Code-mixing In Chinese Social Media—QQ And WeChat

The creation and further development of internet has exerted huge influence on people's way of communication from earlier BBS, email or chat room to present Sina Weibo, QQ or Wechat. People have become more and more attached to online communication especially the instant chatting applications, QQ and Wechat with the coming of smart phones. Unlike previous phenomenon of Chinese/English code-switching in computer-mediated communication, it is found out that QQ and Wechat users frequently adopt non-standard Chinese online-mediated code/standard Putonghua code-mixing consciously or unconsciously instead of Chinese/English code-switching. In order to study this new type of code-mixing, the present thesis exploits a qualitative study to investigate this phenomenon from three aspects, the structural features and surface linguistic features of this type of code-switching, the motivations and functions of such adoption of code-mixing and the socio-cultural changes reflected from such code-mixing in QQ and Wechat.The study collected 200 pieces of conversation fragments on the author's QQ and Wechat with her contacts including both group chats and individual chats. It first categorizes the code-mixing under Muysken's(2000) code-mixing model that includes insertion, alternation and lexical congruent lexicalization. It also investigates the surface features of online-mediated code/Putonghua code-mixing and four general features have been tentatively reached including integration and split of sounds,adoption of confusing sound pairs in dialect, employment of network language and insertion of interjections from dialects. What follows is the analysis of the communicative goals achieved or functions realized in such type of code-mixing under the adaption theory and adaptation model which maintain that code-switching or code-mixing is a linguistic strategy for people involved in a communication to fulfill their communicative goals. The choice of switching codes is out of their adaptation to linguistic reality, social conventions or psychological motivations. The result from the analysis suggests seven functions have been realized falling into thosethree general types including lexical gap-filling, mentioning concepts from specific field, keeping men and women's social roles and expectations, code-mixing as a mitigation strategy, code-mixing as humor-creating strategy, code-mixing as means to pursue fashion and gaining intimacy and shorten distance. Such research of code-mixing in this new situation may test the feasibility of the linguistic adaptation theory.The shift from former Chinese/English code-switching in computer-mediated communication to present non-standard online-mediated code/ standard Chinese code-mixing may have indicated some social changes that are reflected in people's choice of such code-mixing. The wide-spreading online and even offline use of online-mediated code implies that internet itself has undergone changes from former being separated from real life to present interacting with daily life in order to adapt to the linguistic reality caused by the born of non-standard online-mediated code, the social reality that some of the code even are exploited in the drama culture making commercial values, and psychological needs of the mass. The common understanding of some dialect elements in the online-mediated code suggests that contacts between different regions have increased and so have their cultures and varieties with the mass migration resulted from economic development. Together with the spreading of mass media, such as TV and internet, some of the online-mediated code have been integrated into users' daily life, which in the long run leads to the change in Chinese language. The study of non-standard online-mediated code/standard Putonghua code-mixing can provide evidence for the social-cultural changes in Chinese society.