Bilingualism: Code-Switching

Course content

In this seminar, we will focus on code-switching, a typical phenomenon of bilingual speech, which is commonly defined as “the ability on the part of bilinguals to alternate effortlessly between their two languages” (Bullock & Toribio, 2012, p.1). Research into code-switching has focused on the linguistic structure of code-switching, on its linguistic and social functions, on its acquisition, as well as cognitive and psycholinguistic processes involved in producing code-switched utterances.
We will start by defining code-switching and differentiating it from related terms, such as code-mixing, code-switching, borrowing. Next, we will look at the properties of code-switching from various perspectives, answering the following questions:

• What are the linguistic properties of code-switching?
• Are there any grammatical constraints in the way we can combine two languages within one utterance?
• What are the socio-pragmatic functions of code-switching?
• What is the role of code-switching in bilingual language acquisition?
• What are the psycholinguistic processes underlying code-switching?