Hiện tượng pha trộn ngôn ngữ anh trong cáo báo mạng dành cho lứa tuổi thanh thiếu niên của việt nam

This language phenomenon is referred to as code mixing which is found to be quite common in online newspapers, especially on kenh14.vn, an online newspaper for teenagers which has great

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

o0o

BÙI THỊ THU

CODE-MIXING OF ENGLISH IN ONLINE NEWSPAPERS

FOR VIETNAMESE TEENAGERS

(HIỆN TƯỢNG PHA TRỘN NGÔN NGỮ ANH TRONG

CÁC BÁO MẠNG DÀNH CHO LỨA TUỔI THANH THIẾU NIÊN

CỦA VIỆT NAM)

M.A MINOR THESIS

Field: English Linguistics Code: 60220201

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

o0o

BÙI THỊ THU

CODE-MIXING OF ENGLISH IN ONLINE NEWSPAPERS

FOR VIETNAMESE TEENAGERS

(HIỆN TƯỢNG PHA TRỘN NGÔN NGỮ ANH TRONG

CÁC BÁO MẠNG DÀNH CHO LỨA TUỔI THANH THIẾU NIÊN

CỦA VIỆT NAM)

M.A MINOR THESIS

Hanoi, 2017

Field: English Linguistics Code: 60220201

Supervisor: Đỗ Thị Thanh Hà, Ph.D

CANDIDATE’S STATEMENT

-***** -

I certify that the thesis entitled

“CODE-MIXING OF ENGLISH IN ONLINE NEWSPAPERS FOR

VIETNAMESE TEENAGERS”

is my own work for the Degree of Master of Arts at Hanoi University of Languages and International, VNU and that all the materials have been identified and acknowledged The substance of this thesis has not been submitted for assessment

of any other formal course

Hanoi, March 2017

Bùi Thị Thu

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to acknowledge my debt to all the people who have helped me during the time I did my thesis since without these valuable helps, I wouldn’t have finished this done-with-passion study

First of all, I wish to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor, PhD Do Thi Thanh Ha whose significant insights, constructive comments and tremendous encouragements have helped me get through the struggling stages while I carried out the research

My appreciation is also extended to all the teachers of Post-graduate department - ULIS for their useful lectures which laid foundations for my research

I would also like to send my sincere thanks the students at secondary and high schools in Vinh Phuc, Ha Noi and Nam Dinh for their enthusiasm and willingness to give assistance to this study

Last but not least, I would like to send my thanks to my family and friends, especially my colleagues at Vinh Phuc College, for their understanding and unceasing support over time to me

ABSTRACT

Under the influence of globalization, English is becoming more popular in Vietnam Many Vietnamese, especially youngsters, like mixing English terms in their formal and informal communication This language phenomenon is referred

to as code mixing which is found to be quite common in online newspapers, especially on kenh14.vn, an online newspaper for teenagers which has great influence on Vietnamese youth This study aims to find out the patterns of as well

as readers’ attitude towards English terms mixed in the corpus In two columns on kenh14.vn namely “Star” and “Hoc Duong” investigated, there were 1099 English lexical items mixed; among which more than 78,3% are nouns while the rests are verbs and adjectives The results from 216 questionnaires collected from three different regions of Northern Vietnam showed that only half of the readers could understand or feel comfortable with the English words embedded It was also found that the readers living in the city could understand and feel more comfortable with code mixing They also did not find it difficult in reading the code-mixed articles However, they did not show as much preference and attention

to articles with code-mixing as the respondents from mountainous areas A significant finding is majority of readers refuse to blame on English code-mixing for destroying Vietnamese purity

TABLE OF CONTENTS

UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES i

UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES i

CANDIDATE’S STATEMENT i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii

ABSTRACT iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS iv

LIST OF TABLES vi

LIST OF FIGURES vii

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1

1.1 Rationale 1

1.2 Scopes and aims 2

1.3 Research questions 2

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 3

A THEORITICAL BACKGROUND 3

2.1 Code mixing 3

2.1.1 Code 3

2.1.2 Code mixing and code switching 3

2.1.3 Patterns of code mixing 3

2.1.4 Constraints on code mixing 4

2.1.4.2 Extra-linguistic factors related to code-mixing 5

2.1.5 Attitude of readers towards code mixing 6

2.2 Teenage language 7

2.2.1 Definition of teenage language 7

2.2.2 Vietnamese teenage language 8

B PREVIOUS STUDIES 10

CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY 15

3.1 Data Source 15

3.1.1 Kenh14.vn 15

3.1.2 Questionnaire 15

3.2 Data Collection 16

3.2.1 Choosing articles 16

3.2.2 Choosing participants for the questionnaire 16

3.2.3 Designing and delivering questionnaire 17

3.3 Data analysis 18

CHAPTER 4: PATTERNS OF CODE-MIXING - FINDINGSAND DISCUSSION 20

4.1 Findings of the quantification of mixed word class 20

4.2 Distribution of mixed words on kenh14.vn 21

4.3 Overview description and discussion of mixed word classes 22

4.3 1 Nouns 22

4.3.2 Verbs 27

4.3.3 Adjectives 28

4.4.4 Vocabulary combined between English and Vietnamese 31

CHAPTER 5: READERS’ ATTITUDES TO CODE-MIXING - FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 33

5.1 Part 1 of the questionnaires: Findings and Discussions 33

5.2 Part 2 of the Questionnaires: Findings and Discussions 33

5.3 Part 3 of the questionnaire: Findings and Discussion 35

5.4 Part 4 of the questionnaires: Findings and Discussion 41

CHAPTER 6: CONCLUSION 46

6.1 Summary 46

6.2 Implications 47

6.3 Limitations 47

6.4 Suggestions for further study 48

REFERENCES 49 APPENDIXES I APPENDIX 1 I APPENDIX 2 II APPENDIX 3 XII APPENDIX 4 XV

LIST OF TABLES

Table 1: Patterns of code-mixing 20

Table 2: Breakdown of mixing by word classes 21

Table 3: Respondents’ views on the code-mixing used in the two extracts 33

Table 4: Details of understanding and feeling good about 2 extracts 34

Table 5: Readers’ attitude to code mixing in articles on kenh14.vn 36

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1: Q3: You often understand articles on kenh14.vn with code

