What do you think about code-switching?

[MacGyver]

Whenever my girlfriend talks to her family she is constantly switching between Australian-English, Fuzhou and Malaysian-English. English and Chinese switching I get, but the constant switching between two different English accents seems weird to me.

[Ogrim]

I don't know whether it counts as code-switching, but at work I constantly switch between English and French, and so do most of my colleagues. In a meeting I may start off in English, but then a colleague asks a question in French and I will answer in French.

My children do it all the time. Their first language at school is English, the "home language" is Spanish, and they also have French friends and French as the second language of education. Around the dinner table we may speak Spanish, but frequently they throw in an English word here and there because that is what first comes to their mind.

I also observe a lot of code-switching by speakers of minority languages. For Romansh speakers it is perfectly normal to go from (Swiss) German to Romansh and back in the same conversation. I have also observed the same with Alsatian speakers who will flavour their speech with French words here and there.

I have nothing against code-switching, I think it can even be an enrichment adding "spice" to a conversation. Basically, I consider code-switching as a mechanism to communicate better - you may feel that you get the message across more clearly by switching to another language you also share with your interlocutor.

[DaveBee]

When I've heard speakers code-switch it was speakers who were each fluent in two (or more!) languages, and the code would switch for certain topics, or when they were quoting someone speaking in that other language, or smthg like that. From what I could tell from the outside, the switch didn't even seem to be a deliberate choice, but spontaneous. And for some of these conversations, until I pointed out how interesting it was their code-switching, they hadn't even realized they'd done it.

I've been watching a few Montessori videos recently. One of the things mentioned was expanding vocabulary, e.g. types of shoes "pumps, clogs, slippers, brogues" rather than just "shoes". This is not just for communication, but because the brain uses language for filing too, and needs precise terms for a unique entry.

In multi-lingual people perhaps some concepts are stored in one language rather than all languages?

[IronMike]

In multi-lingual people perhaps some concepts are stored in one language rather than all languages?

Penelope Gardner-Chloros's book Code-Switching is wonderful. Highly recommended.

[Ani]

... not want to do it myself out of laziness or weakness in the language and I think it is definitely often a sign of that. ...

I think we need to make a distinction between code-switching and language transfer/language interference.

I think I'm referring to the right thing even if I didn't express myself well. I do see that distinction. The situation that comes to mind in Montreal, I would have otherwise considered the speakers native-like English speakers although their mother tongue was France french, but after 6ish months as roommates they had let both languages degrade. So I would see participating in that regularly a negative.

[aokoye]

In the past I didn't like code-switching. I felt like it was a cop out if I used it, and I felt I was missing out on the real language if my L2 partner used it. Over time I improved at my languages and now I'm pretty ambivalent about it. But I have a big challenge to my code-switching tolerance coming up. I'm learning Tagalog, probably the most notorious code-switching language that I know of.

There are thousands of Spanish and English words that are officially part of the language, but that's not code-switching imo. I'm talking about Tagalog native speakers using English words and phrases instead of common Tagalog words and phrases in the middle of Tagalog conversations. It's amazing how often this happens. I will probably try to hang out with people who are poor at English for at least part of the time during my upcoming trip to the Philippines, and they might be hard to find.

Do you speak a language that code-switches a lot? Any tricks for dealing with it, or do you just go with the flow?

Languages don't code switch - people code switch. Languages borrow vocabulary (Japanese is a great example of this or also see the massive amounts of French vocab in English), but loanwords and the like aren't code switching.

That said, the amount of code switching or translanguaging that I do is very dependent on the environment. If I feel pressured to speak German, be that in a class or with people that I know, very little if any English is going to slip in. If I'm in a more relaxed environment then I'll feel more free to use English and German. It's more complex than that, but that's the basic outline.

