A BILINGUAL VARIETY OF COLLOQUIAL BASQUE

This doctoral dissertation examines the role of code-switching between Basque and Spanish linguistic elements in the metropolitan area of Greater Bilbao in the Basque Country. The study consists of four articles and a compilation article. The articles examine bilingual speech from different points of view: variation in grammatical code-switching patterns, the role of swearing, slang and code-switching in constructing an informal register of Basque, language ideologies that discourage and encourage code-switching, and conventionalization of semantic-pragmatic code-switching patterns. The Basque context of language revitalization has created new divisions between speakers, as the formerly unidirectional bilingualism has turned into a situation where great numbers of Spanish speakers are learning Basque in adult acquisition programs or in Basque-medium education. Basque is still, however, a minority language in the Greater Bilbao area and the bilingual Basque speakers live scattered among the monolingual majority. The effect of these social structures on linguistic structures is examined in two sets of data that were collected for the purposes of this study. For the first set of data, 22 hours of naturally occurring peer-grou