A Study Of Mongolian And Chinese Code-switching On University Campus

As a result of language contact, code-switching has become increasingly important in various academic fields since 1970s. Researches on code-switching have been done a lot in Western linguistics from the perspective of grammatical analysis, sociolinguistics, conversational analysis and psycholinguistics and great achievements have been got. The Mongolian/Chinese code-switching on campus has long existed as a result of language contact. The present study of Mongolian/Chinese code-switching on campus can contribute to a better understanding of the code-switching itself and broaden the research scope of the code-switching.The present study aims to reveal the grammatical constraints on Mongolian/Chinese code-switching on campus and to explore its pragmatic functions. The present conceptual framework is based on Matrix Language Frame Model by Carol Myers-Scotton and Pragmatic Model of code-switching by Yu Guodong. Methodologically speaking, the present study is both theory-driven and data-driven. The whole process begins with the collecting of the natural data in Inner Mongolia University where the author lives and studies. Then the author categorizes them and observes the linguistic characteristics and functions of them.Through the study and analysis of the data, two conclusions are reached in this study:(1) Matrix Language Frame Model is workable to explain the Mongolian/Chinese code-switching on campus. When Mongolian speakers insert any Chinese elements into their speech, they should follow Mongolian sentence structure, and keep to MLF model. (2) Mongolian/Chinese code-switching on campus is regarded as a kind of linguistic choice, and an effective strategy that can be exploited by communicators to achieve certain communicative goals. The purposes of Mongolian/Chinese code-switching can be categorized into three types, namely adaptation to linguistic reality, to meet the communicators' psychological needs and assimilation of Mongolian by Chinese culture to some extent.This study may, to a certain degree, reflect the linguistic reality where the contact and interaction of Mongolian and Chinese occur in Inner Mongolian and have some implications for the future study on ethnic languages and Chinese code-switching in China.