A Study On The Structures And Functions Of Code-switching In Chinese Auto Magazines

Since the 1970s, a large number of researches on code-switching have been conducted by linguistics, and many significant achievements have been made in the linguistic field. Study on code-switching started in late 1990s in China, which mainly focus on classroom interaction, advertisements, newspapers and TV plays. According to my study, Chinese-English code-switching in auto magazine is very popular and has been accepted by readers. The acellerated development of the auto industry provides a great opportunity to the development of auto magazines. In the meanwhile, the improvement of people’s life and increasing of auto consumers from 1990s both stimulate the increasing demand of auto magazines.In this study,9873 instances of Chinese-English code-switching are collected from 4 kinds of magazines:Auto Fun and AutoNews, AutoOwners, China Auto Pictorial, these sample magazines are twelve issues in total published from July to September in 2010. First,9873 instances of code-switching are analyzed under Myers-Scotton’s MLF model to find out the structure types and distribution of each type in Chinese auto magazines. The analysis are also expected to find the structural property and regularity of Chinese-English code-switching. Second, based on Yu Guodong’s pragmatic adaptation model, the functions that code-switching performs are analyzed from tree aspects of adaptation:adaptation to linguistic reality, social conventions and psychological motivations.The findings of this research are as follows:(1) In Chinese auto magazines, Chinese is matrix language and English is embedded language.(2) In terms of switching types, both flagged switching and intra-sentential switching are predominant over smooth switching, inter-sentential switching and tagged switching. Among the switched linguistic elements, words are predominant over other linguistic elements(letter, phrase, sentence). In lexical code-switching, content words occupy most of inserted words, among which nouns are dominant and proper nouns show a much higher percentage. (3) As for the functions of code-swiching, the writers and editors of Chinese auto magazines employ code-switching to realize adaptation to linguistic reality, the social conventions and the psychological motivations. The use of code-switching is also helpful to meet the readers’linguistic favor. The adaptation to linguistic reality suggets that code-switching can fill the lexical gap, adapt to foreign-made products and the linguistic features of Chinese and English. Adaptation to social conventions is realized by using code-switching to avoid taboo or embarrassment topics in Chinese. Adaptation to psychological motivations shows that code-switching can perform the functions of foreign flavor gaining, humor-creating, conveniece and emphasis.Generally speaking, the Chinese-English code-switching in Chinese auto magazines is not only adaptation to linguistic structures of both languages, it is also adaptation the linguistic reality, social conventions and psychological motivations. The increasing appearance of code-switching in auto magazines reflects the psychology of society and participants, which is not only a linguistic phenomenon.