Term Paper on "Code Switching"

Term Paper 14 pages (3873 words) Sources: 1+

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Code Switching

Although it sounds like something straight from a James Bond action thriller, the term "code switching" is actually used to describe those cases wherein a bilingual speaks to another bilingual with the same linguistic background and changes from one language to another in the course of conversation (Wei, 2000). Code switching is also used because it can help convey more meaning than a single language provides rather than the speakers' specific preferences for the one or the other language (Veronosi, 2000). In an increasingly multicultural world, understanding how people acquire language and apply it in multi-lingual situations has assumed greater importance than ever, and, not surprisingly, linguists have contributed to a growing body of research into this area in recent years. The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the grammar of code switching, some constraints associated with the concept, a description of the quantitative and qualitative differences that affect language acquisition and use, and the code-switching differences between children and adults. A critical review of the peer-reviewed and scholarly literature to this end is followed by a summary of the research and salient findings in the conclusion.

Review and Discussion

Grammar of Code Switching.

The occurrence of code-switching -- the alternation of two languages both between and within sentences, has been demonstrated to be controlled by extra-linguistic (or social and situational) as well as intra-linguistic (or structural) factors. For instance, in her timely study on the issue, Poplack (2000) proposes two grammatical constraints which appear to operate on code-switching:

1. The free morpheme constraint which states that codes may be switched after any constituent in discourse, provided that constituent is not a bound morpheme; and,

2. The equivalent constraint, i.e. code-switching tends to occur at points in discourse where juxtaposition of two languages does not violate a surface syntactic rule of either language (Wei, 2000, p. 216).

According to Bakker (1997), there is apparently a clear typological dimension in code mixing wherein no or very little word-internal mixing that involves two fusional languages and massive word-internal mixing in pairs with one agglutinative language. Citing Myers-Scotton's (1993) proposed matrix language frame model to account for this type of code mixing, Bakker (1997) reports that: "Very briefly, this model states that there is one matrix language, in which foreign elements can be employed. That is, the matrix language provides the grammatical framework of the code-mixing utterance. The other language is called the embedded language. If the embedded elements are longer than one word, they should follow the grammatical system of the embedded language" (p. 180). Anything else should follow the grammatical system of the matrix language, including bound and free grammatical morphemes (termed "system morphemes" by Myers-Scotton, 1993). In this regard, Bakker (1997) suggests that, "This works neatly for many language pairs with different typological characteristics" (p. 180). Subsequent research has identified three types of code switching and code mixing: (a) alternation, (b) insertion, and (c) congruent lexicalization (which is intended to be associated with different social situations) (Bakker, 1997), as follows:

1. Alternation. This type of switching occurs in instances in which bilinguals start a sentence in one language and end in another. Both languages keep to their grammatical characteristics.

2. Insertional. In these cases, one language provides the grammatical framework, into which elements from another language are placed; the embedded elements are restricted primarily to stems or phrases. Bakker notes that, "This type can be associated with most of the language pairs that Myers-Scotton studied (1993)" (p. 180).

3. Congruent lexicalization. This is the most complex of the three types and shows an inextricable mixture of the two languages, whereby one cannot identify a matrix language and whereby the grammatical systems do not remain separate but have considerably converged. According to Bakker (1997), "This type may be rarer than the other two types" (p. 180).

It is these components, then, provide form the basis for the grammatical form of code switching: "In the composition of linguistic structures, content morphemes contribute whatever semantic and pragmatic messages the speaker wishes to convey and, in this initiating role, they project directions selecting the system morphemes which are the nuts and bolts -- the grammatical system -- which give the constituent its form" (Myers-Scotton, 1993, p. 255). There are some important informative clues that present themselves as well during the code-switching process. For example, "Code switching signals contextual information equivalent to what in monolingual settings is conveyed through prosody or other syntactic or lexical processes. It generates the presuppositions in terms of which the content of what is said is decoded" (Myers-Scotton, 1995, p. 54). By and large, code switching is an oral function and does not appear to be amenable to the written form: "Code switching is seen less in prose, and within that framework surfaces very little in scholarly writing. It is used most often in dialogue, many times in forms meant to be representative of linguistic variation or stream-of-consciousness style utterances" (Callahan, 2003, p. 12).

