Manifestations, Functions And Motives Of Code-switching Among Residents In Shanghai--a Social And Psychological Probe

As a common strategy, code-switching is frequently employed in the interaction between people from different cultures or different language communities. It has aroused more and more academic interest. Scholars have endeavored to explore its manifestations, types, functions and user’s motivations from various disciplines—such as linguistics, pragmatics, sociolinguistics and anthropology.Based on the previous research, the present paper intends to examine three issues:1. How code-switching is used in a particular locality—Shanghai where linguistic variation abounds:Chinese-English, dialects-Putonghua, or any other forms.2. What are the primary motivations and functions of using code-switching for local people—the natives of Shanghai and people from other provinces—the non-natives of Shanghai?3. To what extent the findings of present research are theoretically or empirically identical/similar to these previous findings.All data have been analytically processed in terms of quantity and quality by SPSS and Excel. The findings indicate that code-switching is more often employed by the people from other provinces than the local people, which is coincide with the author’s hypothesis about code-switching used in Shanghai. And code-switching for reducing psychological distance and explaining, expressing properly and adjusting atmosphere is used with high frequencies for both the natives and non-natives of Shanghai.The result further seems to suggest that with the current language using situation going on, in such a metropolitan city as Shanghai, code-switching is becoming a common linguistic phenomenon, while Shanghai dialect would not hold dominance in the city.