Code-Switching

Back in senior year in college, I wrote a case study for my linguistics course about the blurring of two distinct languages (Vietnamese and English) within my family. After 25 years in the US, the mixing of language became a way of life for the Pham family and thus we became code-switchers. Code switching occurs when an individual who is bilingual alternates between two languages or dialects in a conversation. For my case study, I decided to audiotape family discussions at the dinner table and then analyze our Viet-Lish in order to understand when, why, and how we code-switched. It became obvious that this complicated interaction between my mother language (Viet) and now my primary language (English) facilitated conversations within the context of my family.

Below is the intro to my paper. In order to read the rest of it, you may download the pdf file at the right side panel under the "Documents to Read" header or at this link: CODE-SWITCHING

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Languages are not separate and discrete entities, but one fluid continuum of interacting systems. Spoken languages invariably blend into each other through space and time. A prime example of language mixing is the pidginization of African languages and the French language to create French Creole. With the escalation of globalization, multilingual speakers have become the medium to interweave the languages of the world. In many cases, individuals experience the world with the perspective of two or more distinct languages. This enables these individuals to think and communicate in a variety of ways.

Consequently, the differences between individuals in thought and speech are used to mark distinctions of social classes and of ethnic groups. The native-tongue extends into the basis of a person’s identity. However, linguistic distinctions blur in ethnic Americans or bilingual foreigners. In turn, the blurring of languages can arise through the phenomenon called code switching. Code switching occurs when an individual who is bilingual alternates between two languages or dialects in a conversation (Duran, 1994). This blending of two languages displeases monolingual purists because switching can be seen as degradation and abuse of a language. Also, language gaps can facilitate the development of code switching and typically cause tension between a foreign-born parent, often the purist, and an American-born child, the assimilator. Thus many bilingual families naturally exhibit a plethora of code switches in daily conversation. This paper is a case study of my bilingual Vietnamese American family and the myriad code switches between the Vietnamese and English language that occurs at our dinner table. The investigation provides insight into code switching as a rule-governed behavior and as a communication strategy for bilingual speakers.

The balancing act of languages is crucial for clear communication in bilingual communities. A person who is bilingual is able to communicate, to varying extents, in a second language. Because code switching is the use of two languages interchangeably, it implies some degree of competence in both languages even if bilingual fluency is not yet stable (Duran, 1994). In fact, the jumbling nature of code switching can be used to overcome linguistic and conceptual barriers. For instance, a bilingual speaker who may not be able to express him/herself in one language can readily switch to another to compensate for the deficiency. This type of code switching tends to occur for individuals brought up in a multilingual environment early in life. For that reason, many Asian American families, Chicano American families, and all sorts of other ethnic American families use code switching at the dinner table everyday to ease language and generational gaps.

The rule-governed behavior and communication strategy is initially guided by different speech situations to ease the language gaps. The location, the mode (i.e., writing or speaking), the topic of conversation, the purpose of communication, and the relations of the hearer and speaker as speech situations augment the sophistication of code-switches. Also the diverse level of proficiency in two languages explains the variety and richness of communicative strategies available to bilingual members.

The numerous shifts between languages occur commonly among bilinguals and may take a number of different forms. Commonly a bilingual person has the choice of activating both languages, thus code mixing, or deactivating one language and activating the other language in a monolingual context; however, there is never total deactivation of one language when the other language is more prominent in the situation. Thus one language serves as the base or matrix language and the second language interjects during code switches (Grosjean 1984). As a consequence, the dominant language serves to frame the variations of code switching…

To Be Continued at "CODE-SWITCHING"