A Study On The Pragmatic Adaptation Of The Teachers' English/Chinese Code-switching In Class

Since 1970s, as a unique linguistic phenomenon, code-switching has aroused Chinese and foreign linguists'attention and gained their emphasis. And the study of code-switching has been one of the focuses for researchers in various fields. Within the domain of linguistics, researchers have studied code-switching from various perspectives, like the sociolinguistic perspective, the psycholinguistic perspective, and the grammatical perspective. Recently, more and more researchers make such research from the pragmatic perspective, which brings new energy into the study on code-switching.When mentioning pragmatics, we can't avoid mentioning Jef Verschueren, the secretary-general of the International Pragmatics Association in Belgium. He put forward Adaptation Theory in his new publishing work Understanding Pragmatics. In the book, he presented that the process of language use is a process of language choice. The aim of making choices both within a language and between two languages (code-switching) is for adaptation.As to domestic linguists who have made researches on code-switching, Yu Guodong is a typical one. He presented an Adaptation Model on English/Chinese code-switching (2001). According to him, communicators carry on code-switching in order to make adaptation, and to realize a certain or some specific communicative aims. So, code-switching, as a specific choice to different languages and their varieties, is a kind of communicative strategy. And the specific objects of pragmatic adaptation are language reality, social conventions, and psychological intentions.On the basis of Jef Verschueren's Adaptation Theory, by utilizing Yu Guodong's Adaptation Model on English/Chinese code-switching, by adopting quantitative and qualitative analysis method, and through analyzing the teachers'specific English/Chinese code-switching in class, the study is aiming to explore the pragmatic adaptation of English/Chinese code-switching in college English class. It finds out that teachers'code-switching in class is a process of adaptation: (1) adaptation to linguistic reality (the differences between English and Chinese language); (2) adaptation to social conventions (avoid social taboos, etc.); (3) adaptation to teachers' roles (macro-roles and micro-roles); (4) adaptation to teachers'psychological intentions; (5) adaptation to teachers'and students'language competence. These adaptations not only provide theoretical basis for the explanation of teachers'English/Chinese code-switching in class, exploit a new perspective for our exploration of code-switching, but also facilitate better realization of such switching.Through the study, the author tries to find out the pragmatic functions of teachers'code-switching in class, to explore how does the adaptation model operate during teachers'code-switching in class, and to explain teachers'code-switching in class with the model with the expectation to make some contributions for exploring the strategies of second language teaching and learning.