Code-switching

Introduction

This chapter describes the place of CS in language contact, including its relationship with borrowing, pidginization, convergence and language shift. All of these are instances of change, but the time-scale in which such change occurs can vary widely. CS occurs in contact situations of many types and relates in complex ways to the processes of change at work in those situations.

CS occurs among immigrant communities, regional minorities and native multilingual groups alike. Gumperz and Hernandez wrote that it could be found “each time minority language groups come into contact with majority language groups under conditions of rapid social change” (1969:2). Others (e.g. Giacolone Ramat 1995) have on the contrary described it as a feature of stable bilingualism in communities where most speakers can speak both languages. There are descriptions of contact situations in which it receives little or no prominence (e.g. Jones, 1998, with respect to Wales; Spolsky and Cooper, 1991, on Jerusalem), but this does not necessarily mean it does not occur in those settings. Instead it may be because other instances of contact or restructuring are the primary focus, or because the data collection techniques do not centre on the informal conversational modes where CS occurs. In Section 2.2, the extent to which CS brings about language change, or is symptomatic or independent of it, is considered.

Sociolinguists have treated CS mainly as a spoken genre, and as such it undoubtedly has a long history (see Stolt (1964) on German–Latin CS in Luther's “table-talk”).