Code Switching: A sociolinguistic perspective
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Textbook
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Summary
Nowadays the alternation between two languages which is known as code-switching is rather the norm than exception in many communities due to the fact that there are nearly seven thousand languages spoken throughout the world and more than half of the worlds’ population is estimated to be bilingual and engages in code-switching. Code-switching remains one of the central issues in bilingualism research. For a long time, code-switching has been considered as a lack of linguistic competence since it was taken as evidence that bilinguals are not able to acquire two languages or keep them apart properly. Nowadays it is the common belief that code-switching is grammatically structured and systematic and therefore can no longer be regarded as deficient language behaviour.The purpose of this essay is to explore the question why bilingual speakers engage in code-switching based on selected theories from a sociolinguistic perspective which looks beyond the formal aspects and concentrates on the social, pragmatic and cultural functions that code-switching may have.
Excerpt
Table Of Contents
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perspective is therefore not sufficient to describe the reasons for an effect of a switch.
Therefore I want to deal with code switching from a sociolinguistic point of view which looks
beyond the formal aspects and concentrates on the social, pragmatic and cultural functions
that code switching may have.
The starting point in the sociolinguistic study of code switching is to recognize that the
choice of a particular language is not a random behaviour and may even be predictable. Being
aware of this fact, the central question comes up why bilinguals use different language
varieties in the same utterance. Does a switch between languages carry any specific social
meaning at all? Based on this question, sociolinguistic research further explores the question
in which situations code switching is probable and which functions it may serve for the
individual speaker.
The second chapter begins with a description and definition of the terms monolingual-
ism, bilingualism and multilingualism which are relevant for understanding code switching
since this phenomenon cannot be regarded as an isolated phenomenon. Code switching is a
central part of the bilingual discourse.
The third chapter deals with a detailed description and definition of the term code
switching. First of all, code switching is categorized and classified as a language contact
phenomenon. Moreover, defining code switching includes distinguishing the term from other
language contact phenomena such as borrowing. The chapter further continues with the
definition of code switching. In order to demonstrate how the perception of code switching
has changed throughout the course of research history, several definitions will be considered
which reveal the different viewpoints on the subject. Finally, this chapter is closed with a
distinction between three different types of code switching that may occur in bilingual speech.
The following part gives an overview of selected sociolinguistic theories which are an attempt
to explain the circumstances under which code switching occurs and the motivations speakers
have when choosing another language within the same conversation. In general, one can
roughly distinguish between macro level approaches and micro level approaches in sociolin-
guistics. Macro-level approaches take situational factors and above all societal norms and
structures into account when explaining individual speech behaviour. This approach explores
language choices at a community level.
Joshua Fishman's domain analysis serves an appropriate example of an approach apply-
ing a macro-level perspective. It has set an important milestone in sociolinguistic research
focussing on the relationship between language and society and more precisely on the
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relationship between language choices and certain types of activity. The assumption is that
language choices become predictable on the basis of the domain in which they occur.
In contrast to that, micro level approaches regard the motivations for code switching not
deriving from overall societal norms but from the interlocutors themselves. With micro-level
approaches, code switching is explored at an interactional level.
Jan Blom and John J. Gumperz were the first to concentrate on the functions of code
switching for the discourse itself and later on introduced the term conversational code
switching. Code switching is, according to Gumperz, regarded as a contextualization cue
which speakers strategically use to mark their speech. Gumperz's work proved to be very
influential for the ongoing research on code switching.
It is especially Peter Auer's work which can be understood as a detailed reflexion and
modification of Gumperz's theory of conversational code switching. Auer proposes the
method of conversation analysis which is a detailed transcription of speech exchanges
between interlocutors within a conversation in order to get to an interpretation of the meaning
conveyed by code switching.
With a particular focus on the psychological forces underlying language behaviour, speech
accommodation theory set up by Howard Giles and his colleagues serves as an attempt to
explain languages choices in terms of convergence and divergence. Thus, speakers adjust
their speech style as a way of expressing certain attitudes and intentions towards the interlocu-
tor.
