On Code-switching In Implicit Bilingual Text

Overseas Chinese have a long history of writing all kinds of literary works in English, in which the confliction of two languages and two cultures is a prominent feature. These works use a different language to narrate the culture and history of another nation, employing various language codes to create texts. These texts are unique productions in the multi-cultural and heterogeneous context. In this thesis, the kind of literary work is regarded as an implicit bilingual text, in which English writing is apparent on the surface, but there are a large number of Chinese elements at lexical and syntactic levels. So the writing process of this kind of text is a process of constant switching among different codes.Code refers to any symbolic system that people use for communication. It could be a language, a dialect, a variety, a style, a register or even a morpheme. Code-switching is switching between two or more of the many types of codes mentioned above in the context of a single conversation.Code-switching in written discourse is also worth studying. Based on Variation Theory, within the framework of Poplack’s language contact and code-switching theory, this thesis aims to explore the code-switching phenomenon in texts that implicitly reflects a bilingual situation. The Bonesetter’s Daughter, a novel written by Amy Tan, noted Chinese-American writer, is taken as the studying material. Codes and code-switching phenomenon in the novel are culled out and analyzed.Poplack is a forerunner of studying code-switching from the perspective of language structural analysis. Her definition and identification method of code-switching and some relevant concepts have a great influence. Based on the Variation Theory, she proposed Language Contact Theory, with code-switching as its key notion. Because there are no existing theories that particularly fit studying code-switching in written text, attempts have been made in this thesis to testify the applicability of Poplack’s variationist view and Language Contact Theory, by looking into abundant data collected from The Bonesetter’s Daughter.. In the first instance, the bilingual ability, language attitude and presupposition to readers and motivation of the code-switcher, i.e., the writer, are elucidated. Then, through detailed reading, distinctive features of implicit bilingual text are discovered. Codes and code-switching are studied with sufficient examples. It is found that some of Poplack’s theories, such as tag switching, noun phrase switching, flagged switching and Equivalence Constraint can be applied to this study. However, there is still much room for perfection.New and tentative perspective are proposed in this thesis so that the social-linguistic approach to study code-switching can be expanded, enriched and improved with testified theories and with abundant evidence.