Code-Switching in Language : An Applied Study

This study discusses the perceptions and understandings of code-switching of bilingual English-Spanish speakers from the Inland Northwest. Earlier studies reported that speakers generally hold a negative view of code-switching; however, results of this study questions whether these conclusions remain true. Results from ten, hour-long semi-structured interviews including four musical selections as examples of code-switching demonstrate a shift away from traditional views towards code-switching. Rendering, older studies problematic this study calls for the continuation of code-switching research as well as new and inventive approaches for researching code-switching in the future.

Englisia Journal, 2017

It has been long known that bilinguals can switch their speeches from one language to another when interacting within their own community. Some experts argue that code switch occurs due to the lack of proficiency in languages, lazy choices and easy solutions in communicating, and impact of linguistic dominance. This paper describes the social factors which promote adult bilinguals in code switching. The paper focuses on three types of the social factors contributing to code switching.The first type deals with factors independent of specific speakers and circumstances such as prestige, cover prestige, and power relation. The second one is related to speakers’ competence both as individuals and members of a sub group. The last category refers to factors within the conversation where code switching emerges. To conclude, these social factors are highly relevant in prompting adult bilinguals to code switch.

Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1990

Bilingualism: Language and …, 2011

In this article, we provide a framework of bilingual grammar that offers a theoretical understanding of the socio-cognitive bases of code-switching in terms of five general principles that, individually or through interaction with each other, explain how and why specific instances of code-switching arise. We provide cross-linguistic empirical evidence to claim that these general sociolinguistic principles, stated as socio-cognitive constraints on code-switching, characterize multi-linguistic competence in so far as they are able to show how "local" functions of code-switching arise as specific instantiations of these "global" principles, or (products of) their interactions.

Language & Communication, 1983

caluniv.ac.in

Code-switching, which may be defined as the alternation between two or more languages in a speaker's speech, occurs naturally in the speech of bilinguals. According to some studies, code-switching often happens subconsciously; people may not be aware of the fact that they have switched, or be able to report, following a conversation, which code they used for a particular topic (Wardaugh, 1998, p. 103). Bilingual speakers claim that codeswitching is an unconscious behavior, but researches have shown that it is not a random phenomenon. As attested by Li Wei (1998, p. 156). Code-switching is seen as a purposeful activity. There are functions and intentions assigned to this behavior . Based on this assumption, this paper investigates how code-switching is used as a strategy to achieve the communicative intents and serve certain functions in a conversation. The language a community speaks is part of its culture and so few changes in language occur unless there are prior changes in culture. This usually occurs when two communities, living side by side, interact by exchanging ideas, tools, methods, cultural behaviors (Alicja Witalisz 2011). This is the case of linguistic globalization and as it is a growing trend in the modern world, most of the world's speech communities are multilingual in nature. In language contact situations, code-switching between different language codes has become a very common and inevitable consequence in everyday lives of most people. Here this paper will demonstrate how code-switching functions as a communicative strategy to reduce language barriers as well as to manifest cultural identity. This study will prove that code-switching is a versatile strategy to meet the complex communicative demands between or within the interlocutors. In order to explain and clarify how code-switching is used as a communicative strategy, a few examples are given in reference to the speech of Bangla-English bilingual speakers.

Much less attention has been paid to language attitudes in bilingual settings than to any other aspect regarding the different research topics studied in this field. However, it is a key area in bilingual studies as it gives linguists an insight into what bilinguals actually think about their speech production which could be utterly important for the analysis and interpretation of bilingual data. This paper is an empirical study in which the language attitudes of members of a Spanish/Galician community in London were studied with the purpose of finding out their attitudes to a specific strategy very often used by bilinguals, code alternation.

Int J Biling, 1997

With the large amount of data and studies carried out on different bilingual communities over the past ten years, research on code-switching is presently at a stage where a new set of questions which could not be addressed earlier can now be asked. For example, what social and political conditions lead to certain patterns of code-switching in a community? Or what are the common set of social, historical, and political features shared by the various bilingual communities? In relation to more linguistic issues it is necessary to establish why descriptive or generative syntactic constraints that have been proposed do not hold for all kinds of codeswitching data. Closely connected to this issue is the urgent need to provide a reliable set of criteria for distinguishing different types of language-contact phenomena (i.e., borrowings, nonce-borrowings, caiques, and so on). An additional query is to establish the most adequate methods for investigating the many psycholinguistic questions raised by bilingual language processing. Individual codeswitching behavior needs to be combined with macrolevel social analyses in order to achieve a full understanding of code-switching behavior.

