Talk:Code-switching/Archive 1

idiolects

In my linguistics course (admittedly only a community college), I was taught that code switching refers primarily to altering idiolects depending on situation and audience. For instance, I speak differently to my mother, my students, my lovers, and the police officer who just pulled me over.

Following links from the artricle, I see this is known as a language register (a new term to me).

Why is this listed in the first line of the article, but never mentioned again? None of the examples in the article are examples of code-switching with registers.

• It is mentioned partially, but I'm not sure whether any examples of idiolectal code switching would be necessary: wouldn't most differences between idiolects just be vocab and perhaps pronunciation? The only other possibilities I can think of is phrases like "I is not doing nothing". What should be added? The phrases I would put as examples would either be from my own idiolect (South Aussie English) or English I could get from TV (slang from London or California), but would people understand it? ZanderSchubert 11:20, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

it's unclear to me

I am a little unclear about something - the first paragraph seems to imply that CS happens with the _same_ people during the course of a conversation (i.e because one or more of them have more than one language/dialect etc in common). A later paragraph refers to altering style of speech according to the different people we are talking to, i.e. a teacher, or a mate in the pub. Clearly the two scenarios are slightly different. Are they both examples of CS? Could someone make this clear please?

Done. I deleted that erroneous example from mid-page and paste it below for reference. This is an example of language register choice, not code-switching (nor "language register"-switching) because it is not an intra-message switch. It is just a choice of register appropriate to the person addressed:

"Code-switching also occurs within a particular language. For instance, a person would likely not use the same words or phrases when speaking to a superior (e.g. an elder, teacher, advisor or supervisor) as they would use when speaking to their friends in an informal atmosphere. Another example is African American Vernacular English among African-Americans."

--Roger Chrisman 23:45, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Ender's Game series

I'm not sure if it has any relelvance, but could I mention the piggies from Speaker for the Dead and Xenocide, who learned codeswitching from bilingual Portuguese-English speakers? The book (I forget which one) mentions the piggies speaking mostly in English, but slipping to Portuguese when they were describing something exciting or interesting in their story, similar to how their Portuguese friends spoke. It isn't mentioned in Wikipedia's page (probably 'coz it's got nothing to do with plot). ZanderSchubert 11:20, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

Example

Could we perhaps have a more accessible example? The one we have must have been relevant for the text it was taken from, but surely there must be others involving more widely spoken languages. 68.162.59.226 15:29, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

Maltese-English could be a pretty good example I think:

Example: Hi, Mark, kif inti man? Ghandek x'taghmel saturday night? Kont qed nahseb we could go to the cinema naraw xi film, imbaghad immorru f'xi bar, have a few drinks?

English translation: Hi, Mark, how are you man? Are you busy saturday night? I thought we could go to the cinema watch a film, and then go to some bar, have a few drinks? Marcus1234 13:57, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

This is rather an example of word mixing, not code-switching Stanislav

In contemporary Ukraine both code-switching and language mixing widely popular. Polititians and mostly are talking in code-switching way (Ukrainian and Russian), unless avarege Ukrainians rather mixing Ukrainian and Russian languages (aka surzhyk). As distinction inbetween code-switching and mixing languages it is possible to admit that code-switching consist of mixing full expressions rather then mixing language means mixing words inside of complete sentence.

Stanislav

I agree, that is the worst example you could have possibly given. A french / english or spanish / english example would be best IMO.

Malaysian

This was a broken link, and the government policy didn't flow well without it, so I pulled it out and stuck it here. A.Kurtz 11:19, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Malaysian examples of code-switching are available here. The Malaysian government has begun to attempt to eradicate code-switching with the Malay Language by banning songs that contain code-switching elements.

Politeness levels in Japanese

Might deserve a mention here.71.131.187.145

Ukrainian/Russian - Code-switching or mixed-language?

So, what about the western Ukraine where people are fluent in both Ukrainian and Russian and most speak a mixture of both languages, often using words from either langauge within the same sentence. Often speakers will consistently use the pronouns and pronounciation of one language while borrowing words from the other. The grammar is very similar between the two languages, but I've heard that only about 30% of the vocabulary is shared. So, does that make this area one of code-switching or a true mixed-language?

It's both. Some people speak a mixed language and some use code switching. I believe somewhere around 90% of the vocabulary is shared, depending on which dictionary one uses. -Iopq 15:49, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

It is both, I admit. Unless Ukrainian and Russian does not share even 50% of vocabulary as it is mentioned above. But in whole Ukraine polititians do rather code-switching and avarage people mix it often (surzhyk) Stanislav

As the article stands now, it's only a mess of occurences after occurences, that is in it self of less intrest for the main article. And more infomrative data is shuffled inside the occourences. So I reccomend a total rewrite of this article. _→AzaToth 21:48, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

Code switching is often extremely annoying: these people are generally far less clever than they think, if it's done to be funny, which is often or usually the case. Other times I suppose it's just for the sake of convenience (to be fair). http://heritage.chn.ir/en/Article/?id=88 -- this article discusses the pretentious use of Farsi instead of Persian, a good example of lame code switching. It's generally used by Americans (more than Europeans, I think) to affect a knowledge of the source language with they don't have. Is there any way to put criticisms of code switching in?

'Pretentious'? Don't you mean 'Farsical'?

As a frequent code-switcher, I know that my own switching is not (consciously) an attempt to be clever or funny. The motivations to switch codes are much more complex than that - and this should be mentioned in the article, by the way. Carol Myers-Scotton (1993) has a fairly complete explanation of code switching motivations; Peter Auer (1984, 1998) contradicts her in most respects; Katherine Woolard (2004) has interesting things to say about the search for motivations. All of these should be mentioned. Furthermore, all of these authors come from a sociocultural point of view; there are other approaches to code switching. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 128.138.43.125 (talk) 16:41, 21 January 2007 (UTC).