Code switching
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Code_switching".

Code-switching is a term in linguistics referring to using more than one language or variety in conversation. Bilinguals, who can speak at least two languages, have the ability to use elements of both languages when conversing with another bilingual. Code-switching is the syntactically and phonologically appropriate use of multiple varieties.

Code-switching can occur between sentences (intersentential) or within a single sentence (intrasentential).

Although some commentators have seen code-switching as reflecting a lack of language ability, most contemporary scholars consider code-switching to be a normal and natural product of interaction between the bilingual (or multilingual) speaker's languages.^[1][2][3]

Code-switching can be distinguished from other language contact phenomena such as loan translation (calques), borrowing, pidgins and creoles, and transfer or interference.

There are different perspectives on code-switching. A major approach in sociolinguistics focuses on the social motivations for switching, a line of inquiry concentrating both on immediate discourse factors such as lexical need and the topic and setting of the discussion, and on more distant factors such as speaker or group identity, and relationship-building (solidarity). Code-switching may also be reflective of the frequency with which an individual uses particular expressions from one or the other language in his/her daily communications; thus, an expression from one language may more readily come to mind than the equivalent expression in the other language.

A second perspective primarily concerns syntactic constraints on switching. This is a line of inquiry that has postulated grammatical rules and specific syntactic boundaries for where a switch may occur.

While code-switching had previously been investigated as a matter of peripheral importance within the more narrow tradition of research on bilingualism, it has now moved into a more general focus of interest for sociolinguists, psycholinguists and general linguists.

Code-switching can be related to and indicative of group membership in particular types of bilingual speech communities, such that the regularities of the alternating use of two or more languages within one conversation may vary to a considerable degree between speech communities. Intrasentential code-switching, where it occurs, may be constrained by syntactic and morphosyntactic factors which may or may not be universal in nature.^[4]

Motivation

People code-switch for a number of reasons.

• Code-switching a word or phrase from language-B into language-A can be more convenient than waiting for one's mind to think of an appropriate language-B word.
• Code-switching can help an ethnic minority community retain a sense of cultural identity, in much the same way that slang is used to give a group of people a sense of identity and belonging, and to differentiate themselves from society at large.
• Code-switching is a common means to shift footing (Goffman 1979) or contextualization (Gumperz 1982).

One of the more complete theories of code switching within sociolinguistics is the Markedness Model, developed by Carol Myers-Scotton (1993). According to the markedness model, language users are rational, and choose a language that marks their rights and obligations relative to others in the conversational setting. When there is no clear unmarked choice, code switching is used to explore possible choices.

Many sociolinguists object to the markedness model, and to the suggestion that language choice is entirely rational (e.g. Auer 1998; Woolard 2004).

Competing sociolinguistic theories examine code-switching as language behavior, often using discourse analysis, ethnography, or elements of both. Scholars such as Monica Heller (1988, 1992, 1995), Ben Rampton (1995, 2007), and Joan Pujolar (2004) describe the effects that the use of multiple language varieties have on class, ethnicity, gender, or other identity positions.

Scholars in interactional linguistics and conversation analysis also study code-switching as a means of structuring talk in interaction. Analysts such as Peter Auer (1984) suggest that code-switching does not simply reflect social situations, but is a means to create them. Other conversation analysts studying code-switching include Li Wei (1998, 2005), Mark Sebba (2000; Sebba and Wooton 1998), and Jakob Cromdal (2001, 2004).

Mechanics

Code-switching is distinct from pidgin, in which features of two languages are combined. However, creole languages (which are very closely related to pidgins), when in close contact with related standard languages (such as with Jamaican Creole English or Guyanese Creole English), can exist in a continuum within which speakers may code-switch along a basilect-mesolect-acrolect hierarchy depending on context. Code-switching is also different from (but is often accompanied by) spontaneous borrowing of words from another language, sometimes outfitted with the inflections of the host language, sometimes not.

Linguists have made significant efforts to define the differences between borrowing and code-switching.^[5][6][7] Borrowing is generally said to occur within the lexicon, while code-switching occurs at the level of syntax or utterance construction.

Code-switching within a sentence tends to occur more often at points where the syntax of the two languages align; thus it is uncommon to switch from English to French after an adjective and before a noun, because a French noun normally "expects" its adjectives to follow it. It is, however, often the case that even unrelated languages can be "aligned" at the boundary of a relative clause or other sentence sub-structure.