Figure 2: Q4: You often feel comfortable when you read articles on

Figure3: Q5: In general, you prefer code-mixing in articles on kenh14.vn 38

Figure 4: Q6: Articles with code mixing often draw your attention 38

Figure 5: Q3 & Q7: Comparison between the rate of understanding the

articles with code-mixing and the rate of having difficulty in reading those

articles

39

Figure 6: Q8: Code - mixing of English in articles on kenh14.vn destroys

Figure 7: Rate of understanding and feeling comfortable by regions 42

Figure 8: Readers' preference and attention level paid on code mixing in

Figure 9: Rate of difficulty had and agreement if code-mixing destroys

Vietnamese purity by regions 43

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1.1 Rationale

Being a lingua francas, English has certain influences on other languages in the way that many countries have become multilingual with the frequent use of

English in their daily life It is also no longer a rare phenomenon that many English

words used as substitutes appear in the newspapers or magazines of other languages, which has aroused interest of various linguistic and sociological researchers Sharing the same desire, we also wished to get the holistic view on the process of producing such a mixture of English language into the researcher’s mother tongue, Vietnamese, as well as the reaction of Vietnamese, especially Vietnamese youth, towards the cases

Vietnamese youngsters seem to have the highest frequency of mixing languages in their daily communication English have been nationwide taught in all Vietnamese schools for the past ten years; consequently, they could be exposed to English at the early age As a result, English turns out to be familiar with them Additionally, under the boom of entertainment industry and Western influence, English, more or less, become preferable in media It was also proved by Leung (2010) that young people preferred code mixing in advertising For those reasons, Vietnamese young people are chosen as the subject of the study

For half a century, code-mixing has been such an interesting topic that quite

a number of researches have been conducted on it both in spoken and written languages in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and France In 2003, Ho-Dac Tuc also had a close view on spoken code-switching of English into Vietnamese community

in Australia In 2012, a research on code-mixing in written language was conducted

by T T.Cuc Though valuable results have been found, they still leave the gaps for code-mixing in online newspapers and magazines for Vietnamese teenagers

For all of the reasons listed above, this research was carried out to focus on illustrating the patterns of and readers’ attitudes towards code-mixing of English in online newspapers for Vietnamese teenagers, using both qualitative and quantitative

methods The research, once finished, is expected to shed some light on mixing patterns used in Youth’s newspapers in general, raise sociolinguistics related issues and lay foundation for further studies

code-1.2 Scopes and aims

Within the scope of this study, I do not intent to carry out an in-depth analysis of the phenomenon of code-mixing in Vietnamese society Instead, my study would only focus on the actual situations of and some major issues related to

code-mixing of English in online newspapers for Vietnamese teenagers

1.3 Research questions

In order to reach the aim of exploring the forms of as well as readers’ attitudes to the mixture of code in online newspapers for Vietnamese teenagers, the research answered two questions as follows:

1) What are the patterns of code-mixing used in online newspapers for Vietnamese teenagers?

2) What are readers’ attitudes towards code-mixing phenomenon in online newspapers for Vietnamese teenagers?

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1.2 Code mixing and code switching

The phenomenon of code-mixing and code-switching is defined differently resulting from different research interests and perspectives In this study, we adopt the view point of Poplack (1980), Holmes (1992) and Liu, P (2008) which indicates

that code switching refers to both inter-sentential and intra-sentential

code-alternation occurring when a bilingual speaker uses more than one language in a single utterance above the clause level to appropriately convey his/her intents That

is code switching relates to clause/sentence and discourse while code mixing refers

to mixing the various language units below clause level within a sentence

2.1.3 Patterns of code mixing

Muysken (2000) categorized code-mixing as insertion process, alternation process and congruent lexicalization process These three basic processes are constrained by different structural conditions, and are operant to a different extent and in different ways in specific bilingual settings

Insertion: Insertion is the situation in which lexical items are

incorporated/transferred/ embedded/ inserted into another language

Alternation: happens when structures of two languages are alternated

indistinctively both at the grammatical and lexical level

Congruent lexicalization refers to the situation when two languages share

grammatical structures which can be filled lexically with elements from either language (Muysken, 2000)

This classification is valuable for consideration However, these processes are too complicated; besides, the distinction between the first and third type is not very clear Therefore, in order for an easier approach, the researcher did not apply this categorization but took the methods of categorizing codes mixed in terms of their parts

of speech such as Nouns, Verbs, Adjectives, Adverbs and others This classification was already done in the empirical studies carried out by different researchers before A clear justification of these previous studies will be illustrated later

2.1.4 Constraints on code mixing

2.1.4.1 Linguistic constraints on code mixing

Sociolinguists have been interested in not only the functions, meanings and patterns of code mixing but also the points at which code-mixing occurs in the sentence In other words, what are the constraints on code-mixing? Basing on what has been researched by Muysken (2000), studies on constraints of code-mixing have

undergone three stages: (i) an early stage focusing on grammatical constraints

specific to particular constructions of specific languages; (ii) the later stage with

classical studies in around 1980s exploring universal constraints on code-mixing

such as Poplack’s (1980) Free Morpheme Constraint and Equivalence Constraints,

Di Sciullo, A M., Muysken, P., & Singh, R (1986) Government Constraint and Myers-Scottons’ (1993a) Matrix Language Model; (iii) the present stage, which

may be characterized by the search for new perspectives of mixing strategies and

relative constraints to particular strategy To be more details, there are three prominent theories on universal constraints on code-mixing Equivalence and Free Morphemes Constraints limit the scope of code-mixing in the equivalence of word

order and words category In other words, code-mixing cannot happen if the two languages do not have the same structures or a free morpheme can be switched with

a bound one In Government Constraint, code-mixing will not happen between certain types of word categories or within prepositional phrase in a clause Matrix Language Model illustrates a frame in which system morphemes are embedded into the matrix language All these theories, either reach agreement or attacks from research community, carry unconvincing counter-evidence to attack themselves While the two former constraints could not be applied to all specific language pairs, the later one failed to define and distinguish the notion of system morphemes (Muysken, 2000) Thus, it is reasonable to admit that adequate formulation of constraints on code-mixing are not yet possible This study is not meant to support any specific constraint of code-mixing but rather take these constraints into consideration when dealing with English and Vietnamese in contact in a given corpus

