Code-switching occurs when bilingual or bi-dialectal speakers change between languages or dialects during conversations. It happens in both internal code-switching within one's own thoughts and externally in conversations. There are several reasons why people code-switch, including not being able to fully express themselves in one language, wanting to fit in or express solidarity with a social group, emphasizing or clarifying a point, and family influence.
Code-switching occurs when bilingual or bi-dialectal speakers change between languages or dialects during conversations. It happens in both internal code-switching within one's own thoughts and externally in conversations. There are several reasons why people code-switch, including not being able to fully express themselves in one language, wanting to fit in or express solidarity with a social group, emphasizing or clarifying a point, and family influence.
Code-switching occurs when bilingual or bi-dialectal speakers change between languages or dialects during conversations. It happens in both internal code-switching within one's own thoughts and externally in conversations. There are several reasons why people code-switch, including not being able to fully express themselves in one language, wanting to fit in or express solidarity with a social group, emphasizing or clarifying a point, and family influence.
Code-switching occurs when bilingual or bi-dialectal speakers change between languages or dialects during conversations. It happens in both internal code-switching within one's own thoughts and externally in conversations. There are several reasons why people code-switch, including not being able to fully express themselves in one language, wanting to fit in or express solidarity with a social group, emphasizing or clarifying a point, and family influence.
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CODE SWITCHING
Code-switching occurs where
'Bilingual or bidialectal speakers change from one language or dialect to another in the midst of their conversations'. -internal code-switching
CODESWITCHING
- External code-switching - Common in multilingual situations
We want to fit in To express solidarity or say something in secret with a particular social group.
not able to express him/herself in one language
REASONS WHY PEOPLE CODESWITCH
Emphasising or clarifying a point
Family influence
not able to express him/herself in one language
a speaker may not be able to
express him/herself in one language so switches to the other to compensate for the deficiency. As a result, the speaker may be triggered into speaking in the other language for a while. This type of code switching tends to occur when the speaker is upset and tired.
to express solidarity with a particular social group
This is to exclude others from a
conversation who do not speak the second language. An example of such a situation may be two people in an elevator in a language other than English. Others in the elevator who do not speak the same language would be excluded from the conversation and not listening to their conversation.
Family influence For a concrete example of code-switching in action, I will use my household. All the members of my immediate family are native English speakers, but my mother is of Mexican descent and speaks Spanish fluently, and my father speaks adequate Spanish. My mother will sometimes say that we are "My mijos." Mijo is a contraction of "mi hijo," which means "my son" or "my child." This does not make sense as a straight borrowing, because what she is really saying is the redundant "my my children," yet as a code switch it conjures up the feelings of the extremely close bonds of our Mexican extended family. She is not simply choosing a word, she is evoking a tradition.
Emphasising or clarifying a point
When one of the children dropped something, causing it to break or spill, and reported the event tearfully, our parents would prompt us not to say, "I dropped it." That heaps blame on the child, who is already upset. Instead, we were supposed to say, "Se cay." We could just as easily have said "it fell," the English translation, but using the Spanish gave it an extra shade of meaning--the knowledge that our parents did not blame us for the accident.
to fit in the society I am a Spanish teacher in a high-needs school in Nashville. I grew up in a homogenous town in rural Pennsylvania. Foreign languages came easily for me, so I majored in Spanish and minored in French at the University of Pittsburgh. When I moved to my school in Nashville, I had to learn another language: Southern, African American English. I entered my learning experience with fervor. My students taught me almost as much as I taught them in my first years. Now that I am well versed in the language, I have trouble code switching back to Standard American English.
