User:Ephvex/Code-switching

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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. Likewise, code-switching can occur when there is a change in the environment one is speaking. Code-switching can happen in the context of speaking a different language or switching the verbiage to match that of the audience. 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.

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Code-Switching in Remote Writing Settings

Code-switching is remote settings has become higher on the writing agenda due to the Covid-19 pandemic. A study done by Cambridge University looked into how code-switching is present on remote, online platforms. Looking at tweets from Twitter regarding Hurricane Irma, researchers looked to see how posting went hand in hand with the impacted English and Spanish speaking countries. They found that many utilized English due to the platform's systemic influences. However, translations were prevalent in tweets to make them accessible to both English and Spanish speakers. “To examine the relation between language preference and switch tendency, we computed proportions of code switches as a function of language of prior and current tweet.” Likewise, the results of the study conclude that  “language switching encompasses successive tweets produced by different individuals, that 2) speakers differ with respect to language preference based on tweeting history within the same corpus rather than on self-ratings or another measure of proficiency, 3) more messages overall are in English than in Spanish and 4) compared to non-switch tweets by the same speaker within the same corpus, greater diversity among strongly valenced words characterizes the conditions under which code-switching emerges.” Thus, we can conclude the importance of understanding code switching to make social media accessible.

Constraint-based model: Poplack (1980)[edit]

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.

Some observations on Sankoff and Poplack's model regard the free-morpheme and equivalence constraints that 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.