Font Size: a A A

A Tentative Study On Chinese-English Code-switching Phenomenon In Hunan TV Program-Happy Camp

Posted on:2012-05-10Degree:MasterType:Thesis
Country:ChinaCandidate:Y WangFull Text:PDF
GTID:2155330335485882Subject:English Language and Literature
Abstract/Summary:PDF Full Text Request
Code-switching (abbreviated as CS) is the product of language contact between different languages in bilingual or multilingual community or different language varieties in monolingual community. With reference to this particular phenomenon, many western scholars and researchers have probed into it and performed intensive research on it from different perspectives and approaches such as sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, pragmatics, grammatical analysis and conversational analysis. As for the Chinese-English CS phenomenon, Chinese researchers have conducted studies in many settings such as daily conversation, office talk, English class, literature works, popular songs, internet communication etc. and proposed their own perspectives in light of some enlightening ideas, useful theories and models advanced by western scholars and researchers. However, they rarely carry out studies on Chinese-English CS in TV entertainment programs which exert profound influence on people's social and cultural life.This thesis chooses the Chinese-English CSs in Hunan TV entertainment program Happy Camp broadcasted from September, 2007 to March of 2010 as the research data and adopts the combination of quantative and qualitative analysis to explore the syntactic characteristics and pragmatic functions of Chinese-English CS in the program based on Myer-Scotton's Matrix Language Frame Model, Verschueren's Linguistic Adaptation Theory and Yu Guodong's Adaptation Model. The findings reveal:(1) Statistical figures suggest a great number of Chinese-English CSs in the program in which intra-sentential CS occurs by far frequently than inter-sentential one. Syntactically, for inter-sentential CS, English and Chinese follow their own syntactic and grammatical rules respectively and embedded English either appears in the form of independent sentence or subordinate clause placed after some Chinese verbs. For intra-sentential CS, embedded English takes on the forms of letters, words and phrases which are inserted naturally in the certain positions as the specific sentence constituents on a basis of Chinese language order and under the constraint of Chinese syntactic rules rather than being inserted casually. Consequently, some embedded English lose their inflectional changes under the syntactic constraints and grammatical rules of Chinese.(2) Pragmatically, Chinese-English CS in the program is virtually the strategies speakers adopt in the interactive conversation as the adaptation to linguistic reality, social conventions and psychological motivations and it serves functions of gap-filling, accurateness and succinctness, taboo-avoiding, tone-softening, elucidation, preparatory direction, fashion and individuality marker, fun-creating, topic shift and psychological distance-shortening. Therefore, it can be concluded that the Chinese-English CS phenomenon in Happy Camp is not a disordered, irregular and confusing linguistic phenomenon but the linguistic phenomenon which conforms to certain kinds of syntactic rules and performs various pragmatic functions.This study is a tentative exploration of applying CS theories to the research on Chinese-English CSs in TV entertainment program and expanding the scope of research on Chinese-English CS and it can help audience understand the CS phenomenon in the entertainment program better and give audience some implications on how to conduct speech well in verbal communication through the analysis of the interactive conversations in the program.
Keywords/Search Tags:Chinese-English code-switching, Happy Camp, syntactic characteristics, pragmatic functions
PDF Full Text Request
Related items