Carol MyersScotton is also interested in identifying the psychological and social moti-
vations underlying code switching and introduces the markedness model. According to this
model code switching is regarded as the negotiation of the relationships between speakers.
Moreover, the markedness model is an effort to combine the study on code switching at a
micro and macro-level since she uses the conversation between bilinguals as unit of analysis
but also considers social norms and expectations as influencing factors.
The following chapter includes a detailed discussion of these approaches mentioned above
with the purpose to compare and evaluate them. In doing this, I concentrate on the following
questions:
· What do these approaches have in common?
· What are the main differences between these approaches?
· To what extent have these approaches contributed to the understanding of code switching
and its social meaning?
· In which points are these approaches limited and disputable?
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The last chapter in this critical essay includes a summary of the most important aspects which
have been discussed here. Finally, I will close this chapter by drawing a conclusion on/about
the importance of the discussed approaches for the prospective research of code switching.
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2. Terminology and definitions
2.1 Monolingualism
Monolingualism or unilingualism describes the condition of an individual or a community
having access to only one linguistic code and therefore speaking only one language. This
usually refers to the language which is acquired as a first language or mother tongue. Besides,
the term is sometimes used to refer to a language policy which enforces one official or
national language over others. Although monolingualism had been so far and is in some
communities still regarded as the norm, there are less monolingual people or groups than
there are bilinguals or multilinguals within the world population nowadays.
On the one hand, monolingualism is likely to occur in isolated tribes and on the other
hand particularly among native speakers living in many of the Anglosphere nations like the
United States, Australia or the United Kingdom due to the worldwide perception that English
speakers see little relevance in learning a second language. This is considered to be above all
a result of the widespread distribution of English and its use as a lingua franca even in non-
English speaking countries. According to Edwards (1994) the possession of a powerful
language as English but also French, German or Spanish can lead to monolingual perspec-
tives. The assumption that it is not necessary to learn a second language is based on the
consideration that speakers of a minority group in a community need to learn the dominant
language in order to accommodate to the majority and manage their everyday lives. Such
notions have triggered off local discussions which deal with the question to which extent a
non-native group should integrate its language and its culture into the public life of a commu-
nity.
A good example illustrating this problem is the discussion in Germany about the inte-
gration of Turkish language and culture in everyday life. Due to the bad results in the PISA
study which most of all uncovered the strong correlation between education and social
background in Germany it has been proposed that German should be the obligatory language
not only in lessons but also on the school grounds (Reimann 2006). This proposal on mono-
lingualism at school is heavily disputed. With regard to cultural integration, there is for
instance deep disagreement whether female teachers of Turkish nationality should be allowed
to wear the traditional headscarf during their lessons. Monolingual perspectives also include
the perception that bilingualism is something exotic with an either romantic or threadbare
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background since the speaker was either the child of European nobility or a child of refugees
(Myers Scotton 2003).
Myers-Scotton further claims that especially some Americans associate bilingualism with
migrant and uneducated, unskilled workers.
In the end, monolingualism does not only describe the condition in which individuals
only speak one language but furthermore a viewpoint which comes along with cultural
narrowness which is often enforced by state policies attributing only one language an official
status.
2.2 Bilingualism
It has already been mentioned that bilingualism is the standard rather than the exception these
days. Individual as well as societal bilingualism has been promoted by several factors.
Bilingualism derives from the contact between people with different nationalities whereas this
contact can be forced under certain circumstances or chosen by the people themselves.
On the one hand, the geographical proximity between two communities is the reason for
the development of bilingual communities and speakers. Close proximity between groups
includes amongst others living in a border area between two nations. In border areas speakers
often learn the language which is spoken across the frontier as being the case at the Dutch-
German border. Moreover, close proximity also means living in a bilingual or multilingual
area especially as a minority group. These conditions naturally call for the need to communi-
cate with each other particularly for the purposes of trade. The marriage outside one's ethnic
group is also a result from geographical proximity which then leads to the creation of bilin-
gual families.
