Abstract

This article sets out to investigate a comprehensive sociolinguistic profile of Sino-Anglo code-mixing in Chinese newspaper advertising in terms of typology and functions. Based on a corpus formed of 603 advertisements from three newspapers in Guangdong province in China, the writer categorizes Sino-Anglo code-mixing in the identified cases into insertional code-mixing and alternational code-mixing, identifies the positioning of mixed English and explores how mixing English into Chinese advertising discourses contributes to persuasiveness of advertising from textual and contextual perspectives by use of Markedness Theory. It is concluded that mixing English into Chinese newspaper advertising is an effective verbal strategy to reach the goal of persuasion by enhancing the semantic, rhetoric and contextual effects. Construction of identity through activation of language schema, screening out the target readers and mitigating the tone with consumers through euphemism are three main contextual functions. To study Sino-Anglo code-mixing can shed light on the understanding of dynamism of language situation in China and the relationship between language and society.

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