2.1.4.2 Extra-linguistic factors related to code-mixing

Bentahila and Davies (1995) realized that code-mixing could not be satisfactorily only along the dimensions of structural constraints or rhetorical functions A consideration of such extra-linguistic factors as age, sex, social networks will play an equal role in explanation the patterns of code-mixing as well For instance, Poplack (1980) reported it her study of English- Spanish bilinguals that code mixing was used more often by those with high proficiency in both languages than those with less proficiency in English

Myers- Scotton (1993a) made an attempt to provide a general theoretical explanation of the sociolinguistic and pragmatic aspects of code-mixing called

“Markedness Model” Code-mixing is considered as a socially functional phenomenon which occurs with the speaker’s intention In a given social context, if there are some conventionalized of code choice and code use, which are expected the majority of speakers, this is called code mixing as unmarked choice Whereas, if

the speaker uses the unexpected code to negotiate or achieve a strategic effect in conversation, that is called marked code

The theory of Markedness model as well as the role of extra-linguistic factors is valuable to the researcher when analyzing the patterns of code-mixing in the corpus in later parts In this study, the use of English in online newspapers is regarded as a marked choice because the normative medium (i.e., the unmarked choice) of written communication in Vietnam is Vietnamese Hence, this study will also explore the “other-than-expected effects” of switching to English in the articles and comments in those online newspapers

2.1.5 Attitude of readers towards code mixing

There are thousands of definitions of attitude in linguistic field Among them, the one of Wenden (1985, cited in Al-Tamimi & Shuib, 2009) seems to be more inclusive According to him, "attitudes" encompasses three components: cognitive, affective, and behavioral “The cognitive component is related to the beliefs and ideas or opinions about the object of the attitude The affective factor is about the feeling and emotions that one has towards an object, likes or dislikes, with or against” (p 33) And finally, the behavioral component is made up of one’s consisting actions or behavioral intentions towards the object Regarding Wenden’s theory of attitudes, Van Els et al (1984, cited in Al-Tamimi & Shuib, 2009) claims that “it does not really matter whether all or only one

of the three components are measured; the relationship between the components

is so close that sufficient information on an attitude can be obtained by measuring only one component, no matter which” (p 33)

Various kinds of rating scales have been developed to measure attitudes directly (i.e the person knows their attitude is being studied) One of the most widely used is the Likert Scale Likert (1932) developed the principle of measuring attitudes by asking people to respond to a series of statements about a topic, in terms of the extent to which they agree with them, and so tapping into the cognitive and affective components of attitudes Respondents may be offered a choice of five

to seven or even nine pre-coded responses with the neutral point being neither agree nor disagree

Besides Likert scale, Questionnaires can be an effective mean of measuring the behaviour, attitudes, preferences, opinions and intentions of relatively large numbers of subjects in a way that is more cheaply and quickly than other methods, according to McLeod, S A (2014) Often a questionnaire uses both open-ended and closed questions to collect data This is beneficial as it means both quantitative and qualitative data can be obtained Closed questions structure the answer by allowing only answers which fit into categories that have been decided in advanced by the researcher Data that can be placed into a category is called nominal data Open-ended questions enable the respondent to answer in as much detail as they likes in their own words For example: “can you tell me how happy you feel right now?”

These two measurements will be a great help to discover the attitudes of readers towards the phenomenon of code-mixing in the present study

2.2 Teenage language

2.2.1 Definition of teenage language

There are two different viewpoints on teen language While much of the general public labels teen speech as slang, the professional literature narrows the definition of this term Dialects scholar Walt Wolfram maintains the label slang for teenage speech Wolfram feels that slang is especially useful for teens because of its cohesiveness and ability to differentiate between age groups and peer groups (Wolfram, Walt, Carolyn Temple Adger, and Donna Christian 1999:67)

However, others in the field such as Marcel Danesi (1989), Penelope Eckert (2004), Lars-Gunnar Andersson and Peter Trudgill (1990) have different views of slang from that of Wolfram Danesi agrees that teens have used slang for ages “to set themselves apart from adults” (Danesi, 1994: 96), but he emphasizes that it hardly constitutes the majority of their speech Instead, his focus is on teen language as a whole, which he views as a distinct discourse and feels that its characteristics highlight the tie between language and group relationships

Similarly, Penelope Eckert’s equates teen language to their minimal place in society and believes, like Danesi, that the language they create is a social construct

of their world (Eckert, 2004)

Many agree that adolescence is a crucial time for language growth and experimentation Danesi has coined the term “pubilect” to refer to “the social dialect

of puberty” (Danesi, 1994: 97) This particular form of language is always adapting and forming to the pressures of peer groups Danesi separates pubilect into specific and technical categories based on his work recording and analyzing the speech of teenagers: Emotive Language (teens’ tendency to “project one’s subjective awareness of feelings” through intensified language markers, increased rates of speech delivery, overwrought intonation contours, and highly emotional voice modulations For instance, such utterances as “He’s sooooo cute!”, “She’s faaaaar out!”, and “That’s amaaaaazing!” exemplify the common emotive pattern of overstressing words by a prolongation of tonic vowel.), Connotative Language (the way teens coin words or phrases; or extend the meanings of existing words in highly connotative way, in order to label their world), and Clique-Coded Language (teens using language “as a means for peer-group identity”) (Danesi, 1989)

In the present study, I would like to follow Danesi and his colleagues to see

teen language as a distinct discourse The features of it reflect the relation of

language and group identity That is teen language is the social construct of their small world in which peer conversation during teen years as well as teen’s emotion

play important roles in process of producing teen speech Besides, the discourse produced by teens was called “pubilect” which refers to the social dialect of

puberty The phenomenon of mixing English into Vietnamese sentences can be seen

as a kind of Connotative Language, and Clique-Coded Language categories of

“pubilect”

2.2.2 Vietnamese teenage language

Different linguists (Nguyen Van Hiep & Dinh Thi Hang (2014); Trinh Cam Lan (2014); Nguyen Van Khang (2015)) have figured out different features of Vietnamese teenage language; however, there are some similarities as follows:

[1] Vietnamese language is written without Marks or Tone Marks and

with changes in letters and words There are four subtypes of this feature:

addition (vui = dzui, thôi = thoai, về = dzìa, etc.), subtraction (biết = bít, viết =

vít, buồn = bùn, etc.), substitution (Bé = pé, thôi = thui, không = hẻm/hông, gì = j) and encode (G92U (Good night to you), 9wk (nice weekends), 2day (today), 2nite

(tonight), etc.)

