Fangzhe
The discussion of code-switching in class was quite interesting and it triggers some further thoughts.
An interesting fact is the mention that adding English words in conversations in China is regarded as a kind of showing off. This may sound very weird to people who have long been living in a neighborhood where shifting between different languages is a common practice. The perception is probably derived from the distorted imagery of some TV shows that depict a figure who likes to combine some English words into every sentence he or she speaks, mostly in a funny way, to demonstrate that he or she can speak the language. Criticism also comes from teachers and parents, saying that if the students mix two languages together, they are not learning either language well. Currently in China, although some people still hold this kind of stereotype, more people are accepting this phenomenon as a common scene in the workplace or even daily life.
I did not realize how much code-switching is happening in my life until one day I happened to click on one of the voice messages that I sent to my mom. It was mixed with Mandarin and the dialect I have been speaking since I was born, in an awkward way. I always thought that when I communicate with my mom, I only used Mandarin when I cannot find a proper match in the dialect, but my use of Mandarin was more frequent in our conversation. Obviously, I am not using Mandarin to ‘show off’ to my mom.
From the observations of the Bulgarian Canadians, Yankova and Vassileva (2013) point out that L1 is more related to informal and personal communications while L2 takes on the formal functions. Therefore, it is harder to retrieve a word or phrase from the less used domain. Also, sometimes we use code-switching because the concept is more easily rendered in another language. It helps explain why I use Mandarin to talk to my mom on some occasions. Mandarin for me is more like a language related to my school life and work and my dialect is used in more personal communications with my family. Maybe the more time I spend using Mandarin, the more possible it is that I will put some words and phrases in Mandarin in my daily conversation with my family. There was even once when I said a word in English to my parents because it was a very culture-specific term and I have no ideas about how to describe it in Chinese using simpler expressions. But anyway, I translated it literally and explained what it meant, because they couldn’t understand English very well.
Also, I find that the concept of style shifting according to Van Herk (2012) helps me better understand why I code-switch. The amount of code-mixing and what types of language I use are closely related to whom I am speaking with. For example, I will use more Mandarin when I talk to my grandparents because they speak another dialect different from the dialect I speak. So, I believe in this way they can understand me better. The use of English when I talk to my friends that share similar communicative repertoire often depends on how much they know about English and Chinese and how much the same background we share. All these slight adjustments are the result of what is called ‘audience design’, which means we shift styles to accommodate the audience (p.105). In this case, code-switching can be considered as a good method to make the conversation smoother. But if you use the inappropriate style when talking to someone, such as constantly using English words with a person who knows little English, it makes others feel that you are showing off.
Van Herk, G. (2012). What is Sociolinguistics? Chichester, U.K.: Wiley-Blackwell.
Yankova, D., & Vassileva, I. (2013). Functions and mechanisms of code-switching in Bulgarian Canadians. Études Canadiennes / Canadian Studies, 103-121. doi:10.4000/eccs.254
Hi, Fangzhe, this is a very interesting post. This reminds me of a vlogger I have been following on Chinese social media who frequently uses code switching in her video while get roasted by some of the audience. I didn’t feel anything wrong when I was watching her vlogs because her switching was smooth and didn’t mean to show off from my perspective, however, I was shocked when I saw tons of comments blaming her for using too many English words. I agree with you that the frequency of code switching depends on whether the interlocutors share similar English repertoire with me. If the audience or interlocutors are not very familiar with English, I would manage to avoid using English expressions, although sometimes I find it difficult and awkward to translate some English terms into Mandarine, such as “presentation”, “facilitation”, “reading week”, etc.
Mengting L
It’s true that people’s attitudes towards the phenomenon of code-switching vary from person to person. I quite agree with you that people’ s different responses to code-switching, to a large extent, are deeply related to their own communicative repertoire and their language proficiency. The reason why some people regard code-switching as “showing off”, on the one hand, is probably out of sheer psychological unbalance, usually accompanied with unequal language proficiency among the interlocutors, so it’s easy for them to feel like they are inferior to others and thus reject and even disdain code-switching instinctively. On the other hand, if code-switching takes place in an inappropriate and awkward way, even if the interlocutors share the same linguistic repertoire and language proficiency, they would still have the impression that the speaker is just bragging about the fact that he/she can speak more than one language.
Yating Xu