After reading this paper, Second Language Socialization in Bilingual Chat Room, I am interested in the issue of code-switching and the construction of group identity.
I agree with the idea that by using the mixed-code expressions and use of code-switching to romanized Canto and English, it distinguishes them and creates an ethnic identity as bilingual Chinese emigrants. “It is with this new identity that the girls speak English on the Internet, not as English-speaking Americans or Cantonese-speaking Chinese.”(Lam 2004)
In my own experience, when I am chatting in English with my Taiwanese friends in MSN, sometimes I will use the mixed-code expressions and use of code-switching between Chinese and English. However, unlike the girls in the paper, which are function-based code-switching such as "open laugh mei" (are you kidding), for me, most of the time the code-switching is inclined to content-based code-switching. Only when I encounter some vocabulary I do not know how to express in English will I code-switch into Chinese. As an English major, after immersing in English literature and culture studies for several years, it seems that there is a new identity growing inside me.
This paper offers the beginning for further research of code-Switching and the construction of group Identity since there are more and more bilingual or even multilingual people growing awound the world.
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For Chinese, code-switching is every one who learns second language must confront. Because sometimes we would not understand how say the word which I want to speak in second language. In half way of talking, I may speak in Chinese, even though I should speak English in classroom
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