Research On Code-switching On Campus

Code-switching is a language phenomenon and activity referring to two different languages alternatively used by bilinguals in the same or different speech turns, which is an unavoidable result of language contact and interaction. Therefore, with the frequent global communication and the increasing number of English-Chinese bilinguals, the English-Chinese code-switching is seemingly omnipresent, and has become a preference drew the attention from the researchers in syntactic, conversational analysis, sociolinguistic, psycholinguistic and anthropological fields. Beginning in 1960s, scholars abroad have initiated much study in code-switching from varied angles, and put forward many testified code-switching models. The domestic code-switching research made its first step in the end of 20th century most of which belong to literature review while the empirical study, especially the empirical study of English-Chinese code-switching is comparatively rare.The present research is carried out on the university campus. The everyday code-switching among university students as its research goal, the paper aims at a demonstration of the language characteristics and motivations of the postgraduates and graduates using a method combining qualitative and quantitative analysis. The findings show that the code-switching by college students abides by the MLF theory. Intrasentential switching and lexical switching take larger proportion than intersentential switching and phrasal switching. The main lexical switched types of nouns, verbs and adjectives have their own switched features. When English is switched into Chinese, a language with little inflection, it loses its own inflectional change. But exceptions exist. Besides, as a result of optimal organization of language resources and an efficient communication strategy, code-switching can be utilized by bilingual students, to adapt to the language constraints, social-cultural constrains, and psychological purposes to fulfill the maximal effect of communication. The expressive effect through the alternative use of two or more languages is more satisfying than keeping the"one language only"model.The study of code-switching constitutes an important facet of the study of bilingual conversation and can provide fresh insights to the study of language change over time. Thus research of this kind is sure to contribute significantly to both our understanding of bilinguals'linguistic performance and diachronic study of language change as well.It can be predicted that the Chinese students'code-switching will still exist. Except for its conversational functions, switched codes in dialogues are profitable and efficient forms of language learning and practicing among EFL students. With the development of the society and frequency of culture exchange, code-switching will exist and flourish in a larger stage and new problems worth researching will wait for us.