Code-Switching

My group is responsible for interviewing the age group of 23-39. Comparing to another groups, interviewees of this group are so diverse in terms of their education background and occupation. I mostly conduct my survey via phone calls and I have already acquainted all the 4 interviewees beforehand. The first part of the paper sets the scene for data analysis whereby the complex motivations and attitude involved will be explored while the second part is devoted to examine the methodology being used.
Part One
From my group’s data, all respondents code-mix in which nearly all of them completed high school and half of them finished bachelor or master degree. It can be concluded that code-mixing between Cantonese and English is so commonplace among educated Hongkongers. While English divides people into those who know the language or don’t ,it implies the intentions of speakers to impress the interlocutor of their knowledge of English, by doing so, to construct their identity or express solidarity and membership to the middle-class. This is known as metaphorical switching which means each code represents or symbolizes a set of social meanings.
It can be observed that the domain is one of the crucial factors behind bilingual’s code-mixing behavior. Among the most prominent domains are school, workplace and family. In each of the domains, many discourse topics require the register (cultural or field specific vocabulary) in the guest language and therefore trigger code-mixing behavior. One of the interviewees pointed out that in the school domain, code-mixed English expressions range from technical jargon to everyday school vocabulary such as curriculum, lexical, grammar, presentation and lecture etc. Another respondent recalled the way how her colleagues sprinkle English words in Cantonese-dominating sentences in office chit-chat. In such context, mostly noun or noun phrases in English will be mixed. Example will be contract, form, follow up, memo, appointment and quota...