Code-switching is one of the results of language contact. And, English language is the lingua franca and most widely spoken around the world. In China, although English is not a native language, it has gradually gained its importance in different aspe...
Code-switching is one of the results of language contact. And, English language is the lingua franca and most widely spoken around the world. In China, although English is not a native language, it has gradually gained its importance in different aspects of Chinese society with its global influence and is a compulsory course for the students to take to reach a certain level of proficiency. English code-switching is not uncommon in Chinese society especially since China opened its door to the outside in 1978 and speeded up its communication with the outside world. English-Chinese code-switching began to appear in various kinds of domains like advertisements, pop-music, movies, novels, internet etc. This study probed English code-switching in Chinese popular culture by mainly focusing on the domain of Chinese popular songs. It built one Chinese popular music corpus consisting of lyrics of 784 Chinese popular songs. The study addresses the following three research questions:
1. What are the most frequently-used English words in code-switching in the discourse of Chinese popular songs and to what extent is English used?
2. What are the syntactic patterns and features shown in English code-switching in the discourse of Chinese popular songs?
3. What are the functions for using English code-switching in the discourse of Chinese popular songs?
To address question 1, this paper adopts the corpus software Antconc to analyze the Chinese popular music corpus, firstly, 147 of 784 Chinese popular song lyrics containing code switching are converted into text files. Secondly, quantitative method is used to make a clear understanding about the recent general tendency of English code-switching in the discourse of Chinese popular songs in Chinese popular culture by calculating the numbers containing the code-switching in the corpus. Thirdly, the corpus software Antconc is used to analyze the converted text files. The main retrieval function to be used is word list, by using the retrieval function of word list, the top 20 most frequently used 1-word, 2-word and 3-word clusters are identified. Quantitative and qualitative methodologies combined are used to make an analysis about the use of English in the discourse of Chinese popular songs.
To address question 2, Myers-Scotton’s Matrix Language Frame Model (1993) is employed as the theoretical basis to explore the syntactic patterns of code-switching in the discourse of Chinese popular songs. At the same time, types of Code-switching by Poplack (1998) and Bautisa’s (1998) intra-sentential code-switching are also utilized to analyze the syntactic structures and features. Then, each syntactic pattern is illustrated with the specific examples and analyzed qualitatively and quantitatively.
To address question 3, Appel and Muysken’s (2006) revised functions of code-switching and other function analysis are used concurrently as a fundamental framework to interpret the main functions used in the discourse of Chinses popular songs.