Modern Trends in Studies of Code-switching

In this essay, we survey the recent studies of code-switching, which are receiving attention. Bain (2000) analizes code-switching as it occurred in a Chinese-English 4-year-old\u27s temper tantrum behavior and asserts that the bilingual child is already a \u27rational actor\u27, able to make pragmatic language choices in accordance with how he attributes power to one or the other of his language. Dolitsky (2000) focuses on the switching and seperation of codes in the soliloquies of a 5-year-old bilingual and shows that it is not only social constraints that act on bilinguals to seperate their languages. Dolitsky\u27s study also suggests that the occurrence of dispreference markers at the site of a code-change, as opposed to a lack of these markers for borrowed terms, seems to indicate that borrowing should be distinguished from other types of code alternation. Jisa (2000) examines that the frequency and the type of languagemixing in two young French-English bilingual sisters. Jisa argues that the age at which a bilingual child begins to produce in her weak language has a profound impact on the type and the frequency of code-mixing and language mixing in young bilinguals. This phenomenon is very different from code-switching found in adult bilinguals. Gardner-Chloros, Charles, & Cheshire (2000) compare the way in which four common conversational functions are realized; (a) monolingually and (b) through code-switching by members of a Punjabi and English-speaking network in London. They show that code-switching may take the place of molingual ways of marking significant moves in the conversation, or add itself to these to reinforce the effort, and can be used as a further dimension to the monolingual means which are available. Aslanov (2000) is concerned with the unusual coexistence of French and Italian within the same sentence found in an Arabic-Old French phrase-book written by Copts in the 13th century, and in a manuscript of the Song of Roland copied in Venice at the beginning of the 14th century. This reveals that besides code-switching which is motivated by extralinguistic factors, there are cases of code-switching caused by the desire to avoid French forms and to give preference to their Italian counterparts. The Franco-Venetian manuscript which is of a literary nature contains many cases of code-switching motivated by intralinguistic considerations. Gross (2000) shows that low-status individuals with few opportunities for upward mobility use marked code-switching as a face-threatening strategy and in their interactions with powerful members of a dominant social group. These individuals resort to code-switching as a way to express their interactional power and seize control of the interaction indicating that a speaker\u27s intentions are made manifest not necessarily by the referential meaning of an utterance, but by the code the speaker selects. The intention is derived from the extent to which it deviates from the established unmarked setting for the interaction. Lawson & Sachdev (2000) focus on socio-psychological aspects such as attitudes depending on self-reports associated with code-switching. In their three studies, they reveal that negative evaluations of code-switching obtained in their first study were not reflected in the behavioral data obtained in the subsequent studies that examined self-reported and actural behavior. Moreover, code-switching was employed largely with \u27ingroup\u27 members, but less with teachers or members of non-Arab-groups. Myers-Scotton (2000) shows how the potency of unmarked choices is derived from existing norms and how selecting the marked choice is an attempt to construct new norms, within the framework of rational actor models and the previous examination of the regulation and construction of social meaning. Although, all of the studies we surveyed above should be given due credit as excellent ones, it is expected that further research will be advanced, based on a much wider range of data about this theme, in order to establish a more universal theory