International Journal of Education and Social Science Research, 2021

This paper reviews several concepts associating codeswitching and bilingualism. Codeswitching is a consequence of becoming bilingual. It is suggested codeswitching has adverse effects on the speaking ability of language learners. This paper seeks synthesize the positive outcomes of codeswitching to language learning and make it parallel towards arguments on the negative effect of codeswitching to language learning. Language teachers must strike a balance between the two arguments and identify a common ground to help improve students in successful language learning.

1997

Speakers of more than one language, (i.e. bilinguals) may intentionally mix their languages during conversation in a phenomenon known as “code switching”. As a line of scholarly inquiry, code switching is generally limited to the context of bilingual conversation. I propose to extend the investigation to include inner speech, which is the voice that is often heard inside one’s head while thinking. One view of inner speech is that it is produced using processes similar to that we use to speak except that no utterances are produced. In another view, Vygotsky (1986) posits that inner speech is a child’s ego-centric speech turned inward in a more compact way. For this project, an inner speech discourse is stimulated within proficient Korean-English and Spanish-English bilingual participant s in an experiment by providing one of Kohlberg’s moral dilemmas accompanied by a series of questions probing their responses. Code switching is primed by providing instructions in their native language (L1); the dilemma and probe questions are provided in English. At several points during each session, the participants will be asked to reflect on which language they use for inner speech and the role the language is playing in answering the probes. From this study, I seek an understanding of whether code switching is a mechanism that bilinguals engage in during inner speech activities, how they use it, and what role it plays. Code switching is an area of active research which could become a lens to examine and understand bilinguals’ non-verbal reasoning processes and inform the methods used to present and teach abstract concepts to bilinguals.

2019

The aim of this case study is to analyze the speech between L1-L2 English-Spanish speakers so as to identify extra-linguistic and situational influences that determine the types of code-switching that occur, and to demonstrate that the participants will code-switch in circumstances of recall and of situational affiliation over all other determinants. The results support the notion that 'preferences' in switching are dependent on the wider social, political and cultural context of the interaction at hand.

2007

The study of how individuals use and process two or more languages is an extremely important area of research, especially as the world's bilingual population continues to increase. It has been reported that currently, a majority of people worldwide are bilingual (Bhatia and Ritchie, 2004; Edwards, 2004; Tabouret-Keller, 2004). Although much of the research conducted in the domain of cognitive psychology has focused on the interesting question of how a bilingual represents or stores both of their languages in memory, there is a growing body of literature designed to explore how bilinguals process and switch in and out of languages. This usually occurs in speech production when an individual is speaking one language (i.e., referred to as the matrix or base language) and then rapidly replaces a word or phrase in that language with a word in the other language (i.e., guest language) (Li, 1996). For example, Heredia and Altarriba (2001, p. 164) introduced an example of code-switching that could be observed in the informal speech of a Spanish-English bilingual: "Dame una hamburguesa sin lettuce por favor?" ("Give me a hamburger without lettuce please?"), where in this statement the English word lettuce is used in place of its Spanish translation. Although the terms code (language)-mixing and code-switching are used interchangeably in current discussions (Heredia and Altarriba, 2001), differences between the two phenomena have been pointed out in previous work. Code-mixing was originally described as using words and phrases from one language in place of those in the other language within a single sentence (i.e., the previous example where switching languages occurs within one sentence) (Sridhar and Sridhar, 1980, p. 408). On the other hand, code-switching has been described as switching between languages based on changes in the speech situation, where the topic or members of the conversation change (see e.g., Altarriba and Santiago-Rivera, 1994, for No part of this digital document may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means. The publisher has taken reasonable care in the preparation of this digital document, but makes no expressed or implied warranty of any kind and assumes no responsibility for any errors or omissions. No liability is assumed for incidental or consequential damages in connection with or arising out of information contained herein. This digital document is sold with the clear understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering legal, medical or any other professional services.