社会语言学85817.docVIP

Code—Switching in Chinese／English Bilingual Speakers [Abstract] A phenomenon could not be ignored with more and more people being able to manage two or three kinds of languages．They tend to use some words or sentences in other language when they are conversing in their mother tongue among bilinguals． They code switch in order to fill a linguistic need，to emphasize group identity and to make their conversation interesting，as is found out in the survey carried by the author among 15 Chinese／English bilinguals． [Key words] code—switching；bilinguaI；linguistic 1 Introduction 0ver the past few decades more and more people in China are learning Eng1ish．Children begin to learn English much earlier than did their parents．And some children in urban areas begin to learn English even in kindergarten． Those adults who missed the chance of learning English during their youth are trying to make up for this by entering professional or training schools． With more and more people now speaking English， a new phenomenon has arisen which needs attention．That is when people are conversing in Chinese among English—Chinese bilinguals，they tend to use some English words or sentences in their utterances，no matter if they are home or abroad，when conversing among English—Chinese bilinguals．The occasional switching from Chinese to English in their conversations is increasingly popular．Now we shall explore whom it is that uses this code switching， and how and why they resort to code switching． 2 How they code—switch Code—switching is a very important aspect of bilingualism．Gumperz(1 982：1 35) defined “code switching” as “the juxtaposition within the same speech exchange of passages of speech belonging to two different grammatical systems or subsystems．” Di Pietro (1977：37)gave the definition of code—switching athe use of more than one language by communicants in the execution of a speech act， while Valdes FaUis (1 976)refers to it simply as “the alternation of two languages.” From the co11ected