A Study Of Campus Chinese-English Code-switching Among Non-English Major College Students From The Perspective Of Adaptation Theory

Code-switching is a necessary consequence of language contact, and it hasalways been an important research topic in the research field of sociology, psychology,linguistics and so on. The earliest study of code-switching originated from Ferguson’sstudy of diglossia in1959, and the study of code-switching didn’t flourish until1960s.In the field of linguistics, from the perspective of sociolinguistic, grammatical or(syntactic), psycholinguistic, conversational analysis, and pragmatic approaches,scholars study code-switching on both macro and micro levels. Among the fiveapproaches, the first four have obtained abundant achievements in theoretical analysis,such as Gumperz’s discourse strategies and Myers-Scotton’s markedness model, aswell as other theories applied in the study of code-switching. However, these theoriescannot explain the phenomenon of code-switching comprehensively and objectively,and moreover, the empirical and applied studies of code-switching and its relevantcollection of corpus are insufficient.At present, the theories and approaches of pragmatics are the mostcomprehensive and systematic research orientation to the study of code-switching, ofwhich the greatest contribution is the linguistic adaptation theory proposed by JefVerschueren in his book Understanding Pragmatics published in1999. The theoryprovides an advanced theoretical framework for the study of code-switching. It notonly presents the dynamic process of code-switching, but also offers amacroscopic explanation for the language structure of code-switching from the characteristics of language itself, namely variability, negotiability and adaptability.What’s more, the four aspects of the theory concerning the study of languageadaptability, namely contextual correlates of adaptability, structural objects ofadaptability, dynamics of adaptability and salience of adaptation processes, are alsohelpful to explore the linguistic, social, cultural, psychological and cognitive factorsin the process of code-switching and reveal the internal relation between linguisticstructures and motivations. Therefore, the pragmatic theory applied to make the staticdescription and dynamic analysis of code-switching is helpful for people to betterunderstand the nature of this phenomenon and discover the rules of language use. Athome, the study of code-switching has flourished in our current stage, and theadaptation mode of codeswitching study proposed by Yu Guodong is the mostimportant theoretical innovation. Even though code-switching has attracted extensiveattention of linguistic circle and achieved a lot in theoretical studies, the linguisticdata and empirical studies of Chinese-English code-switching are relatively rare,which enables the author to have wide research space.As the international political, economic and cultural exchanges are increasing,Chinese-English code-switching has become a common linguistic phenomenon andan effective communication strategy on campus. Thus, the empirical study of campusChinese-English code-switching among college students is of great practicalsignificance.This thesis is aimed at exploring the primary factors affecting campusChinese-English code-switching among non-English major college students. From theperspective of Verschueren’s adaptation theory, the author makes a theoretical analysisin detail and evaluates to what extent the four dimensions, namely context, structure,dynamics and salience of the adaptation processes can affect the frequency of usingChinese-English code-switching. In order to further study the essence of thephenomenon, the author conducts an empirical study in Inner Mongolia University ofScience and Technology. Moreover, the research methods of observation, interviewand questionnaire are employed to collect material and data which has been analyzed by the SPSS16.0software. Through quantitative and qualitative analysis, the authordiscusses the research results in order to make the study more comprehensive andobjective.Through the theoretical analysis and empirical study, the author finds that theadaptation of linguistic reality, namely filling the gaps of Chinese, is the fundamentalcause affecting the use of Chinese-English code-switching among non-English majorcollege students. In addition, language environment, topic and certain psychologicalmotivations (creating humor, expressing certain emotions and pursuing fashion) arealso primary influential factors affecting the occurrence of this phenomenon.Finally, the author sincerely hopes that the study can help people betterunderstand the essence of Chinese-English code-switching and provide usefulreference for college English teaching practice of non-English majors, and at the sametime, offer empirical basis for further studies in the future.