| After several years’ developments since its founding in2003, taobao.com hassuccessfully become one of the most influential e-commerce groups, owning the mostonline shopping customers. As a commercial website, its excellent promotingstrategies are clearly demonstrated. With the deepening of globalization, more andmore Chinese citizens are becoming bilinguals in Chinese and English. Therefore, theuse of Chinese-English code-switching in the advertisements on taobao.com becomesthe dynamic reflect to language use. Meanwhile, those fresh and rich languagematerials not only include many particular pragmatic features of code-switching, butalso reflect social, cultural and psychological related elements, which on the wholegrantees its practical research significance.As a consequence of language contact, code-switching refers to the use of two ormore than two languages or two or more than two varieties of the same language inone conversation or in one language discourse. As a unique phenomenon of bilingualsor multilinguals, code-switching has been one of the hottest issues among linguisticssince1970s. Verschueren’s Linguistic Adaptation Theory provides the pragmaticresearch a brand-new perspective. Based on his theory, Yu Guodong, a Chinesescholar, puts forward the Linguistic Adaptation Model for the study of theChinese-English code-switching. The model indicates adaptability, negotiability, andvariability of code-switching to illustrate the communicator’s motives of CS and itsfeatures of diversity. The model is considered enlightening and convincing for it takeslinguistic, social, culture and cognitive factors into consideration simultaneously.Under the guidance of the Linguistic Adaptation Model, the present researchintends to generalize the types of code-switching in advertisements on taobao.comwith the focus on the adaptabilities.119advertisements containing code-switching which could catch the customers’attention in the first place on taobao.com are collected. Together with the specificclassification principles and analyzing principles, both quantitative and qualitativemethodologies are applied to the study of code-switching phenomenon. There are four major findings:(1) There are three major characteristics of the advertisements containingcode-switching on taobao.com. First, a rather large proportion is clearly addressed forfemale addressees; second, those noticeable advertisements are mainly under the dutyof publicizing for a whole promoting session of products rather than a particular one;third, the Chinese-English CS phenomenon appears under deliberate arrangements forsome publicizing effects.(2) There are four types of code-switching on taobao.com. They are Directinsertion, Reproduction, New information insertion, and Vocative expression. Thefour pragmatic strategies accordingly are inserting English codes directly, reproducingthe Chinese information, inserting new information in English codes and usingEnglish vocative expressions.(3) There are four adaptabilities of code-switching in advertisements. They arethe adaptability to linguistic requirements, adaptability to social conventions,adaptability to cultural background and finally adaptability to consumptionpsychology. Passive adaptation is used to refer to the first three adaptabilities whilethe adaptation to the consumption psychology is an initiative one.(4) There are mainly two causes to the inappropriate advertisements. One is forthe advertisers’ inadequate English proficiency; the other is for the language’snegative transfers from Chinese to English. The suggestions are given on theproducers’ responsibility and the supervisors’ inspecting. |
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