Dedicated to Norman Denison

In this paper I shall draw attention to a paradox. On the one hand, the study of code-switching coincided with, and was partly the product of, a realisation within linguistics that bilingualism was not an abnormal situation and that the linguistic behaviour which results from bilingualism could not be dismissed as arbitrary or aberrant. On the other hand, a lot of effort has been expended within the field of code-switching on setting up a new orthodoxy to replace the old orthodoxy of monolingual norms. This consists in defining code-switching as a special form of skilled bilingual behaviour, to be distinguished from the aberrant manifestations of bilingualism which involve one language influencing another. I will try to show that this new type of ideal speaker–listener, whose existence depends on such discrete alternation, is as much of a rare bird as Chomsky's monolingual original, and that code-switching should instead be considered as a much broader, blanket term for a range of interlingual phenomena within which strict alternation between two discrete systems is the exception rather than the rule.

Code-switching is found in a variety of linguistic contexts, ranging from that where highly educated bilinguals are talking among themselves, alternating between two codes which closely reflect the relevant monolingual norms, to situations where societal multilingualism is the general norm.