Session Information
31 SES 05.5 PS, General Poster Session
General Poster Session
Contribution
The alternative use of letters/words/phrase/sentences of the second language when having daily conversations with those who share the first language is not an extraordinary phenomenon, which can be generally called code-switching. This study investigated social motivations for and perceptions on code-switching of Chinese overseas students in the study abroad context. Transcriptions of audio recordings of spontaneous conversations produced by 6 Chinese graduate overseas students during their daily conversations with peers and stimulated-recall interviews were collected.
Based on the theoretical background and in order to bridge the gap in the knowledge concerning overseas students and code-switching, the research questions that aim to determine the perceptions of their code-switching and the motivations underlying this phenomenon are as follows:
1. What are the social motivations for Chinese overseas students to code-switch among themselves in the study abroad context?
2. How do Chinese overseas students perceive their Chinese and English code-switching?
3. What might the research results contribute to the Markedness Model?
The first question is the most urgent and important question of the present study, which aims to investigate the social factors that trigger the participants to code-switch between Chinese and English. The Markedness Model put forward by Myers-Scotton (1993) was applied to categorize the social motivations of the participants. Whether the participants code-switch in accordance with these four types, as mentioned in section 2, will be investigated. Moreover, the specific social motivations belonging to each category will be explored as well.
The second question deals with the ‘perspective’ question of the code-switching analysis, which examines the participants’ general attitudes towards code-switching and towards each category of code-switching according to the Markedness Model. Since social motivations and attitudes are correlated with each other, the second research question will help us to understand the first research question and provide a more thorough perspective of the understanding of the Chinese overseas students in the study abroad context. It was also expected that code-switching among Chinese overseas students plays an important role in their daily life and the perspective of it tends to be positive and related to social factors. Through answering this research question, a proper attitude towards the variation in language use can be built.
The last question aims to establish whether or not the code-switching data collected in the study fits the existing code-switching theory, namely the Markedness Model. The motivation analysis of code-switching is mainly focused on the Anglo-Saxon language family, but whether it is also suitable for the analysis of languages belonging to different language families has not yet been thoroughly investigated. Furthermore, the data collected to prove the model were mainly drawn from dinner table conversations conducted between parents and children, so the relation between these two parties is always unequal. Partly due to this reason, there are many cases of the employment of code-switching to negotiate identities and to set up a new Rights and Obligations set. When it comes to conversations conducted between students who share similar identities, will they still negotiate their identities so frequently and how does this relationship influence their motivations? In addition, there are four themes that emerged concerning the maxims of code choice. Through analysing the data, is it possible that a new maxim could be concluded among this community? In brief, the present study analysed the collected code-switching data to see whether the existing theories can match it and further contribute to the development of the code-switching theory. To answer this question, an analysis of the recordings was conducted combined the presentation of stimulated-recall interviews.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
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