A Study On Linguistic Adaptation Of Teachers’ Code-Switching In Academic Classrooms

Code-switching is a very common phenomenon as a result of language touch. Since the 1960 s, code-switching has been widely studied in western countries from different perspectives. In China, however, code-switching has just begun to attract researchers’ attention at the end of the 20 th century. Also, code-switching in foreign language classroom is a disputable subject in the academic area.The monolingual strategy, pure target language policy, is widely promoted as the advocators hold that the use of mother tongue will lead to negative transfer as well as the deprivation of students’ chances of target language input. On the contrary, many scholars point out that proper use of first language can promote the second language learning.Through a historical review of the previous studies, many empirical and theoretical researches have been done in this area; but they are mainly about code-switching in classrooms of English majors or middle school students, seldom realizing teachers’ language use in the academic classroom, which features professors and postgraduates with high language proficiency level. Hence, considering the contradiction between the “All-in-English” teaching method and the existing teaching situation faced by teachers in academic classrooms, it is of necessity and value to reveal the nature and property of code-switching in this specific context.Hence, this thesis aims at investigating the pragmatic functions of teachers’ code-switching in academic classrooms from a pragmatic perspective, with a hope to raise teachers’ awareness of the language they use in academic teaching. To that end, three questions are proposed in the present study:1. What are teachers’ and graduate students’ attitudes towards teachers’ code-switching in academic classrooms? 2. What is the distribution of code-switching adopted by teachers in academic classrooms? 3. Why do teachers employ code-switching in academic classrooms? Or what are the pragmatic functions of the teachers’ applying of code-switching in academic classrooms?For the sake of the research purpose, the present study takes the linguistic adaptation approach adapted from Verschueren’s(1999) linguistic adaptation theory and provides a qualitative analysis in the form of classroom observations and interviews with the participants. It is conducted in Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, where five graduate students, five academic teachers and five visiting scholars are selected as the subjects. A detailed analysis is made on the data collected, including classroom observation and interviews with all the subjects.Through the present study, it is found that teachers’ code-switching in academic classrooms is quite common and nearly all the subjects keep a positive stance on this phenomenon. The teachers interviewed believed that for academic teaching, it is knowledge but not language that counts. Therefore language is only a teaching tool and both Chinese and English could be applied if necessary. Quite in the same way, the students acknowledge that teachers’ code-switching between Chinese and English is helpful for them to comprehend the abstract and obscure theories. With the double identities of a teacher and student, the visiting scholars hold the view that code-switching is necessary in academic classrooms for the simple reason that this might help the students comprehend the theories easily.Besides, the distribution of teachers’ code-switching in terms of Poplack’s classification is also revealed. Among them, intra-sentential code-switching accounts for the largest proportion, followed by inter-sentential and tag switching, which is consistent with the specific context in academic classrooms. To make full use of the limited class time, teachers usually apply concise language and the easiest way of expressing themselves. As a result, intra-sentential code-switching is the best choice. It is also found that when a new topic is to be introduced, more often than not inter-sentential code-switching will be applied.Most importantly, we focus on the pragmatic functions of teachers’ code-switching, that is adaptation to the social world, mental world and the physical world. They could be subcategorized into the following functions: explanation for technical terms, change of topics, economic principle, humor, softening of the tone, construction of academic authority, adaptation to postgraduate students’ language proficiency and cultivation objectives.Besides, we also found some characteristics of academic classrooms. As language teaching is beyond concern for academic classrooms, language is no more than a tool and the teachers and students can enjoy complete freedom switching between two languages. Also, the teachers seldom exert their authority to manage the class, for the students are highly self-disciplined. In addition, the students usually listen to their teacher without much interaction, leaving the teacher lecturing from beginning to the end.In spite of its limitations, we believe that the findings of the present study will shed light on academic teaching of postgraduate students.