The Linguistic Adaptation Of Chinese-English Code-Switching In The Discourses Of Chinese Magazines

Researches on code-switching (hereafter CS) have been done a lot in western linguistics from the perspectives of grammatical analysis, sociolinguistics, conversational analysis and psycholinguistics. Some studies have been conducted to focus on Hong Kong Cantonese-English CS, while researches on CS in Mainland China are relatively fewer in quantity. Huang Guowen (2004) has analyzed Chinese-English CS in the mass media language from the discourse analysis perspective.Alternatively, this study focuses on the linguistic adaptation of Chinese-English code-switching in the discourses of Chinese magazines from the pragmatic perspective, aiming to describe the CS distribution patterns, explain the reasons for CS performances, and explore the pragmatic functions of CS in the mass media language.Yu Guodong's linguistic Adaptation Model (2001) argues that CS is the realization of communicators' making linguistic adaptation. Adaptability is the essential property of adaptation in the CS process, which reveals the dynamics and functionality of CS; and it is this property that enables communicators to choose from a range of possible linguistic units in the process of CS realization so as to fulfill a communication task. Yu's Model also claims that the Adaptation Principle is the most significant working principle in the highly dynamic process of making adaptation. The Principle accounts for the reasons of CS occurrence in terms of linguistic reality, social conventions, and psychological motivations. In the course of adaptation, CS thus fulfills pragmatic functions in the form of a series of communicative strategies. CS in the discourses presents distinct variability in linguistic realization.Under the theoretical framework of the above Model, the present research combines the qualitative and quantitative methods to achieve research purposes in the aspects of CS variability and adaptability. Quantitative study describes the CS distribution patterns in the discourses of magazines. And the correlation between CS category and frequency will also be examined via SPSS. Qualitative study attempts to account for the reasons of CS and the pragmatic functions of CS as communicative strategies.The results indicate that Chinese-English CS manifests great variability in linguistic realization in terms of linguistic units, structural complexity and discourse types. And the reasons for performing CS in the magazines are to adapt to such factors as the linguistic reality of Chinese and English, the social...