In linguistics, code-switching or language alternation occurs when a speaker alternates between two or more languages, or language varieties, in the context of a single conversation or situation. Code-switching is different from plurilingualism in that plurilingualism refers to the ability of an individual to use multiple languages, while code-switching is the act of using multiple languages together. Multilinguals (speakers of more than one language) sometimes use elements of multiple languages when conversing with each other. Thus, code-switching is the use of more than one linguistic variety in a manner consistent with the syntax and phonology of each variety. Code-switching may happen between sentences, sentence fragments, words, or individual morphemes (in synthetic languages). However, some linguists consider the borrowing of words or morphemes from another language to be different from other types of code-switching. There are many ways in which code-switching is employed, such as when a speaker is unable to express themselves adequately in a single language or to signal an attitude towards something. Several theories have been developed to explain the reasoning behind code-switching from sociological and linguistic perspectives.
Use
The earliest known use of the term code-switching in print was by Lucy Shepard Freeland in her 1951 book, Language of the Sierra Miwok, referring to the indigenous people of California. In the 1940s and the 1950s, many scholars considered code-switching to be a substandard use of language. Since the 1980s, however, most scholars have come to regard it as a normal, natural product of bilingual and multilingual language use. The term “code-switching” is also used outside the field of linguistics. Some scholars of literature use the term to describe literary styles that include elements from more than one language, as in novels by Chinese-American, Anglo-Indian, or Latino writers. In popular usage, code-switching is sometimes used to refer to relatively stable informal mixtures of two languages, such as Spanglish, Taglish, or Hinglish. Both in popular usage and in sociolinguistic study, the name code-switching is sometimes used to refer to switching among dialects, styles or registers. This form of switching is practiced, for example, by speakers of African American Vernacular English as they move from less formal to more formal settings. Such shifts, when performed by public figures such as politicians, are sometimes criticized as signaling inauthenticity or insincerity.
As switching between languages is exceedingly common and takes many forms, we can recognize code-switching more often as sentence alternation. A sentence may begin in one language, and finish in another. Or phrases from both languages may succeed each other in apparently random order. Such behavior can be explained only by postulating a range of linguistic or social factors such as the following:
- Speakers cannot express themselves adequately in one language so they switch to another to work around the deficiency. This may trigger a speaker to continue in the other language for a while.
- Switching to a minority language is very common as a means of expressing solidarity with a social group. The language change signals to the listener that the speaker is from a certain background; if the listener responds with a similar switch, a degree of rapport is established.
- The switch between languages can signal the speaker’s attitude towards the listener – friendly, irritated, distant, ironic, jocular and so on. Monolinguals can communicate these effects to some extent by varying the level of formality of their speech; bilinguals can do it by language switching.
Distinguishing features
Code-switching is distinct from other language contact phenomena, such as borrowing, pidgins and creoles, and loan translation (calques). Borrowing affects the lexicon, the words that make up a language, while code-switching takes place in individual utterances. Speakers form and establish a pidgin language when two or more speakers who do not speak a common language form an intermediate, third language. Speakers also 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 language-contact phenomena and code-switching to denote the actual, spoken usages by multilingual persons.
Code-switching and language transfer
There is much debate in the field of linguistics regarding the distinction between code-switching and language transfer. According to Jeanine Treffers-Daller, “considering CS and transfer as similar phenomena is helpful if one wants to create a theory that is as parsimonious as possible, and therefore it is worth attempting to aim for such a unified approach, unless there is compelling evidence that this is not possible.”
Not all linguists agree on whether they should be considered similar phenomena. In some cases, linguists refer to the benefits and disadvantages of language transfer as two separate phenomena, i.e., language transference and language interference, respectively. In such views, these two kinds of language transfer, along with code-switching, comprise what is known as cross-linguistic influence.
