Bilingualism and CodeSwitching

1
Bilingualism and Code-Switching

• Or Why sometimes Ill start a sentence in
  English y termino en Espanol

2
The Monolingual Default

• Suzanne Romaines book Bilingualism
• She notes that it would certainly be odd to
  encounter a book with the title Monolingualism
  (19951)
• But linguistic theory often seems angled towards
  monolingualism
• E.g. Chomsky (19633) concerned with an ideal
  speaker-listener, in a completely homogenous
  speech-community, who knows its language
  perfectly.
• Problem with this no-one knows all of one
  language perfectly.
• Do you know what stubs to can wall penetration
  welds are? Whats a treble top? Tort?
  (Harding-Esch Riley 200322)
• And, besides, what is a homogenous speech
  community? Weve already seen that most societies
  are multilingual and that most people grow up
  with more than one language

3
Who is bilingual?

• Definitions everyone knows what bilingualism is
  until we try and define it.
• Bloomfield (193355) native-like control of two
  or more languages
• Weinreich (19531) the practice of alternately
  using two languages
• Haugen (19537) the point where a speaker can
  first produce complete meaningful utterances in
  the other language'
• Grosjean (1997) the use of two (or more)
  languages in one's everyday life, not knowing two
  or more languages equally well and optimally
• Important to remember that bilinguals may be
  competent in speaking and listening, but less
  competent in reading and writing
• Sometimes just listening (Diebold, 1964) though
  this goes against Haugens definition and most
  people can understand at least a few words in a
  foreign language (this is probably not
  bilingualism per se)
• So once again, monolingualism is relative, as
  with societal.

4
Ways of becoming bilingual

• Living in a bilingual community
• Being brought up by bilingual parents, or parents
  with different language from wider community, or
  parents with different languages
• Moving to a different country
• Personal study/School/University
• Marrying someone with a different language
  (Vietnam War, Thai Brides usually women who
  learn)
• Political (e.g. black South Africans learning
  Afrikaans to speak to police, speaking Mandarin
  in Taiwan public spheres)
• Religious (Hebrew/Judaism, Church
  Slavic/Orthodox, Arabic/Islam)
• Etc. But all in language contact situations

5
Early and Late Bilingualism

• Late e.g. at school, moving countries after
  the age of 12 (roughly)
• Early moving countries, bilingual parents or
  multilingual community before 12 (roughly)
• Early bilingualism research suggests that
  children are aware of two language systems very
  early on. E.g. bilingual children know they are
  learning two languages at 2 years old, will
  communicate the right language to the right
  person very early
• Language systems develop as two languages, not
  a welded together version the development of
  particular structures in both languages is
  identical to monolingual speakers of both
  languages
• Late bilingualism tends to be less complete, L1
  accent tends to remain in L2, interference and
  transfer of pragmatic and syntactic norms from L1
  gt L2, or L2 monolingualism causes fossilisation
  of L1 (though this may be social)
• Critical period hypothesis younger children
  learn a L2 as if it was L1, even if not exposed
  to it from birth. Adults seem to find it hard to
  get rid of old habits. Also, one explanation
  (Chomsky!) is that adults have less/no access to
  Universal Grammar (theoretically, the underlying
  ability of humans to learn any language.

6
Monolingual Perspectives on Bilingualism

• Bilingualism is detrimental to intelligence
• Several recent studies support earlier evidence
  as to the adverse effect of bilingualism upon
  obtained IQ" (Eichorn-Jones 1952).
• the general trend in the literature . . . has
  been toward the conclusion that bilinguists
  suffer from a language handicap when measured by
  verbal tests of intelligence" (Darcy 1953, 50)
• Partially based on the fact that bilingual
  children tend to produce first sentence later
  than monolingual (but rapidly catch up so that
  progress is the same within weeks/months)
• Bilingualism is not knowing words in one
  language or another (thus neither language is
  complete)
• Contradiction (but argued by the same camp) that
  bilingualism only happens with native ability,
  denigrating bilinguals competence
• This can lead to language death e.g. Chinook in
  the US kids teased by village elders for making
  errors in Chinook, decided to just switch to
  English and refuse to speak Chinook.

7
Code-Switching I

• Code-Switching
• The juxtaposition within the same speech exchange
  of passages of speech belonging to two different
  grammatical systems or subsystems (Gumperz
  198259)
• Can be different languages, or varieties of one
  language, or even styles
• But must be joined together in the same speech
  act prosodically, semantic, syntax etc.
• Speech act is a complete utterance (though not
  necessarily a sentence)

8
Code-Switching II

• Code-switching is not random there are certain
  important structures where code-switches do / do
  not occur
• Social reasons participants in conversation,
  purpose, context etc.
• Also syntactic reasons.
• And not just forgetting a word code-switching
  is an active choice to achieve a social or
  linguistic aim through conversational strategy.
  (Active, though does not mean conscious)
• Or in the case of Chinook, choosing not to
  code-switch
• So competence, not incompetence.
• Weinreichs ideal bilingual switches
  appropriately to changes in the speech
  situation, but not in an unchanged speech
  situation, and certainly not within a single
  sentence.
• But data suggests otherwise

9
Code-Switching III

• Poplack, 1980 Romaine 1995
• Tag-switching tags which can be inserted
  anywhere, which do not have too many syntactic
  limits. Tags in one language, with rest of
  utterance in other language.
• E.g. Cantonese and English No problem, la.
• So he asked me for money, znas, and I had to
  say no, znas (www.sfu.ca/papappas/webpages/PPTf
  iles/L260_03/Lectures/L260_03tut1.ppt)
• Usually discourse markers like, you know
  etc.
• Inter-sentential switching at either clauses or
  between sentences. Clauses/sentences are wholly
  in one language or another, and conform to the
  rules of both languages.
• E.g. Sometimes I start a sentence in English y
  termino en Espanol.
• A Are you going to eat?
• B Bu yao
• Intra-sentential switching in the middle of
  sentences or clauses, or even words.
  Syntactically risky indicates competence in
  both languages. (Opposite to Weinreich.)
• E.g. Are you hui jia-ing

10
Examples of blurred switching

• Glass eye (.) glass eye zenme shuo.
• ________________ ____________
• English Chinese
• But
• Glass eye (.) glass eye zenme shuo
• _________ ___________________
• English switch Chinese
• So not only just switching between two
  languages, but syntactic structure. Also social
  context.

11
Summary

• Romaine (1995) disagrees with an over-reliance on
  the syntactic categories of code-switching
  proposed by Poplack (1980)
• It is all very well to develop a
  syntactic-grammatical model of code-switching
• But code-switching is equally well understood as
  a social phenomena structured as a
  discourse-pragmatic strategy
• It is a strategy of bilingualism
• Bilingualism is not incompetence, but rather an
  enhanced competence
• Code-switching by bilinguals is not fundamentally
  that much different from style-shifting by
  monolinguals, it just has a bigger linguistic
  repertoire to draw from
• Ultimately, language is a means to get things
  done
• And as long as the task is accomplished