While close proximity on the one hand is a main factor for language contact, conditions
of displacement (Myers-Scotton 2003) are another one. Due to certain events and develop-
ments throughout history, there are various reasons to explain migration of groups or an
individual. An example for migration under force is the involuntary movement of Africans
during the slave trade area to the Caribbean and southern states of America. This has resulted
in the development of African American Vernacular English, a pidgin and creole language as
a particular form of bilingualism. In addition, the movement of people to other countries has
been a consequence of a prevalent war with the aim to seek political or religious refuge.
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Another major historical factor explaining the development of bilingualism is colonialism
since wielding power on the colonized nation also meant to impose the language of the
conquerors on the local population. However, today the displacement of people does not
exclusively occur under forced circumstances. The reasons to migrate in search of employ-
ment might be more or less voluntary. In some cases the economic situation of the home town
certainly coerces people into moving away but there are also a number of people who leave
their home town voluntarily. Due to economic as well as mental changes globalization has
brought about, people are willing to learn additional languages in order to improve their
occupational skills and therefore assure their mobility. This in particular applies to the
learning of English for the purposes of international businesses. And apart from political or
economic reasons there are still some people who learn additional languages out of curiosity
and for the purposes of travelling.
Nevertheless, all these factors have finally resulted in the contact of people from different
nationalities and therefore in the contact of different languages which has inevitably led to
bilingualism.
In the history of bilingualism research various definitions have been proposed. Those
have in common to use bilingualism as a cover term for speaking at least two or more
languages. Yet, there is a distinction between societal and individual bilingualism. While the
latter refers to the psychological state of an individual having access to two linguistic codes
(Hamers; Blanc 2000), societal bilingualism is given when two languages are spoken in a
community. This for instance used to be the case in Canada or Belgium.
Definitions on individual bilingualism have mainly differed in terms of proficiency
meaning how fluent an individual can communicate in a second language. Narrow definitions
such as the one of Leonard Bloomfield consider the perfect mastery of at least two languages
as a criterion to define bilingualism. Thus, Bloomfield defines bilingualism as the "native-like
control of two or more languages" (Apple/Muysken 1987:2). In contrast to that Mcnamara
suggests that any person who possesses a minimal competence in only one of the four basic
language skills (reading, writing, speaking, and listening) in another language than his mother
tongue, can already be called a bilingual (Hamers; Blanc 2000). Whereas the above-
mentioned descriptions are very limited and diverge extremely, the concept of bilingualism
has become broader throughout the twentieth century and involves different degrees of
competence in the languages that are involved.
According to Myers-Scotton (2003) for instance bilingualism does not imply the com-
plete mastery of two languages and just a few bilinguals are as proficient in a second language
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as they are in their second. Bilingual speakers rarely achieve equal proficiency in both
languages since they are, for the most part, not exposed to these languages to the same extent.
In addition, the different languages are usually not used in the same situations and with the
same frequency.
The difficulty in defining the term is to set a specific limit on the proficiency a speaker has to
possess on a second language. Therefore, recent definitions as the one of Carol Myers-Scotton
(2003) tend to define bilingualism in a very broad sense describing it as the "ability to use two
or more languages sufficiently to carry on a limited casual conversation".
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2.3 Multilingualism
Today it is very common to use the term multilingualism either instead of bilingualism or at
least in the same context although the two terms do not exactly identify the same phenome-
non. Bilingualism and multilingualism merely differ in the number of linguistic codes an
individual or a community has access to. Thus, multilingualism describes the ability to speak
more than two languages and comes about when speakers of different languages are brought
together within the same political entity (Hoffmann 1991). Although there is barely a differ-
ence towards the concept of bilingualism, multilingualism remains a topic worth mentioning
since in many parts of the world this phenomenon has become an indisputable fact of life.
