VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES LÊ HƯƠNG THẢO VIETNAMESE-ENGLISH CODE-SWITCHING IN CONVERSATIONS AMONG VIETNAMESE EFL TEACHERS: A CASE STUDY Hiện tượng chuyển mã tiếng Việt-tiếng Anh trong hội thoại giữa các giáo viên dạy tiếng Anh như một ngoại ngữ: Nghiên cứu một trường hợp cụ thể M. COMBINED PROGRAMME THESIS Major: English Linguistics Major code: 60 22 15 Hanoi – 2012 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES LÊ HƯƠNG THẢO VIETNAMESE-ENGLISH CODE-SWITCHING IN CONVERSATIONS AMONG VIETNAMESE EFL TEACHERS: A CASE STUDY Hiện tượng chuyển mã tiếng Việt-tiếng Anh trong hội thoại giữa các giáo viên dạy tiếng Anh như một ngoại ngữ: Nghiên cứu một trường hợp cụ thể M. COMBINED PROGRAMME THESIS Major: English Linguistics Major code: 60 22 15 Supervisor: Assoc. Trần Xuân Điệp Hanoi - 2012 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com TABLE OF CONTENTS Certification of authority of the study………………………………………………i Acknowledgements…………………………………………………………………ii Abstract…………………………………………………………………………….iii List of tables and abbreviations……………………………………………………vii CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION.
Rationale of the study. Aims and research questions of the study. Scope of the study. Methods of the study.
Significance of the study. Overview of the rest of the study. 4 CHAPTER 2: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND. Definitions of bilingualism.
Types of bilingualism. Bilinguals‟ language choice. Code, code-switching, code-mixing, lexical borrowing, and interference. Code-switching and code-mixing.
Code-switching and lexical borrowing. Code-switching and interference. Linguistic constraints on code-switching. Typologies of code-switching.
Poplack‟s typology of code-switching. 17 iv TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail. Bloom and Gumperz‟s typology of code-switching. Communicative functions of and reasons for code-switching.
Previous studies on Vietnamese – English code-switching and in Vietnamese context. Description of the context and participants. Data collection method. Data collection instruments.
Data collection procedure. Coding and data analysis procedure. 30 CHAPTER 4: RESULTS AND DISCUSSION. Research question 1: What are the types of code-switching found in conversations between Vietnamese EFL teachers at English Division 1, FELTE, ULIS, VNU?.
Categorization of detected instances of code-switching according to Poplack‟s (1980) typology. Quantification of instances of intra-sentential code-switching by syntactic category. Overview description of intra-sentential code-switching by syntactic category. Research question 2: What are the reasons for the use of code-switching in conversations between Vietnamese EFL teachers at English Division 1, FELTE, v TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.study ULIS, VNU?.
Limitations of the study. Suggestions for further studies. IV vi TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.study LIST OF TABLES AND ABBREVIATIONS LIST OF TABLES Page Table 1. Example of equivalence of constraint.
Breakdown of detected code-switching instances according to Poplack‟s (1980) typology. Break down of intra-sentential code-switching by syntactic category. Switched nouns and noun phrases by semantic category. Switched verbs and verb phrases by semantic category.
Breakdown of detected code-switching instances according to reason (proposed by Malik 1994; Appel and Muysken 2006). 36 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS EFL: English as a Foreign Language L1: the first language L2: the second language FELTE: Faculty of English Language Teacher Education ULIS: University of Languages and International Studies VNU: Vietnam National University vii TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.study CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 1. Rationale of the study Rapid globalization in several aspects of life in the past few decades has strengthened the dominant role of English as the most important foreign language in Vietnam, traditionally a monolingual country. As a result, it is common to find an increasing number of bilinguals speaking Vietnamese and English at the same time here.
That is, they use a mixed language and also switch back and forth between two languages while conversing or lecturing. This phenomenon, defined by linguists as code-switching (code-switching) or code-mixing, is “a well-known trait in the speech pattern of the average bilingual in any human society the world over” (Ayeomoni, 2006). Unlike other sociolinguistic phenomena such as pidgins and creoles where speakers in contact only need to have knowledge of the common language that is used to communicate with speakers of other languages, code- switching requires its speakers to know at least two or more varieties, making it an activity exclusive to only bilinguals. Therefore, studying code-switching in the area of bilingualism is central to gaining a better insight into bilinguals‟ process of utterances.
Code-switching is a widespread phenomenon in “bilingual communities where speakers use their native tongue (L1) and their second language (L2) in different domains” (Kim, 2006). Among these communities, that of teachers teaching English as a foreign language (EFL) are believed to be a group where code-switching is used frequently, especially when these teachers communicate with people working in the same field. Indeed, the alternate use of Vietnamese and English at work, to a certain extent, is an integral part of their communication with each other. This is understandable, considering the fact that EFL teachers, while living in their first language environment, are constantly exposed to English in their work and studies.
In the researcher‟s initial observation, code-switching is most pronounced in conversations between EFL teachers teaching English skills in tertiary level. Since the researcher is a member of this bilingual community in a university in Vietnam, 1 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.study she has been captivated by code-switching used among her colleagues, and therefore decided to investigate this phenomenon. Quite a number of research studies have been written on this code-switching phenomenon in recent years. In addition to early works that concentrate on linguistic aspects of code-switching (Gumperz 1976; Poplack 1980), much of recent research, which was conducted in countries other than Vietnam, has been concerned with the use of code-switching in the foreign and second language classroom (Moore 2002; Celik 2003; Dailey-O‟Cain & Liebscher 2005), in Internet chatting (Cardenas-Claros & Isharyanti 2009), in advertising (Chen 2006, Leung 2010) and in conversations between fellow expatriates (Ho-Dac 2003; Jalil 2009).
