Introduction
Research backgroundIn recent years, the relationship between China and other countries in the worldis getting closer with the development of globalization and informationization. Underthis circumstance, code-switching has been a natural product of the interaction ofdifferent languages and cultures. It is such a common but important languagephenomenon that we can find in almost every aspect of our daily life. Therefore, thethesis will mainly discuss the phenomenon of Chinese-English code-switching inadvertisements on Taobao from the perspective of Relevance Theory.Code-switching has been widely discussed in the field of linguistics and otherrelated fields. Code-switching refers to the phenomenon of alternation between two(or more) languages or language varieties in the same communicating discourse (ZhuWanjin, 1994). Code-switching is a common phenomenon in language contact. Due tolanguage contact, it usually occurs in bilingual settings. Chinese-Englishcode-switching usually occurs on mass media in daily life in China, such as in newsreports, magazines, television programs, popular songs, advertisements, web pages,etc. As such a hot topic, code-switching has aroused wide attention in various fieldsfrom psychology to sociology, from cultural anthropology to linguistics.The syntactic study focuses on the description of the linguistic structure and thecharacteristics of two languages, especially on syntactic restrictions of two languages.This approach explains some grammatical rules of code-switching, but ignores thepositive effects of psychological, cultural and social factors in code-switching. Thepsychological study aims to understand how brain to store, distinguish and choose allkinds of codes in a particular language environment, however, it cannot propose aconvicting model to explain code-switching.
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Purpose and Significance of the Research
This study focuses on the characteristics of Chinese-English code-switching inadvertisements and the applications of Relevance Theory in advertisements on Taobao.First of all, this study makes an attempt to analyze the characteristics of theadvertisements which contain Chinese-English code-switching. And then, it isdevoted to analyze the reasons for using code-switching in advertisements. Thirdly, itattempts to carry on a deeper analysis on the application of Relevance Theory to thestudy and on the effects of code-switching in advertisements. At last, it attempts to putforward some possible suggestions to improve their effectiveness of sales promotion.The significance of this study can be stated from the following aspects.Firstly, it is out of the consideration for China’s current language use. With thecontinuous improvement in the degree of internationalization of China, interactionsbetween different ethnic nations have become more and more frequent. Bilingual ormultilingual phenomenon appeared. Language harmony is the basic requirement ofbuilding a harmonious society, while code-switching is an inevitable result ofmultilingual phenomenon. So more and more Chinese citizens, especially youngpeople, are motivated to learn a second even a third language for a bettercommunication. The prestige of English is quite clear in the dynamic process oflanguage contact. Many studies have been applied to text-based discourse, languagesused in online chatting, and so on. However, the advertisements containChinese-English code-switching which have not achieved much attention as theyshould have. This study would be a little contribution to the range of code-switchingresearch.
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Chapter One Literature Review
1.1 An overview of Code-Switching
With the rapid development of multicultural communication, code-switching hascaught much attention in many fields. Because of language contact, code-switchingfrequently takes place in our daily conversations. Therefore, it is a phenomenonworthy of serious concerning and thorough study. Many scholars both from China andabroad have done remark
