The default academic assumption in linguistics is that people speak one language at a time. So when speakers code-switch, so the theory goes, they draw from a competent understanding of more than one language they have in common with another speaker and switch from one grammar to the other at various predictable junctures.
Why not view it, if just for fun, from the perspective that the default is that people use whatever linguistic tools or other communicative devices are at their disposal regardless of how we might categorize what belongs to what language and regardless of competence within a language?
Recently, I listened as my Mexican neighbor, who has very limited English ability, conversed with my USA-born son, who picked up limited Spanish from co-workers over the past decade or so. With each understanding very little of each other's native vocabulary and unable to execute much formal syntax of the respective non-native language, they managed to get the message through. At times, they drew from a sign language that neither speaker had any systematic understanding of.
Does the situation of limited ability in a language describe the norm, or does communication necessarily grow from a competent internalized grammar of more than one language? Is traditional code-switching among competent speakers just an extension of cases where the speakers might be less than competent in any common language?
for me, people code-switch for practical reasons necessary for communicating the ideas they want to convey ! Traditionalism or modernism, doesn't matter!
I think there are more explanations for the mix of two varieties. See Auer (1999) in International journal of bilingualism 3, 309-332 about the differences of switching, mixing and fused lects. From our sociological findings in the usage of the mix of russian and belarussian language it is not only a question of ability but also of cultural identification and the context (private or public).
it is of course more complex than that and I agree with Diana Lindner
The members of one culture do things in special patterned ways for specific culturally shared and understood meanings . I think the position is totally different in different cultures in manner of misunderstands . The same is true for my colleagues Indians , French , Chinese code-switching when they have a secret talk and they don't want others to know. Some times a lot of jokes occur in that areas . As a fun .@
لان اللغة ماهي الاممارسة وتواصل لايمكن اتقان اللغة الثانية بنفس تفاصيل لغة الأم الابعد وقت طويل خاصة بمايعرف باللغة الثقافية اوالاجتماعية لاختلاف المدولات داخل اللغة الواحد من جانب ولغة واخرى من جانب اخر ومن خلال تجاربي في تدريس العربية كلغة ثانية لاحظت ان من اصعب الموضوعات صعوبة ومشقة لمتعلم اللغة الثانية التعبير عن الوضع الاجتماعي او الثقافة فهو لايسطيع اتقان التعبير الامن خلال لغته الام
Code switching is a descriptive term, not an explanatory one, the reasons that people may code switch are numerous, as noted above, and may not always occur consciously (based on personal experience), though of course sometimes it does. In addition, multiple factors may govern any particular instance of code switiching.
People may also codeswitch consciously to show off, or to illustrate the idea that they are literate and know many languages. Anyway CS is more complicated than that since it involves sociological as well as psychological factors.
Code-switching certainly exists as a phenomenon, but I have come to see it as one subset of a broader set of multilingual linguistic behaviour (which I have been calling translanguaging, but which there are plenty of different currently used terms for) rather than as a category in and of itself.
Jennifer Dailey-O'Cain
It would be great to hear more about your notion of translanguaging.
Oh, it's not my notion at all. I use it in the sense that Zhang and Chan 2017 do, which is basically the use of linguistic and other semiotic resources in ways that often straddle boundaries between languages, cultures, and modes. But there are lots of other people using that term in a similar sense right now, and there are also lots of other terms floating around for the same phenomenon.
I agree with Jennifer Dailey-O'Cain - there is currently a lot of research being done around the concept of translanguaging and its importance as a paradigm shift in how we view the use of linguistic varieties. Ofelia Garcia, Li Wei, Jasone Cenoz, and Durk Gorter have all written a lot about this and its difference from code-switching.
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