Part of the debate may be solved by simply clarifying some key definitions. Evidently, linguists sometimes use different terminology to refer to the same phenomenon, which can make it confusing to distinguish between two phenomena from one another in investigative discourse. For instance, psycholinguists frequently make use of the term language switching in reference to the “controlled and willed switching” to another language. However, this term is hardly used by linguists working on natural code-switching.
Linguists adopted that code-switching involves switching between languages. But when a multilingual speaker fluent in the languages being alternated, can alleviate the contention behind this debate. This is so because language transfer does not require switching between language systems to be done by a multilingual speaker. As a result, this can account for transfer errors, when proficiency in one language is lower than proficiency in the other.
On the other hand, there are linguists that maintain “that CS and transfer are manifestations of the same phenomenon, i.e. the influence of one language on another, is an attractive null hypothesis that can be tested in experimental settings.”
Rationale
There are several reasons to switch codes in a single conversation:
- A particular topic: People generally switch codes during discourse about a particular topic when specific language is necessary or preferred; alternative speech may better convey relevant concepts.
- Quoting someone: People will switch codes while quoting another person.
- Solidarity and gratitude: When expressing gratitude or solidarity, code-switching can occur inadvertently or with the intention of fostering a rapport.
- Clarification: A speaker may engage in code-switching when listeners have difficulty comprehending specific words or concepts initially, or when the speaker does not know or remember the appropriate words in one of the languages.
- Group identity: People may alter their language to express group identification. This can happen, for example, when introducing members of a particular group to others.
- To soften or strengthen command: While asking someone to do something, code-switching works to mark emphasis or provide inspiration.
- Lexical need: People often use technical or idiomatic speech from a foreign or non-primary language; code-switching occurs when translating such words or phrases could distort the precise meaning.
- Unconscious effort: People may engage in code-switching without thinking about it. This can occur when one is frightened by a specific event or circumstances such as going on a thrilling ride at an amusement park.
- To fit in: Code-switching is a useful tool for people to talk and act more like those around them.
- To get something: People code-switching to a dialect, language, or accent of the local people in the area may get better deals, prices, or treatments when purchasing an item or service.
- To say something in secret: Code-switching can be used when a person wants to relay a message to another person with the intention that no one else around them can understand if they converse in another language.
Types
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). It is sometimes called “extrasentential” switching. In Assyrian-English switching one could say, “Ani wideili. What happened?” (“Those, I did them. What happened?”).
- Intra-sentential switching occurs within a sentence or a clause. In Spanish-English switching one could say, “La onda is to fight y jambar.” (“The latest fad is to fight and steal.“)
- Tag-switching is the switching of either a tag phrase or a word, or both, from one language to another, (common in intra-sentential switches). In Spanish-English switching one could say, “Él es de México y así los criaron a ellos, you know.” (“He’s from Mexico, and they raise them like that, you know.”)
- Intra-word switching occurs within a word itself, such as at a morpheme boundary. In Shona-English switching one could say, “But ma-day-s a-no a-ya ha-ndi-si ku-mu-on-a. (“But these days I don’t see him much.“) Here the English plural morpheme –s appears alongside the Shona prefix ma-, which also marks plurality.
Most code-switching studies primarily focus on intra-sentential switching, as it creates many hybrid grammar structures that require explanation. The other types involve utterances that simply follow the grammar of one language or the other. Intra-sentential switching can be alternational or insertional. In alternational code-switching, a new grammar emerges that is a combination of the grammars of the two languages involved. Insertional code-switching involves “the insertion of elements from one language into the morphosyntactic frame of the other.”
A portmanteau sentence is a particular type of intrasentential code-switching. It is a hybrid involving structures from two different languages in one sentence: 199 in which an item in one language as a bridge between portions of the sentence in languages which have differing word order typologies.: 193–194 It is more of a “syntactic blend” than the kind of lexical blend one sees in portmanteau words such as smog.
Theories
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Social theories
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 speech in interaction. Some discourse analysts, including conversation analyst Peter Auer, suggest that code-switching does not simply reflect social situations, but that it is a means to create social situations.
