An Investigation Of Chinese-English Code-switching In Undergraduates’ Campus Life

With the development of international communications and cooperations amongcountries, English, as a global language, has been learned and utilized by a considerablenumber of people in the world. Immersed in such kind of atmosphere, the Chinesegovernment attaches importance to English education as well and therefore makes plenty ofpeople have a good command of English and develop bilingual abilities, especially for thoseundergraduates on campus. Most of the time, however, they use English and Chinesealternatively in the same conversation in campus life. This phenomenon is called"Chinese-English code-switching", which has been particularly investigated in theuniversities located in the south of China. Up to now, few people have made an empiricalstudy of it in the northern parts of the country. In this sense, aided by previous studies, thepresent research expects to explore Chinese-English CS in undergraduates’ campus life in thefour universities of Hebei province, aiming to reveal the current situations of Chinese-EnglishCS in undergraduates’ campus life in the country.In the present research, with the purpose to find more motivations of Chinese-English CS,the author collects45Chinese-English CS dialogues on campus by means of observation,interview and recording for three months. Then, Yu Guodong’s Adaptation Model ofChinese-English CS is adopted to analyze those dialogues, and12motivations ofChinese-English CS are discovered, including three newly-found motivations, namely,"theexpression of special feelings","language learning and practice" and "a habit of switchingunconsciously".Then, a questionnaire survey is conducted among undergraduates from the fouruniversities in Hebei province to investigate the general situations of Chinese-English CS inundergraduates’ campus life. Detailed analyses are carried out in terms of frequency, forms,attitudes, factors that impede their use of Chinese-English CS and the motivations ofemploying it. The results show that Chinese-English CS is common and popular inundergraduates’ campus life and it often occurrs in the form of words or phrases; most undergraduates tend to be more acceptable of this specific linguistic phenomenon as they holda positive or neutral attitude to it;"having no suitable environments and chances tocommunicate in English" works as the first factor that hinders the undergraduates’ use ofChinese-English CS;"tone-softening","accurate quotation","lexical-gap filling" and "theexpression of special feelings" are the four primary motivations of undergraduates’conducting Chinese-English CS in campus life. Besides, English majors and non-Englishmajors behave distinctly in employing Chinese-English CS in terms of frequency, attitudesand factors that affect their use of it. Therefore, the use of Chinese-English CS inundergraduates’ campus life shows differences by major.Based on the above results, this research figures out "English invasion" is the root thatcauses the occurrence of Chinese-English CS in undergraduates’ campus life and also bringsabout some potential problems, especially "the Chinese language crisis". In view of theproblem, some suggestions are provided for the Chinese government, who is supposed toattach a great deal of value to the issue and adopt positive language policy to protect thesocial status of the Chinese language.This thesis is made up of five chapters. Chapter1serves as a brief introduction to thepresent study, comprising the background, the motivation, the purpose, the significance andthe organization of the thesis. Chapter2clarifies key terms adopted in the research, code andcode-switching, and then gives a general review of achievements on code-switching at homeand abroad, especially the domestic empirical studies of Chinese-English code-switching oncampus. Chapter3introduces research design, including research questions, subjects,instruments, data collection and data analysis. Chapter4offers a detailed description anddiscussion of the results and findings based on the six research questions put forward. Chapter5makes a conclusion of the major findings and points out the limitations of the presentresearch as well as suggestions for further studies.