Gardner-Chloros
Code-Switching
Chapter 3

1. Introduction
- CS often manifests itself within the process of language change
- can lead to the creation of new varieties (e.g. pidgins, creoles, mixed languages)
- can also be a temporary phenomenon leading to limited borrowing
- outcome of language contact is determined by social and economic variables (prestige/power)
- CS provides a variety of clues as to the social identity of the speaker
- bilingual speakers use CS as conversational scaffolding and to convey aspects of their identity
- motivation to code-switch relies on factors independent of the varieties

2. Types of factors

- three types of factors contribute to the form taken by CS

1) independent factors affecting all speakers of the variety: e.g. economic, prestige, power, association of variety with a particular way of life

2) individual factors attached to the speaker: e.g. competence, social networks, relationships, attitudes, ideologies, self-perception, perception of others

3) conversational factors: e.g. CS as resource, structuring device

- many overlaps and inter-relations between the three sets of factors

3. Code-switching in two communities: Strasbourg and London Cypriots

- contrast situations where there is switching between closely related varieties with other situation where the varieties involved are typologically far apart from each other

- contrasting cases where the social situation is similar with others where it is quite different

3.1. Strasbourg

- Alsatian vs. French

- Alsatian is heard more in the context of code-switching than in its "pure" form

- CS varies: limited alternation ("French plus Alsatian") to mixed code ("third system")

- use of French for technical terms, greetings, numbers, time and owing to triggering

- in many cases it is impossible to say which is the dominant language of the conversation

- use of CS is not much constrained by topic, but by informal contexts and "chatty" register

- CS reflects inter-generational competence differences (switch takes place more between speakers)

- if both varieties are intrinsic to people's identity: "switching as an unmarked choice" (Myers-Scotton 1983)

CS begins to acquire "language-like" properties; individual language changes are not "indexed" with any particular significance, "turnover" in the dominant language

- Is the Matrix Language useful as a descriptive tool?

- signs of convergence/ melding (beyond individual borrowing):

1) "covert" borrowing (expression remains ostensibly in Alsatian)

2) composite word order

3) bilingual vers: French verbs are borrowed and integrated

- historically rooted CS in a European regional context

- co-existing forms of CS within the same community

- only signals the loss of dialect in some cases

3.2. Greek Cypriots in London

- migrant setting:

1) circumstances of the migration have an immediate impact on the restructuring of the different groups' social networks

2) split between the members of community who develop close links to host society and those who do not (adolescents are often strongly motivated to adopt language habits of host community, non-reciprocal language use within the family)

3) families develop linguistic creativity and specific interactional patterns

- difference between the generations

- different waves of immigration occurred in different circumstances (economic reasons, refugees)

- youngest in the community are heavily anglicized

- low rate of intermarriage

- principally nouns were adapted to GCD at an early stage (loan words), morphologically and phonologically

- younger, more balanced bilinguals use them alongside unadapted code-switches

- Muysken/Appel (1987): "switchability hierarchy" (nouns carry the most referential weight)

- frequent type of CS involves the formation of new verbs (using productive verb-endings)

- new compound verbs constitute a widespread "intermediate"/innovatory process in CS contexts

- grey area where borrowing, code-switching, convergence and innovations cannot easily be distinguished

- English is used to explain or play for time

- CS allows for "dual voicing" symbolizing the split between belonging and distance

- adolescents make use of CS for a variety of expressive and identity-creating/-reinforcing purposes

significant differences between the generations in terms of motives for CS

differences stem from speakers' personal and collective history

4. Macro-linguistic approaches

- CS can be studied at the level of whole societies where multilingualism is prevalent

- Gumpers/Hernandez (1969): "CS occurs whenever minority language groups come into close contact with majority language groups under conditions of rapid social change"

- Heller (1988): CS can be used to manage and avoid conflict when different varieties are associated with different roles in a society (exploit various ambiguities in situations)

- Woolard (1988): way of addressing two audiences at one, leveling the boundary between them

- Gal (1988): CS often involves one state-supported and one stigmatized minority language

form of resistance to domination (help to shape the socio-political situation)

4.1. Diglossia, marked choices and networks

- domain: "institutional contexts and their congruent behavioral co-occurences" (Fishman 1972)

- Myers-Scotton (1986): relationship between diglossia and CS (notion of marked and unmarked choices; Markedness Theory, explains socio-psychological motivations for CS

- Wei/Milroy/Ching (2000): social networks as an alternative means of relating CS and the language choices of the individual to a broader context; "life-modes" correspond with the linguistic behavior of members of different types of network

5. The Gumperz tradition

- John Gumperz put CS on the sociolinguistic map

- Discourse Strategies (1982)

5.1. We-codes and they-codes

- ethnically specific, minority language comes to be regarded as a "we-code" (in-group, informal activities)

- majority language serves as "they-code" (formal, out-group relations)

- very few situations where one code exclusively is appropriate; we-code and they-cdoe are often used within the same conversation

- dichotomous thinking

- Singh (1983): minority language is not always the we-code

- Sebba/Wootton (1998): relationship between code and identity is far from being one-to-one

- Meeuwis/Blommaert (1998): distinction breaks down, CS can be a variety in its own right (same functions and effects as a "language"

- Swigart (1991): distinction fails to account for the variation and CS which are observed

- Rampton (1995): the adoption of CS may in itself be an "act of identity", e.g. case of "crossing"

- people code-switch to identify themselves with a particular peer-group

- CS due to necessity (discourse-related) and CS as the product of choice (display of identity) are not always easy to separate (often combinations of the two)

5.2. Situational and conversational code-switching

- situational CS: distinc varieties are associated with changes in interlocutor, context or topic (consequence of diglossic distribution)

- conversational CS: changes in variety without any "external" prompting

- metaphorical CS: to evoke the connotations, the metaphorical "world" of that variety

- situational CS appears to an idealized notion, rarely found in practice; frequent conversational CS

6. Comparison between and within communities

- challenge: How broadly should CS be defined?

- has so far been defined as inclusively as possible: differences between CS and other contact phenomena are probably only differences of degree, not categorical

- CS merges with lexical borrowing ("minimal" manifestation of contact), convergence, interference and code-mixing (last step before total fusion)

- process of language contact does not always proceed in the same way

6.1. Variation between communities

- only a few comparisons are available, not many comparable data-sets

6.2. Comparisons between communities

- McClure/McClure (1988)

- Poplack (1988): data collected in the Puerto-Rican community in New York, Ottawa-Hull community in Canada

demarcation leine between CS and borrowing: single words that are morphologically or phonologically integrated do not count as CS

stronger influences of English were directly reflected by the use of CS (same switch-types: metalinguistic comment or switches in the context of explaining/translating, but distribution was different), speaker's full awareness of using English (good French excludes Anglicisms)

- Puerto Ricans code-switch more fluently and variedly: both languages are an intrinsic part of their identity (integrated duality)

CS arises in different forms in a wide variety of sociolinguistic circumstances
some communities shun CS (protect language and culture, speaker attitudes

7. Conclusion
- societal and individual level are in constant dynamic interaction
- CS has clear analogies in the monolingual sphere (register, style)
- Bell (1984): concept of "audience design" can help explain many cases of CS
- more systematic comparison of CS and dialect-/style/register-shifting

CS is the bilingual manifestation of universal discourse practices

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