Psychological And Social Motivations For Code-Switching In Chinese Filmic Discourse

Code-switching (CS) is the use of two or more linguistic varieties in the same conversation or interaction, which means it is the alternate use of two linguistic varieties within the same utterance or during the same conversation. Code-switching is a common and complex language phenomenon in language contact which has been a hot research topic of linguists since the 1970s. Researchers have done much work on code-switching from perspectives of sociolinguistics, grammatical, psycholinguistics, and conversation analysis and so on. Fruitful achievements have been made already, but little attention is paid to the code-switching in film discourse.As one of the most common forms of mass culture, film is an important part of people's life and it is greatly influenced by the economic and cultural development, which in turn is reflected in its language choice. The reflection manifests itself in the large amount of code-switching. This study is carried out on the basis of the previous research achievements especially Yu Guodong's modified model of adaptation theory. Yu Guodong (1999) thinks the adaptation principle of code-switching can be divided into three maxims:linguistic reality, social convention and psychological motivations. Code-switching is not only a linguistic but also a social phenomenon, which is greatly related with the development of society. And audiences of films can be regarded as a special group, which reflects the complex nature of society. The present paper furthers Yu's theory with one more maxim:social motivation which explores the motives why film makers, including playwrights, directors and so forth employ code-switching in Chinese film discourse. 197 examples from 20 Chinese films are collected in the present paper. Through research and analysis, the author has found:first, code-switching widely exists in film discourse. Second, psychological motivations in film discourse can be divided into two major groups:psychological satisfaction and psychological avoidance. Psychological satisfaction includes eight aspects such as to show respect, to create humor, to embody language preference, to gain the sense of achievement and so on. Psychological avoidance mainly includes:embarrassment avoidance and conflict avoidance. Third, adaptation to social motivations include:promotion of the development of the story, entertainment for the audiences and adaptation to the present language using habit. Fourth, psychological motives and social motives either function separately or overlap with each other.