A Study Of Code-switching In Senior High School English Classrooms

Verschueren in his book Understanding of Pragmatics proposes a new theory to analyze code-switching from pragmatic perspective. According to Verschueren, using language is the process to make choices because of three features of language: variability, negotiability and adaptability. Among the three features, adaptability is the most important one. Adaption of language is dynamic and language users should adjust their speech with the change of communicating contexts. According to Verschueren, language adaption includes contextual correlates of adaptability, structural objects of adaptability, dynamics of adaptability and the salience of adaption process. Based on Verschueren's adaption theory, Chinese scholar Yu Guodong proposes his own model to analyze code-switching. Yu holds that language users should adapt to linguistic reality, social conventions and psychological motivations when they make code-switching. Yu Guodong's adaption model not only explains the adaption features of code-switching but also combines Chinese literature into it. Yu's adaption model is employed as the research model of this paper. Both qualitative and quantitative approaches are used to analyze the collected data. The research questions of this paper are as follows: (1) What are the code-switching types used by senior high school English teachers in classes? (2) What are teachers'motivations to make code-switching? (3) What are students'opinions about their teachers'code-switching?The result of the research shows that English teachers make code-switching in order to adapt to linguistic reality, social conventions, psychological motivations and teachers'roles. Both teachers'macro roles and micro roles are realized in the adaption process. Teachers'code-switching in classrooms can be categorized into intra-sentence code-switching, inter-sentence code-switching and tag-switching. Through classroom observation, it can be found that intra-sentence code-switching happens more frequently than inter-sentence code-switching and tag-switching. Most of the students hold positive attitudes towards their teachers'code-switching in classrooms.