[2] Some English words are mixed in Vietnamese text

The English words can be used in the original forms:

- Good BYE !!!;

- Viết rồi del del rồi viết;

- Hải Hà là who??;

- Bạn đã bít gì về girl í!

In some cases, a full sentence in English may be mixed:

- May ban oi, I’m very sad

In other cases, they can be transcribed into Vietnamese:

- Tranh thủ show pic giờ tớ shw cho cả nhà

- Haha! Đây là cuộc thi tìm hỉu zề hgirl, có quà cho mười you có câu trả lời hợp í chui nhứt, nhanh nhứt Gn2u!

[3] Teen slangs are used widely

Vietnamese youngsters often imitate many idioms, proverbs in literally way, mostly meaningless, mainly to make more amusing:

- Đã sida còn xông pha hiến máu

- Cống rãnh đòi sóng sánh với đại dương

Personally, Vietnamese teenage language contains the features of teenage

language proposed by Danesi (1989) and (1994) Vietnamese pubilect is the distinct

discourse reflecting the identity of Vietnamese adolescents It is always adapting

and forming according to the group distinctiveness

Nguyễn Văn Hiệp & Đinh Thị Hằng (2014) stated some important reasons for such Vietnamese pubilect From the psychological perspective, the years of teenagerhood are often associated with alienation and problems in self-identification This is a stage in a teenager’s life when he or she has to stop being dependent on their family and, at the same time, start discovering their own way of life Therefore, teen speech may be of great value in establishing teenagers’ sense of selfhood Meanwhile, teenagers tend to be more eager to discover new things Most

of them seem to be interested in creative and imaginative or even unconventional affairs Besides, they seem readily to go with new trends, especially those characterised with their ages As the consequence, there appear interesting teenage idioms like “đau khổ như con hổ”, “ghét như con bọ chét”, “tào lao bí đao”, etc

Another reason for teenage language to appear is due to its ability to express the joyfulness, childishness, playfulness and creativeness of this age and its ability to well ice-break by creating cheerful and close atmosphere then to shorten the gaps among the users Moreover, Vietnamese youngsters can easily express their feelings through such the creative kind of language It may help diminish the seriousness as well

B PREVIOUS STUDIES

There has been little research on Vietnamese - English code-switching In a rare study, H Đ Tuc (2003) discussed the universal principles that constrained the distribution of intra- and inter-sentential code-switching with a particular focus on the social and linguistic aspects of Vietnamese language, including the linguistic and cultural features of Vietnamese personal reference system and Vietnamese tones The subject of his study was a Vietnamese community in Melbourne, Australia He interviewed totally sixty informants with an equal number of males

and females, ranging from eighteen to sixty-two of age The findings revealed that among 3157 codes switched found in the corpus, nouns occupy the highest percentage (50,61%), followed by verbs (12,35%) and adjectives (4,6%) Other parts of speech contribute about 10% The special of his study is that the ratio of switching at clause level takes almost one fifth of all the switched cases Almost the English codes are about house hold, working and daily life activities

The findings of the present study would be compared to those of Tuc’s when relevant Nevertheless, as the focus of this study is intra-sentential code mixing, all the cases of English switched above clause level will not be counted Also, as the given corpus is a kind of online newspapers, the method of data collection will be of difference No recording or interview will be recorded but will be observed through publications of mentioned online newspapers

Code-mixing among teenagers has been widely researched in many places of the world

T T Cúc (2012) carried out a research on code-mixing of English into Vietnamese, in a written form of spoken language Her study investigated six volumes of Hoa Hoc Tro Magazine, a magazine for teenagers which was published weekly and has great influence on Vietnamese youth The findings showed that there were 1379 English lexical items mixed; among which more than 90% were nouns while the rests were verbs and adjectives Most of the words mixed belong to entertainment or IT topics The results from 239 questionnaires collected from three different regions of Northern Vietnam showed that approximately half of the readers understood and felt good about the mixed codes Despite dealing with code-mixing better, the readers with higher education level or better living conditions do not find code-mixing attractive as much as those living in rural areas or studying in lower grades A significant finding is majority of readers refuse to blame on English code-mixing for destroying Vietnamese purity Those findings are helpful in guiding the present research to analyze the data and can be the skeleton for the present study due to the similarities between two corpuses as well as the aims of

two researches The data of both studies are from newspapers for Vietnamese teenagers Moreover, the purposes of two studies are almost the same - to find out the patterns of code-mixing and the readers’ attitude towards code-mixing For those reasons, the findings of the current study would be compared to those of Cuc’s when relevant

Furthermore, Yen Miao Ju (2009) investigated the code-mixing phenomenon and the motivations for code-mixing among a group of trilingual Cantonese-English-Mandarin teenagers through videotaping the Mandarin conversations between trilingual teenagers in a Hong Kong international school Results showed that the individual’s Mandarin proficiency, language dominance, and the speaker’s perception of her interlocutors’ language background are three key factors influencing the code-mixing patterns A variety of code-mixing patterns were attested involving Cantonese, Mandarin and English Among these patterns, Mandarin and Cantonese often play the role of being the matrix code while English often acts as the embedded code Similar to previous studies on bilingual Cantonese-English code-mixing, English nouns, including proper nouns and field-specific terminology, are most frequently mixed in as the embedded language Moreover, trilingual code-mixing occurs not only among participants with lower Mandarin proficiency for filling up the lexical gaps, but also among those speaking fluent Mandarin whose code-mixing patterns are influenced by a range of sociopragmatic factors The data of this study could potentially constitute a mini-mu ltimedia corpus which is the first of its kind documenting Hong Kong trilingual teenagers’ code-mixing

