A Research On Code-Switching In Office Fiction

Since the1970s, linguists have put their focus on the study of code-switching (CS), and there are various studying angles, including sociolinguistic view, grammatical view, psychological view, conversational view and pragmatic view. Compared with western countries, the study into CS in China is relatively later, with its first appearance in the early1990s. But now, the research field has become mature, especially after Yu Guodong’s issue of adaptation model of CS, which has opened up a broader avenue for CS study from pragmatic view.With the development of international exchange, in China, people studying foreign languages are on the increase, and bilinguals, even multilinguals are emerging in an endless stream. Along with blooming economy, China is appreciated by investors worldwide, and almost all the Fortune500companies have subsidiaries in China. Contact with foreigners in office life is inevitable, and CS is of high frequency.In recent years, numbers of office writers come into being. They set the office life as the background, depicting white-collars’daily life and work. In such office fictions, there are large numbers of CS data. Based on Poplack’s CS types, Myers-Scotton’s matrix language frame theory, Verschueren’s linguistic adaptation theory and Yu Guodong’s adaptation model of CS, the present dissertation studies CS in the four chosen office fictions from grammatical and pragmatic views.The research shows that in the types of CS in office fictions, the amount of intra-sentential CS far exceeds that of inter-sentential CS. Among intra-sentential CS, the frequencies of nouns and nominal phrases’switches are superior to others, such as verbs, verb phrases, adjectives, adverbs, adverb phrases, interjections, prepositional phrases, etc. Influenced by Chinese, the writers of office fictions misuse some CS, for example, nouns are misused as verbs, verbs as nouns, verbs as adjectives, etc. As to the pragmatic study of CS in office fictions, the author applies Verschueren’s linguistic adaptation theory and Yu Guodong’s adaptation model, and points out that the functions of CS in office fictions can be divided into three types: adaptation to linguistic reality, to social conventions, to psychological motivations. On this basis, the author brings forward some other functions and causes of CS: creating humorous atmosphere, drawing near or estranging interpersonal relationships, explanation, keeping fashion, expressing emotion, etc.