Multilingualism on a societal level is particularly very common in Asian and African
communities. Several languages co-exist in these countries and large sections of the popula-
tion speak three or more languages. On the one hand, speakers use a local, ethnic or another
indigenous language in order to communicate within their own or between different ethnic
groups. Next to these local language speakers often use an additional language for more
formal occasions. This language which may be, for instance, English, French or Spanish
which has been introduced during the process of colonisation often serves as the language of
education, bureaucracy and privilege (Wei 2000).
Attitudes towards multilingualism have also changed throughout history. With regard to
societal multilingualism, many governments have chosen to ignore the linguistic diversity of
their community in the past and gave only one language an official status (Hoffmann 1991).
Nowadays the linguistic diversity of many countries is more or less accepted and there are
some bilingual states, in which even two languages hold an official status. Brussels and
Canada are the best known examples for states with two official languages. Nevertheless, the
majority of multilingual communities still hold one official language and choosing this
language can turn out to be a challenge for the government which then has to face possible
internal conflicts especially if the nation has a colonial past.
Individual multilingualism is often regarded as an additional skill improving the occupa-
tional opportunities and mobility of the speaker. In many European countries, it is therefore
very common today to learn at least two additional languages next to their mother tongue. The
availability of different languages in a community can serve as a useful interactional resource
for the multilingual speaker who usually assigns different roles to different languages. Thus,
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speakers may use one language in formal contexts as work, education and government and
another one in more informal contexts with family and friends. The use of different languages
is likely to occur in the same utterance. This very typical language behaviour performed by
bilinguals or multilinguals is then known as code switching which will be the central subject
matter in the following chapters.
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3. Code switching
3.1 Language contact phenomena
In the previous chapter several occasions have been mentioned in which speakers of different
languages communicate with each other. For the purposes of trade, amongst others, the
linguistic exchange of speakers occurs very frequently with the consequence that their
different languages influence each other. In other words, when speakers of different languages
interact very closely with each other, this may result in a phenomenon which is called
language contact. The permanent use of several languages in daily interaction can have
different long-term effects on the grammars of those languages and the outcomes are defined
as language contact phenomena which take many forms. Language contact phenomenon is
used as a cover term for bilingual speech behaviour including code switching, borrowing,
pidgin and creole development and the attrition of languages. All of these phenomena have in
common that they are concerned with how elements of two different languages are used
together and furthermore, they are concerned with the effects a grammar of one variety can
have on the grammar of another variety (Myers-Scotton 2003).
Since the effects can be more or less radical language contact phenomena can be distin-
guished according to the degree of structural change obvious in the grammar. In other words,
language contact phenomena range from the borrowing of words to more radical changes
such as the attrition or total loss of a language or even to the development of pidgin and creole
languages in communities in which speakers do not share any common language (Myers-
Scotton 2002).
Among the various language contact phenomena it is above all the phenomenon of code
switching that has attracted the attention of many linguists and has been studied from different
perspectives.
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3.2 General distinction between code switching and borrowing
In the previous chapter it has been explained that phenomena like code switching is one of
many various language contact phenomena next to borrowing or pidginization. The diverse
phenomena have may have the same origins, namely the contact between speakers of different
language but still differ on a linguistic level. For further analysis it is necessary to keep code
switching clearly from other language contact phenomena apart. A great deal of attention has
been drawn to the distinction between code switching and borrowing. Gardner-Chloros claims
that this can be explained with the frequent occurrence of single-word switching alongside
with borrowing in many communities (1995).
Borrowing describes the process in which languages borrow words or phrases from oth-
er languages (Malmkjær 2002). One of the best known examples is the word Computer in
German. The use of Anglicism especially in the media has led to the fact that those words
which are in general called loanwords have established in the vocabulary of particular young
speakers (Myers-Scotton 2003). Being widely accepted through their frequent use, loan words
have become integrated into the recipient language of a community and are also perceived as
a part of this. This is one important distinction between borrowing and code switching.