Among the studies above, some may be dissimilar with the current study in terms of language pair or the corpuses for investigation However, the method of collecting data, conducting questionnaires could be practical in the current study To

be more detailed, the current study is an attempt to further Cuc’s researches in different context with different corpus At the same time, unlike the focus of the studies on a written magazine, it is to focus on a variety of online newspapers

To sum up, this study has reviewed linguistics constraints including specific and universal ones as well as extra-linguistics influential factors to code-mixing The study wishes to fill the gaps left by the empirical studies about code-mixing in online newspapers for teenagers in the context of Vietnam

A large number of studies have attitudes against code switching For them, languages are best kept separate and well-formed according to tightly defined monolingual rules (Wei and Wu 2009) Even bilinguals who code-switch themselves sometimes believe that code switching is an indication of laziness or poor linguistic proficiency Chana and Romaine (1984), for example, reported negative attitudes towards code switching among Punjabi-English bilinguals in Birmingham, in spite of their almost exclusively using a code switching mode

However, recent research in bilingual and multilingual education has provided evidence that code switching can not only be used as an effective pedagogical strategy for teaching and learning (Canagarajah 2011) but also should

be seen as a sign of linguistic creativity and criticality (Li 2011) Some researchers

in bilingual and multilingual first language acquisition have argued that code switching is evidence of advanced executive control whereby the child justifies his

or her language choice to manage the communicative demand (Genesee 2003; Zhu and Li 2005) Their arguments have been backed up by extensive linguistic analyses

of the complex structures of code switching which suggest that the ability to switch between languages in conversational interaction requires high linguistic knowledge

as well as sociolinguistic sensitivities (Gardner-Chloros 2009)

In an innovative study of the attitudes towards code switching of the London Greek Cypriots, Gardner-Chloros, McEntee-Atalianis, and Finnis (2005) revealed important variations Informants from lower occupational groups had the most favourable attitudes towards code switching; in fact, the more educated the respondents (undergraduates and postgraduates), the less favourable their attitude towards code switching The younger respondents disapproved less of code switching, and saw it as more advantageous, than the older ones Overall, code switching seemed to be gaining acceptability within the London Greek Cypriot

community, as cultural hybridity became more commonplace and, in some cases, even fashionable

In the present study, we focus on finding out the attitude of teenagers towards code mixing of English to Vietnamese in some online newspapers for such age

CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY

The study is conducted using both Qualitative and Quantitative methods It is

intended to use a collection of Vietnamese articles on website kenh14.vn to examine the phenomenon of code-mixing and a questionnaire to a group of readers - with the ages ranged between 12 and 19 to see the readers’ attitudes towards code-mixing

All conclusions are mainly based on analysis of the articles, the survey’s results and references

There are 18 main content columns on the website and other modules called

“nhóm chủ đề” (specified topics) such as: Quiz, Magazine, Đọc chậm (read slowly) and Photopia (pictured stories) (See in APPENDIX 1)

The researcher chooses this newspaper for the interest in young people as well as the belief that young people are more inclined to use code-mixing in language as they are more exposed to English not only at school but also through entertainment and mass media

3.1.2 Questionnaire

The paper was constructed on survey questionnaire - the quantitative method

- which is considered as the most effective way of gaining massive data from a wide

range of respondents in a generous amount of time This questionnaire was designed basing on the questionnaires frame made by Leung (2010) and in Vietnamese so that all respondents could understand and answer it thoroughly The questionnaire was delivered to discover the attitude of readers towards the phenomenon of code-mixing English words into the Vietnamese articles in online newspapers

information of these articles is presented in Appendix 2

3.2.2 Choosing participants for the questionnaire

With the hope to find out the viewpoints of readers from the North of Vietnam on the use of code mixing in online newspapers, the survey will be conducted among 3 groups of readers from three provinces including Hanoi, Nam Định and Vĩnh Phúc These provinces are of different terrains, economic situations,

so it is underpinned that youngsters will have different conditions to have contact with online news Consequently, their viewpoints towards code-mixing used in the newspaper may not be the same Respondents in Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam, represent for those from the cities while those from Nam Định are for the countryside Likewise, readers from Vĩnh Phúc are on behalf of those from the mountainous areas Totally 450 respondents, with 150 from each region, are invited

to answer the questionnaires

As the informants are mostly secondary and high school students, their ages range from 12 to 19 Their first language is Vietnamese, and all of them have

learned English at school

3.2.3 Designing and delivering questionnaire

3.2.3.1 Designing questionnaire

The questionnaires comprise 13 questions structured in four main parts

The first part, also the first question (Q1) asks about the frequency of

respondents to read online news on kenh14.vn This question helps to filter informants so that only answers from those groups who sometimes, usually or often read would count The responses of those who never or rarely read would not be considered

The second part including two questions exploring if readers can understand

English code-mixing words in the two extracts from two modules on the website

kenh14.vn namely “Star” and “Học đường” (school) In Q2, a respondent was

asked whether he/she understood the code-mixed statements and in Q3 whether he/she felt comfortable with them Likert scale was used and respondents might

select from Strongly Disagree to Strongly Agree

The third part contains six questions to get respondents’ views on

code-mixing of English in online news Likert scale was also implemented in these questions so that informants selected from Strongly Agree to Strongly Disagree To

be more detailed, the questions made are as follows:

Q.4 You often understand articles with code mixing on kenh14.vn

Q.5 You often feel comfortable when you read articles with code mixing on kenh14.vn

Q.6 In general, you prefer code-mixing in articles on kenh14.vn

Q.7 Articles with code mixing on kenh14.vn often draw your attention Q.8 You find it difficult to read the articles with English code-mixing on kenh14.vn

Q9 Code - mixing of English on kenh14.vn destroys Vietnamese impurity

The last part consists of the questions about personal information of

respondents such as age, place of living, their school and their contact information (if they are willing)

