Chapter One Introduction
1.1 Background
With the increase of international communications, more and more people are gradually aware of the importance of learning two or more languages as a tool, which brings about globalization, integration and diversity. Bilingualism and multilingualism have become a common social phenomenon in bilingual communities. Code-switching has become more and more popular in verbal communication, and its research has been conducted in many subjects (Fan Lin & Li Shaoshan, 2013). Code-switching (Grosjean, 1992) refers to the process that bilinguals switch between two or more languages. Besides, the code-switching cost (Kolers, 1966) involving the longer reaction time and the lower accuracy rate happens when the bilinguals switch from one language to another. The reaction time is different between from first language to second language and from second language to first language, which is called the code-switching asymmetry. Generally speaking, domestic researchers mainly focus on Chinese-English bilinguals, and oversea researchers pay more attention to Spanish-English bilinguals (e.g., Hermandez et al., 2000; Fernandez et al., 2013), German-Dutch bilinguals (e.g., Christoffels et al., 2007), and French-English bilinguals (e.g., Martin-Rhee & Bialystok, 2008). Although their researches have notice of the code-switching asymmetry, the reason for it remains controversial. Some researchers showed that it is related to the central executive control mechanism (e.g., Mu?oz, Marquardt & Copeland, 1999; Kohnert, Bates & Hernandez, 1999), while others indicated that it is concerned with the second language proficiency (e.g., Rodriguez-Fornells et al., 2005; Bialystok, 2001).
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1.2 Research Objectives
The present study tries to explore the asymmetric effect in the code-switching process for Chinese-French bilinguals with different proficiency levels by the E-prime. Two experiments were conducted to determine two questions: (1) Does code-switching cost happens to Chinese-French bilinguals both in Chinese to French and French to Chinese switching mode? (2) If there is code-switching cost, how does code-switching direction and French proficiency affect language code-switching process?
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Chapter Two Literature Review
In Chapter Two, the author will firstly give definitions to basic concepts of main terms related to the study, including bilingualism, mental lexicon, code-switching, code-switching, code-switching cost, code-switching asymmetry. In the second part, two theoretical theories relevant to asymmetric code-switching cost, the Bilingual Interactive Activation+ Model and Revised Hierarchical Model, will be introduced in detail. In the next part, previous studies on Chinese-French bilinguals, code-switching cost, and code-switching asymmetry will be illustrated one by one. In the last part, the limitations of the previous studies will be stated.
2.1 Key Concepts
Bilingualism refers to the phenomenon and disciplines relative to bilingual acquisition and usage and bilingual refers to those people who master and are able to use two or more than two languages. As the result of social development and conventions, the existence of bilingual and bilingualism begin to come into being. Apparently, bilingualism is a concept clearly defined without any ambiguity, which involves all the activities and phenomenon that come down to two or more languages. However, bilingual has been a controversial concept in the field of bilingual studies, and different researchers have different understanding about what kind of individuals can be considered as bilinguals. There have been many definitions of bilinguals in literature, but there is little consensus about what bilinguals exactly are. Generally speaking, the degree of proficiency has always been the main focus when trying to define the bilingual. Some researchers regard total proficiency in both languages as a criterion to call him or her a bilingual. For example, Bloomfield (1933) defined the bilingualism as the native-like control of two languages, which means the one who does not possess any kind of shortcomings in the second language can be called a bilingual. Paradis (1986) defined the bilingual more strictly as a person who can make habitual, fluent, correct and accent-free use of two languages and gain nearly native control of both languages. However, others have a more liberal and broad view on the definition of bilingual. Haugen (1953) stated that the speaker of one language who can produce complete meaningful utterances in the other language is a bilingual. A similar definition was offered by Weinreich (1953), who held that as long as a person takes an alternate use of two languages, he or she is a bilingual. Macnamara (1967) described the term bilingual as the following.
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2.2 Two Theoretical Models Related to the Study
Code-switching is an important research field of cognitive psycholinguistics. With the development of cognitive science, many researchers have studied bilingual code-switching during language production and understanding from different perspectives. In this section, two types of theories can be used to explain code-switching asymmetry are introduced. One is the Bilingual Interactive Activation+ Model (BIA+ Model), and the other one is Revised Hierarchical Model (RHM). With regard to code-switching process and the source of code-switching cost, Bilingual Interactive Activation+ Model (BIA+ Model) offers a quite typical view. Bilingual Interactive Activation+ Model (BIA+ Model) (Dijkstra & Van Heuven, 2002) is as the name implies, an extension of the Bilingual Interactive Activation Model (BIA Model) (Dijkstra & Van Heuven, 1998; Van Heuven, Dijkstra & Grainger, 1998), and has inherited the basic theory of the BIA Model which regards language as an integrated non-selective access of mental lexicon and a task decision system exists in there.
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Chapter Three Methodology ......... 33
3.1 Research Questions ....... 33
3.2 Research Design ........... 33
3.3 Method ........ 34
3.4 Data Collection and Analysis .......... 40
Chapter Four Results and Discussion ............ 42
4.1 Existence of Code-switching Cost ........... 42
4.2 Asymmetric Effect of Code-switching Direction ...... 43
4.3 Asymmetric Effect of Language Proficiency Levels .......... 47
4.4 General Discussion ....... 50
Chapter Five Conclusions .... 55
5.1 Major Findings ..... 55
5.2 Implications ......... 58
5.3 Limitations of the Study......... 59
5.4 Suggestions for Future Studies ....... 59
Chapter Four Results and Discussion
In last chapter, the thesis has introduced the two research questions, the research design, the research method and experimental procedures. In Chapter Four, one of the most important parts of the whole work, the experimental results will be presented and there will be a detailed discussion based on the results of the research. In the analysis of behavioral data, this paper mainly focuses on the reaction time. According to the data, the experimenter defines the participants whose accuracy rate is higher than 90% as valid participants, correspondingly, the participants whose accuracy is lower than 90% as invalid participants. Through analysis and comparison, two invalid participants belongs to high-proficient bilinguals, and one invalid participants belongs to low-proficient bilinguals. Therefore, the research has 28 valid participants in total, including 14 participants belonging to high-proficient bilinguals and 14 participants belonging to low-proficient bilinguals. Moreover, the experimenter deletes the extreme data of experiment results, accounting for 2.86% of the total data. At last, all analysis of behavioral data was processed by SPSS19.0.
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Conclusions
The study has explored the asymmetric effect in the code-switching process for Chinese-French bilinguals with different proficiency levels by employing the picture-word matching judgement task. This chapter is to make a general conclusion for the whole thesis. A summary of major findings will be depicted and some implications as well as limitations and suggestions for future studies will also be provided.The present study tries to explore the asymmetric effect in the code-switching process for Chinese-French bilinguals with different proficiency levels by the E-prime. Major findings in this study are summarized as the following. On the basis of the aim, three kinds of priming condition, including no priming, Chinese words priming and French words priming have been selected for creating a code-switching condition between two languages. And we design three experiments, respectively with no prime, Chinese prime and French prime. By means of an empirical study, we have discussed the two questions concerning code-switching asymmetry in the process of picture-word judgement for Chinese-French bilinguals with different proficiency levels. At last, by comparing the different RT data and ACC, we gain the following three conclusions, in response to answer the two research questions put forward in Chapter Three.in the process of language switching, code-switching cost happens to Chinese-French bilinguals both in L1→L2 and L2→L1 switching mode. From the statistical analysis in previous part, we find that bilinguals no matter high-proficient or low-proficient all have a code-switching cost during the switching process of two languages. Namely, the RT of non-switching is shorter than the RT of switching.
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The reference (omitted)