Theory Of Linguistic Adaptation, Conversion, And In English Yards

In the process of globalization, people from different countries have more chances to meet and communicate. They intend to learn languages or dialects different from their native ones, and the bilinguals even multilinguals turn to be more and more. It is meaningful to study the specific language competence and communicative strategies of them. Code-switching (henceforth CS), as a common phenomenon occurs in their communication process, has become one of the focuses of various research fields. Since 1970s, many linguists have explored this phenomenon from different linguistic approaches, including sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, grammatical, conversational analysis and pragmatic approach.Among all the approaches towards the CS study, the pragmatic approach is relatively new. It can explain the process of CS in a dynamic context, which integrates the linguistic, social, psychological, cognitive, and cultural factors involved in the process of CS for study, and thus may explain the problems of the systematical and functional aspects of CS comprehensively and satisfactorily (He and Yu, 2001).Jef Verschueren advanced a Linguistic Adaptation Theory in his book Understanding Pragmatics (1999), which has been widely applied in fields of pragmatic study. A ready and successful example can be found in Chinese scholar Yu Guodong's pragmatic Adaptation Model for CS study , which, based on Verschueren's theory, categories the phenomenon of CS into three kinds: CS as adaptation to the linguistic reality, CS as adaptation to the social conventions, and CS as adaptation to the psychological motivations. (Yu, 2001, 2004) In the present study, the Linguistic Adaptation Theory, as well as the Adaptation Model for CS study will be adopted as the theoretical basis.The research of CS involves various fields, among which, the CS study in the computer-mediated communication (henceforth CMC) context, a field that cannot and should not be neglected, deserves further efforts. Along with the occurrence and development of Internet culture, CMC has become a new academic focus of linguistic studies. The present paper is a tentative applied study of CS in CMC context, and it is based on Verschueren's Linguistic Adaptation Theory and Yu's Adaptation Model.The present study has answered the following questions:...