The detail of questionnaire is available in APPENDIX 3

3.3 Data analysis

The study was conducted using both Qualitative and Quantitative methods After the articles had been picked and the survey had been done, the result was analyzed to draw out some possible conclusions

Research question 1: To answer the first question, the current study, similar

to that of T.T Cuc & Đ T T Hà (2015), also employed the coding scheme used in Tuc (2003)’s It means the classification of the patterns of codes embedded was also categorized into parts of speech such as nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs and others All the phenomena of English code-mixing were highlighted and recorded All the code-mixed words or phrases would be put into these groups of parts of speech to see: (1) among all the intra-sentential code-mixed words, what functions most of them have (2) which words or phrases seem to happen the most often, (3)

in which module the frequency of code-mixing is the highest The results were transcribed into numeric forms and presents via charts, tables and diagrams Each example that was used for discussion was followed by an English translation while words, phrases or sentences that were switched would be underlined

Research question 2:

In part 1: As stated earlier, only answers from those who sometimes, often

and usually read would be taken as valid responses All the questionnaires were counted and classified into valid and invalid groups

In part 2: In both Questions 1 and 2, Agree and Strongly Agree answers

would be counted to see the percentage of people who (1) understood each extracts

of news given and (2) found it comfortable to read the extracts with code-mixing

In part 3: Questions were similarly analyzed Answers of Agree and

Strongly Agree would be used to get the rate of people generally (i) understood code-mixed words in articles on kenh14.vn in general, (ii) found it comfortable to read code-mixed articles, (iii) Liked code-mixing on kenh14.vn, (iv) agreed that code-mixing drew attention, (v) had difficulties in reading code-mixed articles and (vi) agreed that kenh14.vn destroyed the purity of Vietnamese

In part 4: such demographical factors as age or education level and place of

living will be taken into account to compare and contrast the attitudes towards mixing in articles and related comments on kenh14.vn influenced by different

code-conditions

CHAPTER 4: PATTERNS OF CODE-MIXING - FINDINGS

4.1 Findings of the quantification of mixed word class

From 100 articles on two columns “Star” and “Hoc Duong” (School) on website kenh14.vn, 1099 code-mixing of English phenomena were found into Vietnamese sentences Among these 1099 intra-sentential code-mixing words, the most commonly used parts of speech in the sentences are 919 nouns and noun phrases, followed by 81 verbs and 99 adjectives In other words, more than 80% of the lexical items code-mixed on two columns “Star” and “Hoc Duong” on kenh14.vn are nouns This result coincides with that of H Đ Tuc (2003), Chen (2006) and T.T Cuc & Đ T T Hà (2015) on the percentage of the English nouns mixed Nevertheless, English pronouns, conjunctions, prepositions adverbs and interjections are not mixed in the articles on the website The table below shows details of English lexical items mixed in the articles on two columns on the website kenh14.vn

Table 1: Patterns of code-mixing

Column “Star” Column “School”

From the table above, it can be assumed that there are slightly more English phenomena mixed on the column “Star” (with 614 phenomena) than on “Hoc Duong” (with 485 phenomena) The majority of the phenomena on both two columns are nouns which are illustrated in the breakdown of switching by word classes in the following table:

Table 2: Breakdown of mixing by word classes

4.2 Distribution of mixed words on kenh14.vn

As assumed above, the number of English words mixed on the column “Star”

is a little larger than that on “Hoc Duong” This can be explained that “Hoc Duong” contains the articles relating to education field, so it requires the sense of seriousness Nevertheless, the gap between the two columns is not very big because

“Hoc Duong” also includes articles about the students’ life with a wide variety of topics discussed in which there may be high tendency of English words used Besides, the target readers of the website are Vietnamese teenagers who often use English in their communication (Nguyen Van Hiep & Dinh Thi Hang (2014); Trinh Cam Lan (2014); Nguyen Van Khang (2015))

4.3 Overview description and discussion of mixed word classes

4.3 1 Nouns

When considering the quantification of nouns, all the proper nouns such as proper names, places, streets, buildings, names of films, songs, music programs, competitions and awards are excluded As stated above, among all the code-mixed words, nouns and noun phrases are the most frequent ones

In the list of the most common words and phrases found in the corpus investigated (see the Appendix 4), “Fan” is the word code-mixed the most in the articles on Kenh14.vn, especially on “Star” column This can be reasonable due to its close relation to music and cinema Owing to the rapid development of entertainment industry, especially music and cinema, there have been more and more music bands and movie stars As a result, more articles about youth’s stars appear, which leads to the more often appearance of these words “Fan” can be found in almost articles on the column “Star” on the website

E.g 1: Hơn 1000 fan có mặt từ rất sớm để chờ đón thần tượng

(More than 1000 FAN arrived early to welcome ….), (Article No 32, column

“Star”.)

E.g 2: Nhiều fan đã lên tiếng cho rằng câu chuyện này đã bị dẫn dắt đi sai

sự thật

(Many FAN said that this story …), (Article No 2, column “Star”.)

E.g 3: Các fan phát hiện ra rằng, trong chuyến du lịch lần này, hai anh

chàng diện đồ đôi với nhau khá nhiều

(All of FAN discovered that …), (Article No 21, column “Star”.)

“Fan” also appears once on the column “Hoc Duong”:

E.g 4: Những fan của chàng ca sĩ điển trai Thanh Duy Idol sẽ có cơ hội “gặp

gỡ’ anh chàng tại ngày hội thú vị này

(FAN of the handsome singer Thanh Duy Idol will have a chance …),

(Article No 31, column “Hoc Duong”.)