Work in syntax and morphology has suggested several constraints on where language alternation can occur. None of these suggestions are universally accepted, however, and linguists have offered apparent counter-examples to each proposed constraint (e.g. Bokamba 1989; Bhatt 1995).^[8][9]

• The free-morpheme constraint states that switching cannot occur between bound morphemes (Sankoff & Poplack 1981). ^[10]
• The equivalence constraint says that code-switching can only take place in positions where "the order of any two sentence elements, one before and one after the switch, is not excluded in either language" (Sankoff & Poplack 1981). For example, the sentence "I like you porque eres simpatico" is allowed, since it obeys the rules for relative clause formation in both Spanish and English.
• The closed-class constraint says that closed class items such as pronouns, prepositons or conjunctions cannot be switched (Joshi 1985).^[11]
• The Matrix Language Frame model (Myers-Scotton 1997, 2002) distinguishes the roles of the participating languages. ^[12] The Matrix Language provides the grammatical frame of bilingual clause. This model is complemented by the 4-M model of morpheme classification (Myers-Scotton and Jake, 2000). ^[13]
• The functional head constraint says that code-switching cannot occur between a functional head (such as a complementizer, determiner or inflection) and its complement (a sentence, noun phrase or verb phrase) (Belazi et al. 1994).^[14]

Note that some of these constraints make specific assumptions about the nature of syntax, and are therefore controversial, especially among linguists who make different theoretical assumptions.

Shana Poplack's approach to language mixing is relatively independent of choice of syntactic theory, and use notions such as equivalence switching, nonce borrowing, flagged switching and constituent insertion to categorize, based on quantitative analysis of large corpora of bilingual conversation, the intrasentential mixing phenomena characteristic of different bilingual speech communities. These patterns can be rather different for even for two communities sharing the same language pairs.^[15]

Scholars use different names for various types of switching.

• Intersentential switching is switching outside the sentence or clause level, for example at sentence or clause boundaries.
• Intra-sentential switching is switching within a sentence or clause.
• Tag-switching is switching a tag phrase or word from language B into language A. (This is a common intra-sentential switch.)
• Intra-word switching is switching within a word itself, such as at a morpheme boundary.

Examples

Zentella (1997)^[16] offers the following example of code-switching from her work with Spanish speakers in New York city. In this example, Marta and her younger sister Lolita speak both Spanish and English with Zentella (ACZ) outside of their apartment building.

Lolita: Oh, I could stay with Ana?

Marta: - but you could ask papi and mami to see if you could come down.

Lolita: OK.

Marta: Ana, if I leave her here would you send her upstairs when you leave?

ACZ: I'll tell you exactly when I have to leave, at ten o'clock. Y son las nueve y cuarto. ("And it's nine fifteen.")

Marta: Lolita, te voy a dejar con Ana. ("I'm going to leave you with Ana.") Thank you, Ana.

Zentella explains that the children in this predominantly Puerto Rican neighborhood speak both English and Spanish. "Within the children's network, English predominated but code switching from English to Spanish occurred once every three minutes on average" (1997:32).

Kroskrity (2000:340-341)^[17] gives the following example of code-switching by three older male Arizona Tewa speakers, who are trilingual in Tewa, Hopi, and English. The topic concerns the selection of a site for a new high school on the eastern Hopi Reservation:

Speaker A: Tututqaykit qanaanawakna. spoken in Hopi

Speaker B: Wédít’ókánk’egena’adi imbí akhonidi. spoken in Tewa

Speaker C: Naembí eeyae nąeląemo díbít’ó’ámmí kąayį’į wédimu::di. spoken in Tewa

English translation:

Speaker A: "Schools were not wanted." spoken in Hopi

Speaker B: "They didn't want a school on their land." spoken in Tewa

Speaker C: "It's better if our children go to school right here rather than far away." spoken in Tewa

In this two-hour conversation, these men had been speaking primarily in Tewa. However, when Speaker A makes a statement that considers the Hopi Reservation as a whole, he switches to Hopi. This usage of the Hopi language when speaking of Hopi-related issues is a conversational norm in the Arizona Tewa speech community. Kroskrity makes the claim that these Arizona Tewa who identify both as Hopi and Tewa use the different languages to help construct and maintain these discrete ethnic identities linguistically.

See also

• Language contact
• Macaronic language
• Diglossia
• Mixed language
• Style shifting

References

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