For those who didn't read the article above here's a rather cut and dry definition of translanguaging:

Translanguaging is the act performed by bilinguals of accessing different linguistic features or various modes of what are described as autonomous languages, in order to maximize communicative potential. (García 2009: 140)

From what I can tell from the reading/talking/going to presentations that I've been doing over the past 10ish months translanguaging is mainly used in the context of education but I would be unsurprised if that use eventually ends up branching out.

[Whodathunkitz]

In multi-lingual people perhaps some concepts are stored in one language rather than all languages?

Penelope Gardner-Chloros's book Code-Switching is wonderful. Highly recommended.

I suspect that some of this is the context in which it is learnt. Food, feelings, beliefs, family in the home.

More abstract concepts in school, TV, newspapers, university, workplaces often in a different language or dialect.


As for varieties of English, I will say the "needful".

I find it fascinating!

My old accent / dialect only comes out when I deliberately try, am tired or drunk.

My son corrects his mum and even me over our pronounciation especially "says" which we both pronounce as sez while he says "say-es".

I then launch into my regional English accent/dialect and he normally pleads or demands that I speak "English". It's to show him the variety that there is and not to judge others, especially his mum. If that doesn't work, a couple of minutes of cebuano...

When I worked with someone with a similar accent and our Brummie boss was sandwiched between us, our accents got stronger through the day and our Brummie boss had acquired bits of the accent by the end of the day and his wife was perplexed when he got home.

I work with a lot of Indian English speakers and hence "do the needful" or the more usual english version of "do the necessary" have crept into my speech to mean "take care of it".

[smallwhite]

Do you speak a language that code-switches a lot?

In Hong Kong we code-switch a lot, adding English words into our Cantonese.

At work, these words are always said in English: Marketing, Admin, reception, filing, claim (money), balance sheet, P and L, bank rec(oncilation), consol(idation), debit-credit, English first names (even the old cleaning lady who probably doesn't know English calls us by our English names)...

That old cleaning lady would probably be the only person who doesn't say these words in English: Purchasing, IT, keyboard...

And since the majority(?) of us had our schooling in English, technical terms are often said in English: carbon dioxide, demand and supply, algebra, square root...

[reineke]

... not want to do it myself out of laziness or weakness in the language and I think it is definitely often a sign of that. ...

I think we need to make a distinction between code-switching and language transfer/language interference.

I think I'm referring to the right thing even if I didn't express myself well. I do see that distinction. The situation that comes to mind in Montreal, I would have otherwise considered the speakers native-like English speakers although their mother tongue was France French, but after 6ish months as roommates they had let both languages degrade. So I would see participating in that regularly a negative.

"The two major manifestations of language loss are code-switching (CS), i.e., overt mixing of the two languages and convergence, i.e., covert incorporation of one language into the surface forms produced by the other language..."

The 'Bare Bones' of Language Attrition
By Schmitt, Elena

"Although ...language mixing and code-switching are often equated in discussions of bilingualism, code-switching is only one possible type of mixing."

Language Transfer: Cross-Linguistic Influence in Language Learning
Terence Odlin - 1989

A Research in the Literature: Terminologies and Definitions:

"There are overlapping of terminologies to describe categorizations of language mixing phenomenon in the literature. Language mixing refers to "the merging of characteristics of two or more languages in any verbal communication" (Od lin 1989:6). It may be used as a cover term for the merging of languages in contact situations in general, which takes the forms of transfer, borrowings, code-switching and mixing in child bilingualism...

3.1. Transfer and Borrowing
Language mixing may be considered to be one type of transfer (Odlin1989), or interference (Garder-Chloros 1990). Transfer or cross-linguistic influence includes borrowing transfer and substratum transfer. Borrowing transfer refers to "the influence of a second language has on a previously acquired language (which is typically one's native language)" (Odlin 1989:12).

...Substratum transfer refers to "the influence of a native language or some other previously learned language on the acquisition of another language" (Odlin 1990:97). Substratum transfer (or simply transfer) is commonly observed in second language learner contexts.