Following “fan” is 39 repetitions of “clip” and 35 times of “show” or “live show” Such words as “album”, “DJ”, “shop”, “STEM”, “STEAM”, “marketing”,

“teen”, “cover letter”, and “netizen” are also quite popular The rest including

“CV”, “fan site”, “fan page”, “concert”, “teaser”, showbiz”, “shipper”, “stress”,

“selfie”, “website”, “idol group”, “hot girl”, “scandal” or “follower” have the quantity of more than 10 words each

Even though these words also have Vietnamese equivalents, they still have been use widely; and as a result, their Vietnamese equivalents are somehow disregarded This is partly due to the convenience in the condensed and user-friendly English codes, such as “fan” or “clip” In the realm of linguistics, the principle of economy favours the method that uses the least amount of effort to achieve maximum result The principle was originally studied in the areas of phonology and syntax by André Martinet He stipulated that communication is dichotomous: it requires clarity and precision as well as a relaxed delivery (cited in Vicentini, 2003) In this light, code-mixing achieves both facets of Marinet’s ideal

It reduces effort and simultaneously removes any obstacle that prevents comprehension.In other words, “fan” or “clip” has only one syllable while their Vietnamese equivalents contain a series of words “người hâm mộ” or “đoạn phim xen kẽ” Thus, it requires less effort to vocalize and/or to write these words compared to their Vietnamese equivalents That coincides with the cases of opting for English words that have fewer syllables than Chinese counterpart in the research

on code-mixing among university students in Hong Kong by Li (2000)

However, these words also indicate the development and the trends of the youth nowadays to some extends With the boom of internet and the development of social network, such terms as “netizen”, “fan page”, “fan site”, “follower” and

“selfie” can be seen or heard more and more often in daily life In addition, in the period of international integration and economic cooperation, Vietnam now is the partner of several countries all over the world in many fields like economy and education That helps Vietnamese people especially youngsters have contact with

such the words like “STEM”, “STEAM”, “marketing” Consequently, there are more articles about international education programs or international economic partnership containing these terms

As suggested by Tuc (2003), Vietnamese shares the same general characteristic of East and Southeast Asian languages such as Chinese, Thai Khmer, Hmong that they do not contain any notion of number or amount Vietnamese noun

is transnumeral, or in other words, has no marking between singular and plural Therefore, the nouns maintain invariable as non-count nouns in English no matter what their number is That is also the case in the articles on kenh14.vn

In the sentences above, all the English nouns mixed are in singular form even

though examples (1), (2), (3), (4) followed such numbers as “hơn 1000” (More than 1000), or quantifier “nhiều” (many, several), “các” (all), “những” (finite number,

some) respectively This could be explained basing on Bisang’s idea that these English nouns have become transnumeral in accordance with Vietnamese grammar Besides, the reference of mixed nouns may be vague as they are indefinite nouns in English In other words, each word may means singular or plural

E.g 5: Ở clip khi các nghệ sĩ lên sân khấu nhận giải, fan đã chụp được khoảnh

khắc cả Đông Nhi và Noo Phước Thịnh quay sang cười với Sơn Thùng M-TP

(…, FAN snapped the moment in which both Đông Nhi and …), (Article No

2, column “Star”.)

E.g 6: Nếu không vì scandal thì em ấy đứng ở hàng đầu rồi

(But for SCANDAL, she would have been at the top rank.), (Article No 30,

column “Star”.)

A case in point is “fan” in (5) may mean “a fan” or “fans” in general However, if they are placed in clearer context, the meaning will be more explicit Another case is “scandal” in e.g 6 If we base on English context, we will find it difficult to define whether “a scandal” or “scandals” are mentioned That is to say

that most English nouns mixed are not followed by plural marking as in English grammar

However, there are also odd cases like in the following examples:

E.g 7: Hi vọng đây sẽ là cơ hội để các CNHers gắn bó thân thiết và có thêm

nhiều kỉ niệm đẹp với nhau hơn

(It is hoped to be the chance for CNHers to be knitted and …), (Article No

27, column “Hoc Duong”.)

E.g 8: Những hoạt động này sẽ giúp các 98-ers thêm tự tin và củng cố quyết

định của bạn trong việc lựa chọn con đường tương lai

(These activities will help 98-ers to be more confident and …), (Article No

31, column “Hoc Duong”.)

E.g 9: … chưa bao giờ trên gương mặt các bạn Amsers đánh mất nụ cười

cùng nhiệt huyết tuổi trẻ

(There never lost smiles in the faces of Amsers …), (Article No 41, column

“Hoc Duong”.)

E.g 10: Rời games, những chuyến tham quan, vui chơi khác của tuổi teen,

những bạn nhỏ thành thị, có điều kiện bước ra thế giới đã chọn cách lội ruộng, qua cầu khỉ …để mang niềm vui khoa học đến với nhiều trả em ít có điều kiện tại quê nhà

(Getting out of GAMES, trips, …), (Article No 43, column “Hoc Duong”.) E.g 11: Dưới đây là những tips giúp bản Cover Letter của bạn nổi bật trong

mắt nhà tuyển dụng

The followings are TIPS to help the Cover Letter to be outstanding …),

(Article No 28, column “Hoc Duong”.)

When mixed into Vietnamese sentences, almost the nouns “CNHers”, ers”, “Amsers”, “games”, and “tips” in above examples are marked with numerics

“98-as “những”, “các” and they still keep their plural forms It proves that the author

here is fully aware of plural rules in English grammar to strictly follow them

There are some differences between syntactic structure of English and Vietnamese nouns In English , nouns can be preceded by a class of determiners along with singular , plural count and non -count nouns such as “the” , “a”, “some”,

“many”, “much”, etc In Vietnamese, nouns can be preceded either by Vietnamese particles, like “cái” , “chiếc” (general classifier preceding most nouns), “con”

(general classifier preceding an animal), etc or by none of those, as in example (6)

When an English noun is mixed into Vietnamese corpus, it is influenced by Vietnamese absence of article before nouns Therefore, the required articles in e.g 5 (fan) and e.g 6 (scandal) are omitted In the view of English usage, these nouns are considered as infinite ones; however, they become definite from the discourse of context in Vietnamese This finding is similar to that of Tuc (2003) in his study of English code switched in Vietnamese, of Berk-Seligson’s (1986) reporting cases of Spanish articles omitted before a Spanish noun and especially nearly the same with that of T.T Cúc and Đ.T.T Hà (2015) in their research in Hoa Hoc Tro Magazine

There are also the cases of noun phrases ilustrating the violation of structural equivalence and contrast of English and Vietnamese nouns in the placement of adjectives While Vietnamese requires adjectives following nouns, English allows nouns preceding place For instance, in following example, “marketing online” was used instead of “online marketing”; or in other example, “shop online” instead of

“online shop”

E.g 12: Sức mạnh kinh khủng của marketing online, chứng khoán hay bất

động sản, nhiều bạn sinh viên đã bất chấp việc vay mượn tiền để lao đầu vào khóa học làm giầu

(Under the unbelievable power of MARKETING ONLINE, stocks or ),

(Article No 17, column “Hoc Duong”.)

