Code-switching In Newspapers From The Relevance Perspective

Scholars have been paying more and more attention on the phenomenon of code-switching, and have done a lot of researches on its reason, form and effects. Some of them have started to study code-switching from the perspective of the newly introduced relevance theory.Newspapers can be seen as a mean of ostensive-inferential communication, through which the writer encodes and express his intention in a way that manifest to the reader. This process that shows the intention of the writer is called ostensive. Meanwhile the reader decodes the assumptions that manifest to him and gets to know the reader's intention. On the basis of ostensive and the reader's cognitive context, the reader gets the right understanding of the information. This process is the inferential process.But the characteristics of code-switching appear in the media, especially the flat media such as newspapers, have not been studied from the perspective of relevance. The speciality of code-switching in newspapers lies in the communicative intention of the media and the means they adopt to realize the intention. Ostensive-inferential communication has two intentions: informing intention and communicating intention. As public media, newspapers usually target at a certain group of people. Code-switching can serve as an effective tool to attract the attention of these target readers.In this study we investigate code-switching in 4 influential newspapers with large circulation. On this basis we analyze this phenomenon from the relevance perspective and summarize some universal principles of code-switching in newspapers. We also conclude possible reasons that cause this phenomenon: social and psychological factors that cause the occurrence of code-switching. The social factors are the formality of topics, people's adaptation to the concept, economic principle, and the social distance between communicators. The psychological factors include discrimination and concealment. In order to realize concealment, the writer may choose or cater for certain audience by using certain codes as an effective tool to maximize the writer's benefits. These factors, however, are not independent from each other but are interwoven in some cases to make the code-switching reach the optimal relevance.According to relevance theory, maximum relevance dose not equals to optimal relevance. When the discourse has enough contextual effect for the reader to understand the writer's intention with minimum effort, then the discourse reaches optimal relevance. In order to realize optimal relevance, writers have to take many factors into consideration, including their communicative intention and their target reader.