3.3. Code-switching
Code-switching is defined as "the alternation of languages within a single discourse, sentence or constituent" (Poplack 1980:583). ). It is classified according to the position of the switch into intrasentential or intersentential. Code-switching is rule-governed and characterized by social functions.

...studies show that bilinguals switch between languages for various reasons and contexts. Some of the motivations of code-switching are the lack of a particular word or inability to find words to express oneself, that is, "to fill a linguistic need"... or the greater availability of a word in the other language. Code-switching is also motivated by psychological factors... It has social functions: it emphasizes self-identity, and marks group membership, solidarity or social status or class...

Types of codeswitching...

The Matrix Language vs. Embedded Language
Myers-Scotton (1992) proposes a model of code-switching called Matrix Language Frame
Model in which she describes the structural constraints on intrasentential code-switching. She
distinguishes the Matrix Language (ML) from the Embedded Language (EL).

Bilingualism, Code-switching, Language Mixing, Transfer and Borrowing; Clarifying Terminologies in the Literature
http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED413784.pdf

"Over the past thirty years, and in particular since the publication of the groundbreaking work of Pfaff (1979) and Poplack (1980), a wealth of information about code-switching (CS) between a wide range of language pairs has become available. While the
popularity of the topic is perhaps unrivalled in the field of language contact, there are important controversies over the nature of the phenomenon and how to delimit it from other contact phenomena, in particular borrowing. Sometimes the problem is that researchers use different terminology for phenomena that are in essence the same, but in other cases researchers appear to be investigating different phenomena altogether, which means that drawing conclusions from a range of studies is difficult.

The confusion around terminology and definitions is compounded when one tries to incorporate findings from neighboring disciplines, such as Second Language Acquisition (SLA) or Psycholinguistics, into research on CS, because each discipline favors its own
terminology.

Linguists use a wide variety of terms to indicate different bilingual behaviors, including CS (see section 2). There is also an abundance of terms used to refer to the influence of one language on another.

Since the demise of contrastive analysis (Lado 1957), researchers in SLA avoid the term INTERFERENCE and use TRANSFER or CROSSLINGUISTIC INFLUENCE instead, while psycholinguists continue to use the term interference, and researchers in contact-induced language change talk about CONVERGENCE, INTERSYSTEMIC INFLUENCE OR SUBSTRATE/SUPERSTRATE/ADSTRATE INFLUENCE.

The focus of this chapter is to present a review of the definitions employed in the extant literature on bilingualism and language contact. Although many researchers think of CS and interference or transfer as different phenomena, instances of CS and transfer can be seen as similar in that they involve the occurrence of elements of language A in stretches of speech of language B.. The term ―elements is used for want of something better, as there is no other term to cover the wide variety of phonological, morphological, syntactic, semantic and conceptual features, lexical items, phrases, clauses, multiword chunks and graphemic symbols that can be transferred from one language to another.

Thus, CS is studied not only as a subject in its own right, however justified the aim of formulating (universal) constraints on this phenomenon or proving its significance in a particular socio-linguistic context may be. Instead, it is becoming increasingly evident that CS research needs to inform and be informed by models of speech processing, theories of language variation and change and SLA and that studying CS in isolation from other disciplines may not be fruitful..."

Code-switching and transfer: an exploration of similarities and differences
Handbook article for The Cambridge Handbook of Linguistic Code-switching (pp. 58-74).

http://centaur.reading.ac.uk/20711/1/code-switching.pdf

[peter]

In multi-lingual people perhaps some concepts are stored in one language rather than all languages?

I like this explanation.

As part of the 6 week challenge I'm making myself listen to some Bengali radio interviews. These have a presenter and someone being interviewed. I've noticed different interviewees use different amounts of English. I just heard a sports interview, and there was a lot of English - my impression is this was due to the topic, drug doping, which they've probably discussed and heard about in English many times. In the science programmes I've heard the person interviewed is usually American/English, and so there's a translator. The presenter/interviewer and translator use only Bengali, but the Bengali-speaking interviewees, to varying degrees, speak by combining Bengali and English.