Motivations For Chinese-English Code-switching In Advertising Discourse

The present research is under the theoretical framework of Verschueren's Linguistic Adaptation Theory, aiming at exploring the motivations for Chinese-English code-switching in advertising discourse in famous Chinese magazines and newspapers. The study also devotes to providing evidence to support the argument that Chinese-English code-switching is widely used in Chinese advertising discourse mainly by finding the proportion of Chinese-English code-switching in Rayli Magazines. The present study also wants to show that the use of English and code-switching is more prevalent in advertisements for the brand of women make-up, shoes, cars and cell phones; computer products and electronic products. In addition, English switch prevails in advertisement rather than other foreign languages that involves in the code-switching.This study intends to make an analysis of Chinese-English code-switching in advertising discourse. This study is a descriptive one and qualitative study is the most essential methodology in the research of code-switching. In order to be more objective, comprehensive and scientific, the main research methodology of this thesis involves quantitative study and it is both theory-driven and data-driven in analyzing Chinese-English code-switching from linguistic, cultural, social and psychological point of view to explore the motivations for using Chinese-English code-switching.This study broadens the range of the study on code-switching, not only focusing on lexical and syntactical levels but also concentrating on social, cultural and psychological levels. It make a good complement to the previous studies in the field of code-switching and makes contributions to the understanding of advertising language meanwhile it serves as a reference for advertisement makers. Furthermore, it will give some implications for researchers'further study in this field.Theoretically, this study has confirmed Verschueren's Linguistic Adaptation Theory and Yu Guodong's Adaptation Model from the three properties of language: variability, negotiability and adaptability. Moreover, the use of code-switching is the requirement of adaptability in linguistic reality, culture, society and psychology. Practically, code-switching serves as a communicative strategy which is pretty helpful to bilingual or multilingual communication and it can ensure successful communication as well. The advertisers use Chinese-English code-switching to attract more customers and get higher profits. To achieve this goal, Chinese-English code-switching is used to serve as both truthfulness and accuracy.