Code-switching In Chinese Popular Songs: From An Adaptation Approach

With frequent economic and cultural contact among different nations, code-switching, as one of natural consequence, gradually appears in people’s daily life and has attracted extensive attention of researchers. Since1970s, this language phenomenon has been noticed by scholars and abundant studies have been carried out from different perspectives, which include the grammatical approach, the sociolinguistic approach, the psycho linguistic approach, the conversation analysis approach, and the pragmatic approach. Compared with the other approaches to the analysis of code-switching, the pragmatic approach is the most comprehensive one on account that it encompasses the linguistic, social, cultural and cognitive elements and could give a scientific and overall explanation to this phenomenon.Most previous theses on code-switching phenomenon touched upon written materials like newspapers and magazines, advertisements, or literary works. Yet, studies on code-switching in Chinese popular song lyrics are quite rare. English, as a world language, has gained its popularity in China and has frequently been seen in popular song lyrics. In view of its significance, it is proved to be essential to conduct a study on Chinese/English code-switching in Chinese popular songs. Based on Jef Verschueren’s Theory of Linguistic Adaptation (1999), with200popular song lyrics as the data, the present research is to present an analysis of code-switching phenomenon in Chinese popular songs by utilizing Yu Guodong’s Adaptation Model on code-switching (2001).The results of the study have shown that:firstly, among all the linguistic units such as letters, words, phrases, sentences and paragraphs, code-switching in the form of words takes up the highest frequency. Among all kinds of parts of speech, nouns take the overwhelming majority over other parts of speech. In terms of structural complexity, the frequency of intra-sentential code-switching is higher than that of inter-sentential code-switching and tag code-switching. From the perspective of adaptation, the reason why songwriters employ code-switching strategy in Chinese popular songs is to adapt to the linguistic reality, the social conventions and the psychological motivations. The study on Chinese/English code-switching in Chinese popular songs aims to enrich existing studies on code-switching. In the meantime, it would be beneficial to both the construction and the appreciation of the popular song lyrics.