A Study Of Chinese/English Code-switching In BBS Conversations From An Adaptation Perspective

With the advent of the information age and the acceleration of globalization, the earth is becoming smaller and smaller, which has made people from different cultures and nations contact frequently. As a result of frequent language and culture contact of today's world, code-switching is prevalent everywhere, and has aroused more and more attention.Since the 1970s researchers in different fields has studied the code-switching phenomenon from different perspectives, and among all the approaches, the pragmatic approach is the most convincing and promising for it encompasses the linguistic, social, cultural and cognitive factors involved in code-switching in a dynamic context. Therefore, the pragmatic approach is comprehensive enough to cover the complexity and subtlety of code-switching and give code-switching a scientific, concrete and overall explanation.Based on Verschueren's Linguistic Adaptation Theory and Yu Guodong's Adaptation Model on code-switching, this thesis aims to conduct a detailed study on Chinese/English code-switching in BBS from an adaptive perspective. The core of the present study is to carry out a detailed analysis of the pragmatic functions that the Chinese/English code-switching can perform in BBS and to testify the the Adaptation Model.As far as research methodology is concerned, this thesis adopts both the qualitative and quantitative research methods. To be more specific, the present study uses qualitative methodology to analyze the adaptability of code-switching and to verify the Adaptation Model. And the interpretation and explanation of categories of code-switching are also on the basis of qualitative analysis. Besides, the quantitative method is also adopted to reveal the frequency and forms of Chinese/English code-switching in BBS. In a word, this thesis is mainly a theory-driven study with the support of a quantitative analysis.In the present study the Chinese/English code-switching in BBS is defined as a linguistic choice and a communicative strategy exploited by BBS users to fulfill their specific communicative goals. BBS users exploit Chinese/English code-switching in BBS to adapt to four elements:the linguistic reality, social conventions, psychological motivations and the style of BBS conversations. In the process of adaptation, the Chinese/English code-switching also perform various pragmatic functions, which often can not be fulfilled by other communicative strategies. The findings of the present study reveals that the Chinese/English code-switching in BBS performs the functions of showing politeness, avoiding social taboos, filling lexical gap, abiding by the linguistic conventions, mentioning foreign products, softening the tone and saving face, selecting addressee, creating humor, giving example, expressing affection implicitly, expressing strong feelings, showing off, keeping authenticity and so on.And with the help of the data collected and statistic analysis, this thesis also shows that the majority of code-switching in BBS is code-switching between Chinese and English; in BBS English codes appear in various forms of suffixes, letters, abbreviations, words, phrases, sentences, paragraphs, E-mail addresses, and URLS, with the code-switching in the forms of abbreviations taking up the highest percentage; among all the English words appearing in BBS, English nouns takes up the highest percentage; and as far as the positions the Chinese/English code-switching appearing in BBS are concerned, Chinese/English code-switching appearing in the middle of a sentence takes up the highest percentage, which means that many BBS users prefer to insert English codes in their Chinese conversations in BBS.