Markedness model
The Markedness model, developed by Carol Myers-Scotton, is one of the more complete theories of code-switching motivations. It posits that language users are rational and choose to speak a language that clearly marks their rights and obligations, relative to other speakers, in the conversation and its setting. When there is no clear, unmarked language choice, speakers practice code-switching to explore possible language choices. Many sociolinguists, however, object to the Markedness Model’s postulation that language-choice is entirely rational.
Sequential analysis
Scholars of conversation analysis such as Peter Auer and Li Wei argue that the social motivation behind code-switching lies in the way code-switching is structured and managed in conversational interaction; in other words, the question of why code-switching occurs cannot be answered without first addressing the question of how it occurs. Using conversation analysis (CA), these scholars focus their attention on the sequential implications of code-switching. That is, whatever language a speaker chooses to use for a conversational turn, or part of a turn, impacts the subsequent choices of language by the speaker as well as the hearer. Rather than focusing on the social values inherent in the languages the speaker chooses (“brought-along meaning”), the analysis concentrates on the meaning that the act of code-switching itself creates (“brought-about meaning”).
Communication accommodation theory
The communication accommodation theory (CAT), developed by Howard Giles, professor of communication at the University of California, Santa Barbara, seeks to explain the cognitive reasons for code-switching, and other changes in speech, as a person either emphasizes or minimizes the social differences between himself and the other person(s) in conversation. Giles posits that when speakers seek approval in a social situation they are likely to converge their speech with that of the other speaker. This can include, but is not limited to, the language of choice, accent, dialect, and para-linguistic features used in the conversation. In contrast to convergence, speakers might also engage in divergent speech, in which an individual person emphasizes the social distance between himself and other speakers by using speech with linguistic features characteristic of his own group.
Diglossia
In a diglossic situation, some topics are better suited to the use of one language over another. Joshua Fishman proposes a domain-specific code-switching model (later refined by Blom and Gumperz) wherein bilingual speakers choose which code to speak depending on where they are and what they are discussing. For example, a child who is a bilingual Spanish-English speaker might speak Spanish at home and English in class, but Spanish at recess.
Linguistic theories
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This article’s Criticism or Controversy section may compromise the article’s neutrality by separating out potentially negative information. (June 2016)
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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.
Constraint-based model: Poplack (1980)
Shana Poplack’s model of code-switching is an influential theory of the grammar of code-switching. In this model, code-switching is subject to two constraints. The free-morpheme constraint stipulates that code-switching cannot occur between a lexical stem and bound morphemes. Essentially, this constraint distinguishes code-switching from borrowing. Generally, borrowing occurs in the lexicon, while code-switching occurs at either the syntax level or the utterance-construction level. The equivalence constraint predicts that switches occur only at points where the surface structures of the languages coincide, or between sentence elements that are normally ordered in the same way by each individual grammar. For example, the sentence: “I like you porque eres simpático” (“I like you because you are nice“) is allowed because it obeys the syntactic rules of both Spanish and English. Cases like the noun phrases the casa white and the blanca house are ruled out because the combinations are ungrammatical in at least one of the languages involved. Spanish noun phrases are made up of determiners, then nouns, then adjectives, while the adjectives come before the nouns in English noun phrases. The casa white is ruled out by the equivalence constraint because it does not obey the syntactic rules of English, and the blanca house is ruled out because it does not follow the syntactic rules of Spanish.
Critics cite weaknesses of Sankoff and Poplack’s model. The free-morpheme and equivalence constraints are insufficiently restrictive, meaning there are numerous exceptions that occur. For example, the free morpheme constraint does not account for why switching is impossible between certain free morphemes. The sentence: “The students had visto la película italiana” (“The students had seen the Italian movie“) does not occur in Spanish-English code-switching, yet the free-morpheme constraint would seem to posit that it can. The equivalence constraint would also rule out switches that occur commonly in languages, as when Hindi postpositional phrases are switched with English prepositional phrases like in the sentence: “John gave a book ek larakii ko” (“John gave a book to a girl“). The phrase ek larakii ko is literally translated as a girl to, making it ungrammatical in English, and yet this is a sentence that occurs in English-Hindi code-switching despite the requirements of the equivalence constraint. The Sankoff and Poplack model only identifies points at which switching is blocked, as opposed to explaining which constituents can be switched and why.
