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With the increasing cultural exchanges between different cultures, languagecontact has become an unavoidable phenomenon; and as more and most languagescome together, people are no longer restricted by only one language when expressingan idea, but rather, have many other available options at their disposal. They alternatebetween different languages instead of just sticking to one. Here comes into being theact of code-switching. This is exactly the case of Hong Kong. Cantonese is the nativelanguage of Hong Kong people. However, as it was once colonized by Great Britain,English here was also widely used. As a result, the code-switching between Cantoneseand English is very common in Hong Kong. The present study focuses itself on thestudy of Cantonese and English code-switching in Hong Kong.Code-switching refers to the switch from one language to another language in thesame conversation or communication. Since the 1970s, many scholars all over theworld have devoted their efforts to the studies of the phenomenon of code-switching.The angles of research that they have adopted are various. Some study code-switchingfrom the perspective of sociolinguistics, some adopt the grammatical analysisapproach, some view it form the psycholinguistic angle, and others apply thepragmatic approach like conversation analysis.All these approaches, though different, can all be subcategorized into either thestudies of the form or the studies of the function. On the one hand, researchers keenon the form devote themselves to the analysis of the grammatical features ofcode-switching; on the other hand, researchers keen on the function focus their effortson the analysis of the social and human-related meanings of code-switching.However, besides grammatical features, the features of the sounds are also partsof the features of the form. The sonic trait of code-switching is one neglected part ofthe studies of the form.What’s more, the traditional studies of the functions of code-switching alwayspresume that code-switching is strategic, deliberate and function-fulfilling. Yet, thestudies of the cases in Hong Kong reveal that this is not the whole story, that manycases of code-switching are actually subconscious, involuntary andnon-function-fulfilling.Therefore, the present study aims to achieve an overall analysis ofcode-switching. The analysis of the sonic features will be added to the traditionalgrammatical analysis. What’s more, the non-function-fulfilling side of code-switchingwill also be explored alongside with the studies of the function-fulfilling side of it.

1.2 The Language Profile in Hong Kong

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Hong Kong was colonized by theGreat Britain, which made a great impact on the culture and the language of this area.At that time, English functioned as the only official language. At the same time,Cantonese was the most frequently-used language in people’s daily lives. (XuXiaoye,2010 :2)Since the implementation of the policy “illiteracy (in written Chinese and English)and trilingualism (in English, Cantonese and standard Mandarin)”, both the Cantoneseand English serve as the official languages in HK.（Zou Jiayan,1997: 15-22）As Hong Kong people have two languages at their disposal, it is very natural thatthey will at some time or other alternate between Cantonese 本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。