of the application of Chinese-English code-switching in fashion discourse, including the types, features and motivations of this phenomenon. This thesis is targeted to broaden the study of code-switching in the hope of deepening the theories and widening their application in real life.The data source of this thesis includes three domestic influential fashion magazines: Shanghai Style, Miss and Trends Home. Based on the findings of previous investigations, the author makes a detailed processing of the data, including comparison, categorization, synthesis and induction, and further studies the code-switching appearing in these fashion magazines from sociolinguistic and pragmatic perspectives.The thesis includes five parts: Chapter one aims to provide a general introduction, including the reasons, objectives, the methodology and the layouts of this thesis. Chapter two presents a review of the relevant literature based on the previous efforts, including the terminologies, types and approaches adopted in previous studies. Chapter three introduces the data of this thesis, including the source, the collection and processing of the data which are used in this thesis. Chapter four presents a detailed analysis of the types, features and motivations of Chinese-English code-switching in fashion discourse. Chapter five, the concluding part, lists the findings and limitations of the present study.Through the process of doing this research, the author has found: (1) In terms of classifying code-switching, the Chinese-English code-switching in fashion discourse includes various levels from words, phrases, clauses to paragraphs. The code-switching of single words includes nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs, which have been presented in the thesis in great detail. (2) In terms of the features of code-switching, the thesis has concluded four typical features in fashion discourse: firstly, code-switching is stable and consistent in the whole discourse; secondly, most of the column names, brand names and titles appear in the form of"translation couplet"; thirdly, intrasentential switching is far more than intersentential switching; finally, the design of the layout tends to insert an English word which can generalize and highlight the topic. (3) In terms of the motivations of code-switching, the author has made an analysis from the perspectives of social and linguistic motivations respectively. Firstly, as for the social motivations, code-switching is a product of social development; it reflects the mixing of Chinese and Western cultures, which features the tendency of the time; it satisfies the taste of a special reader group so it is a product of audience design; it is a commercial advertising strategy and it affects people's mind to pursue foreign products in fashion. Secondly, as for the linguistic motivations, it is characterized by quotation, repetition, gap-filling and convenience. What's more, it can make the language casual and lively, and perfectly fits the features of fashions.