However, so far very little research has dealt with code-switching in Vietnam as well as of Vietnamese –English bilinguals, a linguistic phenomenon which has become common in their daily speech. Obviously, research on code-switching is still in its infancy in Vietnam and therefore leaves many gaps for those who are interested in this topic to investigate. This study aims at filling this gap. It illustrates the patterns and finds out the reasons for code-switching among Vietnamese EFL teachers at English Division 1, Faculty of English Language Teacher Education (FELTE), Hanoi University of Languages and International Studies (ULIS), Vietnam National University (VNU).
In a word, keen interest in bilinguals‟ process of utterances in general and code- switching used by her colleagues in particular, and the need to examine unanswered questions left in the field have been key motivations for the researcher to conduct this study. Aims and research questions of the study The first objective set out in this study is to review existing literature published by influential scholars on this topic. Next, the study purports to investigate the types of code-switching among Vietnamese EFL teachers at English Division 1, Faculty of English Language Teacher Education, ULIS, VNU, using the theories proposed by Poplack (1980), Malik (1994), and Appel and Mu ysken (2006) as principles of 2 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.study classification and analysis. The final aim of this research is to explore the reasons for code-switching among this bilingual community.
In short, the study aims to answer the two following research questions: 1. What are the types of code-switching found in conversations between Vietnamese EFL teachers at English Division 1, Faculty of English Language Teacher Education, ULIS, VNU? 2. What are the reasons for the use of code-switching in conversations between Vietnamese EFL teachers at English Division 1, Faculty of English Language Teacher Education, ULIS, VNU? 1. Scope of the study This is a case study that only examines the phenomenon of code-switching among Vietnamese EFL teachers at English 1, Faculty of English Language Teacher Education, ULIS, VNU.
The use of code-switching by teachers in other divisions, albeit equally frequent, is not within the scope of this study. This work also focuses on patterns of code-switching found in conversations among the participants, though code-switching can appear in written form. Added to this, the settings of these conversations are limited to places on campus only, most of which are teacher‟s break rooms or conference halls during break times. More importantly, the conversations under investigation in this study are informal ones covering daily spontaneous topics, which means discussions of issues in scheduled meetings or conferences are excluded.
Methods of the study Both qualitative and quantitative methods were employed in order to find answers to the research questions. First, natural conversations between participants were audio recorded and transcribed to identify instances of code-switching, which then were grouped according to Poplack‟s theory (1980). This qualitative method was used to draw findings to the first research question concerning types of Vietnamese- English code-switching found in the recorded conversations between Vietnamese EFL teachers. 3 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.study Next, transcripts of conversations along with a short teacher‟s self-report form were delivered to participants in order to obtain their reflection on what caused them to code-switch.
Collected data were then calculated and grouped. Employing the quantitative method at this stage, the researcher sought to find out the answers to the second research questions on reasons for the participants‟ code-switching. Significance of the study As one of the few studies conducted on the topic of code-switching, this research is expected to shed some light on the understanding of this phenomenon among EFL teachers in general and Vietnamese EFL teachers in particular, thereby encouraging more researchers to look into this topic. Also, with the findings of the study, the researcher wishes to raise sociolinguistic-related issues for other studies to discuss, such as attitudes towards this phenomenon, or its development in the coming years.
The completion of this paper may make other possible contributions to conversation analysis as a means of ethnographic methodology, and to discourse analysis from a sociolinguistic perspective. Additionally, this paper is expected to contribute to studies of speech community of this particular population in the specified setting. Lastly, this research is supposed to lay the foundation for the researcher‟s future studies on bilingualism and code-switching. Overview of the rest of the study The rest of the study is comprised of four chapters which are as follows.
Chapter two, Theoretical Background, reviews prominent literature directly relevant to the topic being discussed. Chapter three, Methodology, presents the methods used for data collection and data analysis as well as justification for these methods. Chapter three is followed by the fourth chapter, Results and Discussion, in which the findings of the study are discussed to answer the research questions. Finally in chapter five, recapitulation of the whole study is presented before suggestions for further studies and a conclusion are given.
4 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.study CHAPTER 2 THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 2. Introduction This chapter provides definitions and background of the theories and concepts related to the topic investigated in this research paper. More importantly, different systems of classifying code-switching as well as reasons for code-switching will be discussed in detail. Since the study is concerned with the phenomenon of code-switching in conversations, this chapter only reviews studies conducted on code-switching in daily communication between speakers, and excludes those on code-switching used in other contexts such as advertising, chat rooms, or language learning classrooms.
Definitions of bilingualism As code-switching is “the inevitable consequence of bilingualism” (Hudson, 1996, p. 51), it is necessary to discuss bilingualism in the review of literature related to code-switching. Numerous attempts have been made by linguists to describe and fully understand the concept of bilingualism. One of the earliest studies carried out by Bloomfield (1933, p.
56) broadly defines bilingualism as the “native-like control of two languages.