Matrix language-frame model
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This section may be too technical for most readers to understand. (November 2013)
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Carol Myers-Scotton’s Matrix Language-Frame (MLF) model is the dominant model of insertional code-switching. The MLF model posits that there is a Matrix Language (ML) and an Embedded Language (EL). In this case, elements of the Embedded Language are inserted into the morphosyntactic frame of the Matrix Language. The hypotheses are as follows (Myers-Scotton 1993b: 7):
The Matrix Language Hypothesis states that those grammatical procedures in the central structure in the language production system which account for the surface structure of the Matrix Language + Embedded Language constituent (linguistics) are only Matrix Language–based procedures. Further, the hypothesis is intended to imply that frame-building precedes content morpheme insertion. A Matrix Language can be the first language of the speaker or the language in which the morphemes or words are more frequently used in speech, so the dominant language is the Matrix Language and the other is the Embedded Language. A Matrix Language island is a constituent composed entirely of Matrix Language morphemes.
According to the Blocking Hypothesis, in Matrix Language + Embedded Language constituents, a blocking filter blocks any Embedded Language content morpheme which is not congruent with the Matrix Language with respect to three levels of abstraction regarding subcategorization. “Congruence” is used in the sense that two entities, linguistic categories in this case, are congruent if they correspond in respect of relevant qualities.
The three levels of abstraction are:
- Even if the Embedded Language realizes a given grammatical category as a content morpheme, if it is realized as a system morpheme in the Matrix Language, the Matrix Language blocks the occurrence of the Embedded Language content morpheme. (A content morpheme is often called an “open-class” morpheme, because they belong to categories that are open to the invention of arbitrary new items. They can be made-up words like “smurf”, “nuke”, “byte”, etc. and can be nouns, verbs, adjectives, and some prepositions. A system morpheme, e.g. function words and inflections, expresses the relation between content morphemes and does not assign or receive thematic roles.)
- The Matrix Language also blocks an Embedded Language content morpheme in these constituents if it is not congruent with a Matrix Language content morpheme counterpart in terms of theta role assignment.
- Congruence between Embedded Language content morphemes and Matrix Language content morphemes is realized in terms of their discourse or pragmatic functions.
Examples
- Hindustani (Urdu or Hindi)/English
Life ko face kiijiye with himmat and faith in yourself. (Code-switching, English in bold) Face life with courage and faith in self. (Translation) |
- Swahili/English
Hata wengine nasikia washawekwa cell. (Code-switching, English in bold) Even others I heard were put cells. (Translation) |
We see that example 1 is consistent with the Blocking Hypothesis and the system content morpheme criteria, so the prediction is that the Hindi or Urdu equivalents are also content morphemes. Sometimes non-congruence between counterparts in the Matrix Language and Embedded Language can be circumvented by accessing bare forms. “Cell” is a bare form and so the thematic role of “cell” is assigned by the verb -wek- ‘put in/on’; this means that the verb is a content morpheme.
The Embedded Language Island Trigger Hypothesis states that when an Embedded Language morpheme appears which is not permitted under either the Matrix Language Hypothesis or Blocking Hypothesis, it triggers the inhibition of all Matrix Language accessing procedures and completes the current constituent as an Embedded Language island. Embedded Language islands consist only of Embedded Language morphemes and are well-formed by Embedded Language grammar, but they are inserted in the Matrix Language frame. Therefore, Embedded Language islands are under the constraint of Matrix Language grammar.
- Swahili/English
*Sikuona your barau ambayo uliipoteza. (Code-switching ungrammatical, English in bold) I didn't see your letter which you lost. (Translation) |