Whereas loan words are integrated into the linguistic system of the other language and have
established within the vocabulary of a linguistic community, words from the other language in
code switching are used in their original sense. In contrast to borrowing, code switching is
rather regarded as an individual and maybe spontaneous occurrence. In other words, the
degree of integration is mainly used as a criterion to draw a line between the two language
contact phenomena. Thus, it is assumed that loan words are adapted on a morphological as
well as phonological level into the recipient language whereas words used in code switching
are not (Apple/Muysken 1987). However, there is disagreement about the necessity of a sharp
distinction of the terms due to the perception of some scholars that code switching can serve
as a precursor borrowings (Carol Pfaff 1995). This means that foreign vocabulary introduced
by code switching bear the potential of becoming a loan word. Nevertheless, the realm in
which this debate is carried out implies a rather structural and grammatical perspective.
With regard to definitional issues it is sufficient and important to emphasize that code
switching in contrast to other language contact phenomena such as borrowing describes an
individual behaviour in which two different languages are used within the same conversation.
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3.3 Definition of Code switching
The conversation between bilinguals is not always restricted to the use of one language.
Bilingual speakers rather use their linguistic repertoire in an optimal way by switching
between the languages which are available to them. This phenomenon is in linguistics well-
known as code switching or code alternation. Code switching describes a very common and
therefore central practise among bilingual speakers which can take many forms. Thus, the
alternate use of two codes can occur within linguistic units of different length. Accordingly, it
may occur within whole sentences, a part of a sentence or within single words or phrases.
This means in particular that long blocks of speeches may be divided into parts which are
expressed in different languages, a sentence may start in one language and finish in another
one or words and phrases of one language are inserted in a sentence that is expressed in a
different language (Wei 2000).
One of the first attempts to define code switching is made by Einar Haugen and Uriel
Weinreich who are considered to have initiated code switching research. Here, the view of the
bilingual speaker as someone who is equally proficient in both languages is relevant in order
to understand their perception of code switching.
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According to Weinreich
"The ideal bilingual switches from one language to the other according to appropri-
ate changes in the speech situation (interlocutors, topics, etc.), but not in an un-
changed speech situation, and certainly not within a single sentence"
(1953:73,cited in Edel 2007)
Due to the perception that ideal bilinguals only switch between sentences a switching
within a sentence is therefore regarded as an interference phenomenon as part of a speech
behaviour performed by imperfect bilinguals. Code switching thus reflects the inability of the
speaker to carry on a conversation in one of the available languages.
Weinreich's understanding of code switching as interference which he describes as
"those instances of deviation from the norms of either language which occur in the speech of
bilinguals as a result of their familiarity with more than one language..." (Weinreich 1974:1,
cited in Edel 2007) supports this viewpoint. With regard to terms like interference it becomes
obvious that code switching has long been regarded as a lack of competence in one of the
languages which are available to bilingual speakers.
Although Haugen's and Weinreich's terminology and definitions have become widely
accepted and their view on code switching only reflected the attitudes of their time (Myers-
Scotton 1998), the understanding of bilingualism and therefore of code switching changed
fundamentally.
The widespread perception that codeswitching reveals the inability of bilinguals to ex-
press themselves adequately in one of the languages available to them proves to be wrong.
Since the seventies code switching is assumed to be a speech behaviour which requires a high
linguistic competence in a language (Edel 2007). Intensive studies on grammatical constraints
controlling code switching have shown that it is not just a simple combination of two different
grammars but the grammatical integration of one language into another one. The performance
of code switching therefore implies skilled manipulation of at least two overlapping sections
of grammar. The languages are not involved to the same extent since one language sets the
grammatical framework. This language is called the base, recipient or matrix language
(Malmkjær 2002). In contrast to that, the other language provides specific items which fits
into the framework of the base language. This language is characterized as the donor or
embedded language. Code switching passages have proved to be even in two typologically
different languages grammatically correct (Edel 2007). Due to this fact it does not simply
