Faculty of Education

Degree in English Language Teaching

Course material for 4th Year - 2024 Lecturer: Contact:
SOCIOLINGUISTICS Week 13 (06th – 10th May) José Pires jpires@unilicungo.ac.mz
Lesson 16

Unit III: Code Choice, Mixing, Switching

Topic: Multilingualism between different language speakers

Whenever two people meet, negotiations take place. If they want to express solidarity and sympathy,
they tend to seek common features in their behavior. If speakers wish to express distance towards or
even dislike of the person they are speaking to, the reverse is true, and differences are sought. This
mechanism also extends to language, as has been described by Howard Giles' Accommodation Theory.
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.
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.

1
Some multilinguals use code-switching, a term that describes the process of 'swapping' between
languages. In many cases, code-switching is motivated by the wish to express loyalty to more than one
cultural group, as holds for many immigrant communities in the New World. Code-switching may also
function as a strategy where proficiency is lacking. Such strategies are common if the vocabulary of
one of the languages is not very elaborated for certain fields, or if the speakers have not developed
proficiency in certain lexical domains, as in the case of immigrant languages.
This code-switching appears in many forms. If a speaker has a positive attitude towards both languages
and towards code-switching, many switches can be found, even within the same sentence. If, however,
the speaker is reluctant to use code-switching, as in the case of a lack of proficiency, he might knowingly
or unknowingly try to camouflage his attempt by converting elements of one language into elements of
the other language. This results in speakers using words like courrier noir (literally mail that is black)
in French, instead of the proper word for blackmail, chantage.
Bilingual interaction can even take place without the speakers switching. In certain areas, it is not
uncommon for speakers each to use a different language within the same conversation. This
phenomenon is found, amongst other places, in Scandinavia. Speakers of Swedish and Norwegian can
easily communicate with each other speaking their respective languages. It is usually called non-
convergent discourse, a term introduced by the Dutch linguist Reitze Jonkman. This phenomenon is
also found in Argentina, where Spanish and Italian are both widely spoken, even leading to cases where
a child with a Spanish and an Italian parent grows up fully bilingual, with both parents speaking only
their own language yet knowing the other. Another example is the former state of Czechoslovakia,
where two languages (Czech and Slovak) were in common use. Most Czechs and Slovaks understand
both languages, although they would use only one of them (their respective mother tongue) when
speaking. For example, in Czechoslovakia it was common to hear two people talking on television each
speaking a different language without any difficulty understanding each other. Another example would
be a Slovak having read a book in Czech and afterwards being unsure whether he was reading it in
Czech or Slovak. This bilinguality still exists nowadays, although it has started to deteriorate after
Czechoslovakia split up.

Code switching and code mixing

Code-switching is a linguistics term denoting the concurrent use of more than one language, or
language variety, in conversation. Multilinguals, people who speak more than one language, sometimes
use elements of multiple languages in conversing with each other. Thus, code-switching is the
syntactically and phonologically appropriate use of more than one linguistic variety.

Code-switching is distinct from other language contact phenomena, such as borrowing, pidgins and
creoles, loan translation (calques), and language transfer (language interference). Speakers form and
establish a pidgin language when two or more speakers who do not speak a common language form an
intermediate, third language. On the other hand, speakers practice code-switching when they are each
fluent in both languages. Code mixing is a thematically related term, but the usage of the terms code-
switching and code-mixing varies. Some scholars use either term to denote the same practice, while
others apply code-mixing to denote the formal linguistic properties of said language-contact
phenomena, and code-switching to denote the actual, spoken usages by multilingual persons.

2
Social motivations for code-switching

Code-switching relates to, and sometimes indexes social-group membership in bilingual and
multilingual communities. Some sociolinguists describe the relationships between code-switching
behaviours and class, ethnicity, and other social positions. In addition, scholars in interactional
linguistics and conversation analysis have studied code-switching as a means of structuring talk in
interaction. Analyst Peter Auer suggests that code-switching does not simply reflect social situations,
but that it is a means to create social situations.

