Chinese-English Code-Switching In The Magazine Of University Students-An Adaptation Approach

The magazine of University Students is the most authoritative and comprehensive cultural journal mainly for the in-campus college and university students in China, In the discourses of the magazine, there are a lot of performances of Chinese-English code-switching (hereafter CS). Taking 20 issues of this magazine in a year as the data source and Yu Guodong's Linguistic Adaptation Model as theoretical base, the present thesis conducts a qualitative study on the adaptation of the Chinese-English CS in the discourses of the magazine with a quantitative support. The aims of the study are to explore the reasons for the CS and the pragmatic functions the CS operates, describe the distribution patterns and features of CS in the discourses, and verify the validity and feasibility of Yu Guodong's Linguistic Adaptation Model.As a unique phenomenon of bilinguals or multilinguals, CS has been one of the hot issues among linguists since 1970s. Scholars have done a lot of researches into it under different approaches including sociolinguistics, grammar, psycholinguistics, conversational analysis, and have made great achievements. In recent years, the research from pragmatic perspective opens up a new way. This approach combines description of language phenomenon with the corresponding explanation, and reveals the dynamic process of language use. Thus it is considered to be able to analyze and explain CS more comprehensively.Verschueren's Linguistic Adaptation Theory provides the pragmatic research with a brand-new perspective. Based on his theory, inland scholar Yu Guodong puts forward Adaptation Model for the study of the Chinese-English CS. In this model he indicates adaptability, negotiability, and variability of CS to illustrate the communicators' motives of CS and its features of diversity. This model is considered as enlightening and convincing because it includes linguistic, social, cognitive, and cultural factors simultaneously.Under this theoretical framework, this thesis conducts a careful research into the adaptability, negotiability and variability of CS in the discourses of University Students with the method of qualitative study supported by quantitative study. The qualitative study intends to explain the reasons for the CS and the pragmatic functions the CS fulfills. The quantitative study aims to describe the variability of CS manifested in different distribution patterns in the discourses. The results of this study indicate:(1) The employment of CS is mainly to adapt to the linguistic reality of the language of Chinese and the language of English, the Chinese social convention and the communicators' psychological motivations. The first two are passive adaptations and the third one belongs to active adaptation. In the process of adaptation, CS can realize many different pragmatic functions as a communicative strategy, such as explaining and emphasizing, concealing identities, creating humor, keeping authenticity, mitigating the tone, seeking convenience , seeking the foreign flavor , etc, so as to help communicators approach communicative goals;(2) The negotiability of CS shows that CS is performed neither casually nor mechanically, nor is it performed according to strict rules or fixed form-function relationships, but rather on the basis of highly flexible adaptation principle and strategies. The principle on which the CS builds is in general agreement with the Adaptation Principle put forward by Yu Guodong;(3) The frequency statistics of the variability and the corresponding description indicate the features of the diversity of CS. The variability of CS according to the linguistic form in the discourses of the magazine mainly displays in two aspects: linguistic units, and structural complexity including the types and the forms of CS. In the aspect of linguistic units, the frequency of words is the highest, among which the number of nouns ranks the first; in the aspect of types of CS, the percentage of intra-sentential CS accounts for the highest. And in this type, there exist three forms, among which, the first form (English codes are inserted directly into Chinese sentences) ranks the first in number.Through detailed and careful analyses of the comparatively new corpus, this study verifies, and, to a certain degree, develops Yu Guodong's Linguistic Adaptation Model. It is beneficial to help people understand more about the phenomenon of CS in media language. Meanwhile, the study reflects the influence of the language of English upon the language of Chinese in the development of modern China, and the fact of language contact and interaction. It also has certain implications for people's effective use of CS as a communicative strategy.