A Word Grammar Approach To Chinese-English Code-switching

Code-switching is the use of more than one language by participants in the execution of a speech act.The present thesis uses a word grammar approach which is founded by Richard Hudson to analyze Chinese-English code-switching,the aim of this study is to show that WG is preferential over other linguistic theories for the study of bilingual speech.Since 1970s,code-switching has been studied in detail from different perspectives.Four approaches stand out in the literature:the grammatical approach,the sociolinguistic approach,the psycholinguistic approach,the conversation analysis approach.Among different approaches,the grammatical approach succeeds in provoking our understanding that code-switching is a highly systematic and structured linguistic phenomenon,and it cannot occur at any place within a sentence. Based on a study of all available literature concerning code-switching under grammatical approach,the author finds that word grammar can explain the code-switching in a more comprehensive way,it can cover the linguistic,social,and cognitive elements.