Mechanics of code-switching

Code-switching mostly occurs where the syntaxes of the languages align in a sentence; thus, it is
uncommon to switch from English to French after an adjective and before a noun, because, in French,
adjectives usually follow nouns. Even unrelated languages often align syntactically at a relative clause
boundary or at the boundary of other sentence sub-structures.

Linguists have made significant effort toward defining the difference between borrowing (loanword
usage) and code-switching; generally, borrowing occurs in the lexicon, while code-switching occurs at
either the syntax level or the utterance-construction level.

In studying the syntactic and morphological patterns of language alternation, linguists have postulated
specific grammatical rules and specific syntactic boundaries for where code-switching might occur.
None of these suggestions is universally accepted, however, and linguists have offered apparent
counter-examples to each proposed constraint.[1][17] Some proposed constraints are:

 The Free-morpheme Constraint: code-switching cannot occur between bound morphemes.

 The Equivalence Constraint: code-switching can occur only in positions where “the order of
any two sentence elements, one before and one after the switch, is not excluded in either
language.” Thus, the sentence: “I like you porque eres simpatico.” (“I like you because you are
likable.”) is allowed because it obeys the relative clause formation rules of Spanish and English.
 The Closed-class Constraint: closed class items (pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions, etc.),
cannot be switched.
 The Matrix Language Frame model distinguishes the roles of the participant languages.
 The Functional Head Constraint: code-switching cannot occur between a functional head (a
complementizer, a determiner, an inflection, etc.) and its complement (sentence, noun-phrase,
verb-phrase).

Note that some theories, such as the Closed-class Constraint, the Matrix Language Frame model, and
the Functional Head Constraint, which make general predictions based upon specific presumptions
about the nature of syntax, are controversial among linguists positing alternative theories. In contrast,
descriptions based on empirical analyses of corpora, such as the Equivalence Constraint, are relatively
independent of syntactic theory, but the code-switching patterns they describe vary considerably among
speech communities, even among those sharing the same language pairs.

3
Types of switching

Scholars use different names for various types of code-switching.

 Intersentential switching occurs outside the sentence or the clause level (i.e. at sentence or
clause boundaries).
 Intra-sentential switching occurs within a sentence or a clause.
 Tag-switching is the switching of either a tag phrase or a word, or both, from language-B to
language-A, (common intra-sentential switches).
 Intra-word switching occurs within a word, itself, such as at a morpheme boundary.

Examples of code-switching

Spanish and English — Researcher Ana Celia Zentella offers this example from her work with Puerto
Rican Spanish-English bilingual speakers in New York City. In this example, Marta and her younger
sister, Lolita, speak 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 of the predominantly Puerto Rican neighbourhood 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.”

Hopi and Tewa — Researcher Paul Kroskrity offers the following example of code-switching by of
three elder Arizona Tewa men, who are trilingual in Tewa, Hopi, and English. They are discussing the
selection of a site for a new high school in the eastern Hopi Reservation:

Speaker A [in Hopi]: Tututqaykit qanaanawakna. (“Schools were not wanted.”)

Speaker B [in Tewa]: Wédít’ókánk’egena’adi imbí akhonidi. (“They didn’t want a school on
their land.”)
Speaker C [in Tewa]: Naembí eeyae nąeląemo díbít’ó’ámmí kąayį’į wédimu::di. (“It’s better
if our children go to school right here, rather than far away.”)

In their two-hour conversation, the three men primarily spoke Tewa; however, when Speaker A
addresses the Hopi Reservation as a whole, he code-switches to Hopi. His speaking Hopi when talking
of Hopi-related matters is a conversational norm in the Arizona Tewa speech community. Kroskrity
reports that these Arizona Tewa men, who culturally identify themselves as Hopi and Tewa, use the
different languages to linguistically construct and maintain their discrete ethnic identities.