Generally, Vietnamese can be free to choose a noun, a verb or an adjective to follow a noun as long as it fulfills semantic requirement This may be the feature

which makes many Vietnamese say that their language has no grammar (Thomson, 1987; cited in Ho, 2003)

4.3.2 Verbs

English verbs occupies 7,4% of total 1099 mixed words Most of the mixed verbs are in the bare forms (infinitive without “to”) instead of third-person-singular, past or past participle forms

Most of the verbs refer to common actions done with computer and internet such as “hack”, “upload”, “up”(load), “search”, “log in”, “copy”, or online social networks like “tweet”, “like”, “share”, “comment”, “sub” (subscribe), “follow”,

“view”, “chat”, “post” Some others are about entertainment such as music “debut”,

“cover”, “mix”, “drop”, “hit”, “live”; fashion with “make up”, “tha thu”, “pose”, take pics”, “crop”; or education with “rang-tôm” (brainstorm), “bookmark” “lead”,

“list”, “power up”, “apply” What is exciting here is the twelve-time appearance of the verb “ship” which has a close relation with online business - a new trend in Vietnamese youngster’s society

Vietnamese verbs are distinguished with English ones by several features The most typical one of Vietnamese verbs is that they themselves do not demonstrate a clear notion of “voice” in grammar sense That means there is no distinct differentiation between active and passive verbs This is illustrated through the following cases:

E.g.13: Bức ảnh này của cô đã có thời gian dài giữ kỷ lục được like nhiều

nhất Instagram

(This photo has kept the record of being LIKE most in Instagram), (Article

No 18, column “Star”.)

E.g 14: Những ngày qua, người hâm mộ vẫn chưa hết xôn xao vụ việc Phạm

Hương bị hack tài khoản facebook

(Fans haven’t finished the fuzz of Pham Huong’s facebook account being

HACK.), (Article No 23, column “Star”.)

It is clear that the sentences in e.g (13), (14) are in passive voice as objects are put at the beginning of the sentences In English, such verbs as “like”, “make up” and “hack” will be put in passive form with “be” and past participle However, these verbs are assimilated by syntactic structures of Vietnamese verbs to stay in the infinitive form just like Vietnamese verbs In other words, syntactic features of Vietnamese verbs are retained in the mixed English verbs

Unlike English verbs, Vietnamese ones are also neutral to tense or grammatical functions This is also a general feature of many East and South-east Asian languages, which depend entirely on the situational context for their reference

to relative time Hence, “chat” in e.g (15), despite following the modal verb

“muốn” (want), still maintains its bare form rather than “to chat” Likewise, in e.g (16) “tweet” is not put in simple past tense as that in English; “copy” in e.g (17) is not used in the form of present simple tense and present perfect tense respectively

E.g 15: Nếu bạn gái ấy muốn chat, gọi điện thoại với người yêu thì có thể

bảo họ nói chuyện sớm hơn

(If that girl wants CHAT, make a phone call …), (Article No 40, column

“Học Đường”.)

E.g 16: Các thành viên còn lại trong One Direction đã tweet thể hiện sự ủng

hộ với người anh em

(Other members of One Direction TWEET to express their supports .),

(Article No 24, column “Star”.)

E.g 17: Đây là My copy lời chuyên gia dinh dưỡng của My thôi

(It’s the words that My COPY from My’s dietitian.), (Article No 20, column “Star”.)

4.3.3 Adjectives

The mixed adjectives comprised 8,4% of the total mixed words with 92 words The most common mixed adjectives are: “online” (x29), “hot” (x14), “solo” (x8), “sexy” (x7); “start-up” (x6); “anonymous” (x4) Besides, there are less popular adjectives like “acoustic”, “unisex”, “V-line”, “MR removed”, “full-time”, “cool”,

“kool”, “super”, “made in VHU”, “pro”, “sâu đíp “, “handmade”, “young”, “small”,

“regional”, “survival”, “offline”

According to Kia (2011), these adjectives have also been common in press in general for some sense of stylishness and modernity they bring That is also applied

to online articles on the website Most of these adjectives are short with only one or two syllables, which create the impression of activeness and youth

As being analyzed above, the distinctive feature distinguishing English adjectives and Vietnamese ones is their position when co-occurrence with nouns In English, adjectives are modifiers preceding nouns while the order in Vietnamese is noun + adjective However, recently, there are a few cases in Vietnamese newspapers, a new form of word order similar to the syntactic structure of the

English noun phrases such as: “đe ̣p lắm Viê ̣t Nam” (beautiful Vietnam), “trắng cao

nguyên” (white highland), “tự hào thế hê ̣ trẻ ” (a proud young generation) Nevertheless, these cases are still unusual in Vietnamese E.g (18) below, on the other hand, is typical for the order of noun + adjective, in which such adjective as

“handmade” are always on the right hand side of Vietnamese nouns

E.g 18: Cũng trong dịp Bonding Day này, các bạn sinh viên cũng không

quên gửi những lời chúc tốt đẹp nhất đến các thầy cô thông qua những tấm thiệp

handmade cực dễ thương, nhân ngày 20-11

(… through such cute cards HANDMADE in November 20th.), (Article No

18, column “Học Đường”.)

Basing on the results found by Plaff (1979) in her study that the mixture of adjectives is often found in the predicative position In e.g (19), (20), there is no verb between the nouns and the adjectives “To be” before “cool”, “hot” is omitted,

or in other words, these adjectives have played the roles of predicates in the sentences

E.g 19: Thế mới biết, giảng viên ở Cao Đẳng Việt Mỹ cũng “cool” và sẵn

sang để “lầy” cùng các bạn như thế nào