Switching to Taiwanese in Mandarin-dominant spoken media discourse in Taiwan: Evidence of association as the main motivation

Abstract

Code switching in public domains has become common in Taiwan. However, little is known about the actual use of Taiwanese in Mandarin-dominant spoken media discourse. This study explores the motivation behind speakers’ choice of Taiwanese when they intended to achieve certain communicative effects in this setting. A detailed discourse analysis suggests that the main motivation is related to the association of Taiwanese or of some particular expressions in Taiwanese. Four types of association emerged. First, speakers switched to Taiwanese because of the association with certain social meanings created in certain social contexts. Second, speakers associated Taiwanese with individual people or cultural objects because it was one of the salient linguistic attributes of the people or cultural objects. Third, speakers associated Taiwanese with certain expressions of ideas because certain phrasing or some particular words in a lexicon in Taiwanese could more precisely, descriptively, effectively, and/or vividly express the ideas than those in Mandarin. Finally, speakers switched to Taiwanese because of the association with locally-developed items in a conversation.