Constraints of Code Switching.

Notwithstanding the value of the framework for understanding what compels bilinguists to incorporate components of two or more languages during speech, there are some constraints that have been identified by researchers that should be taken into account as well. For example, three general approaches are apparent in past efforts to conceptualize constraints on code switching:

1. Researchers articulated constraints on switching from the surface (e.g. largely using linear ordering, form class, or size of switched material);

2. Some researchers proposed that constraints were driven by the same principles or rules formulated under current syntactic theories to explain syntactic structures within a single language;

3. Simultaneously and then more recently as well, others suggested that a major linguistic constraint on CS is related to clashes in subcategorization restrictions between the languages involved (Myers-Scotton, 1993).

A number of models have been proposed to resolve the grammatical constraints on intrasentential switching to determine whether the switch from one language to the other tends to follows or violate the grammatical rules of either language (Myers-Scotton, 1993). In this regard, the free morpheme and equivalence model Poplack (1980) and Sankoff & Poplack (1981) were the first to postulate linguistic constraints operating on intrasentential code-switching. They defined two such constraints:

1. The free morpheme constraint predicts that a switch may not occur between a bound morpheme and a lexical form unless the latter has been phonologically integrated into the language of the bound morpheme (i.e. borrowing); for example, the Spanish -- English code-switch flipeando is a well-formed Spanish form, whereas run-eando is not, because the phonology of run is unambiguously English and that of eando Spanish.

2. The equivalence constraint predicts that the order of sentence constituents immediately adjacent to and on both sides of the switch must be grammatical with respect to both languages simultaneously.

The equivalence constraint is illustrated in Figure 1 below, where the dotted lines indicate permissible switch points, and the arrows the surface relationships of the two languages; switches can take place at, but not between, the dotted lines:

Figure ____. Equivalence constraint rule in bilingual code-switching.

Source: Blanc & Hamers, 2000, p. 262.

The assumption behind the concept of equivalence is that it serves to facilitate the code-switching process. According to Blanc and Hamers, there can also be equivalence of categories (lexical elements, morphosyntactic features, and so forth) as well as the relations between categories (for example, word order); the very concept of equivalence is problematic, though. For example, there no precise match between categories in different languages (Blanc & Hammers, 2000). Furthermore, from a psycholinguistic point-of-view, a speech community may recognize categories from different languages as equivalent, whereas another community may not (Blanc & Hamers, 2000). In addition, the equivalence constraint assumes that the two switched languages share the same categories and makes no prediction about categorial mismatches: "If switches occur at sites where there is no structural equivalence between the two languages (when, for example, the two languages require a different word order), they sometimes involve omission or repetition of constituents" (Blanc & Hamers, 2000, p. 262).

Language Acquisition: Quantitative vs. Qualitative Differences.

According to Byram (2000), "Just like words, the voice (the way of pronouncing words and phrases, intonation and rhythm), gestures of various kinds, visual signs, posture, gaze, proxemic positioning and so on contain information which can be captured and used by the interlocutor in an appropriate and efficient manner, irrespective of the language and culture and in spite of certain quantitative and qualitative differences" (p. 446). In this regard, Meisel (2000) suggests that language acquisition studies have much to gain from investigating the simultaneous acquisition of two (or more) "first languages": "By analyzing the development of two linguistic competences in one individual, we may be capable of sorting out more easily to what extent the underlying logic of development is determined by the grammatical system to be acquired, or the particular way of human language processing as opposed to properties of the individual or of the communicative situation. There is, in… READ MORE

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