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Who is bilingual?
Definitions everyone knows what bilingualism is until we try and define it. Bloomfield (1933:55): native-like control of two or more languages Weinreich (1953:1): the practice of alternately using two languages Haugen (1953:7) the point where a speaker can first produce complete meaningful utterances in the other language' Grosjean (1997): the use of two (or more) languages in one's everyday life, not knowing two or more languages equally well and optimally Important to remember that bilinguals may be competent in speaking and listening, but less competent in reading and writing Sometimes just listening (Diebold, 1964) though this goes against Haugens definition and most people can understand at least a few words in a foreign language (this is probably not bilingualism per se) So once again, monolingualism is relative, as with societal.
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Code-Switching I
Code-Switching
The juxtaposition within the same speech exchange of passages of speech belonging to two different grammatical systems or subsystems (Gumperz 1982:59) Can be different languages, or varieties of one language, or even styles But must be joined together in the same speech act prosodically, semantic, syntax etc. Speech act is a complete utterance (though not necessarily a sentence)
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Code-Switching II
Code-switching is not random there are certain important structures where code-switches do / do not occur Social reasons: participants in conversation, purpose, context etc. Also syntactic reasons. And not just forgetting a word: code-switching is an active choice to achieve a social or linguistic aim through conversational strategy. (Active, though does not mean conscious) Or in the case of Chinook, choosing not to code-switch So competence, not incompetence. Weinreichs ideal bilingual switches appropriately to changes in the speech situation, but not in an unchanged speech situation, and certainly not within a single sentence. But data suggests otherwise
Code-Switching III
Poplack, 1980 & Romaine 1995
Tag-switching: tags which can be inserted anywhere, which do not have too many syntactic limits. Tags in one language, with rest of utterance in other language.
E.g. Cantonese and English: No problem, la. So he asked me for money, znas#, and I had to say no, znas# (www.sfu.ca/~papappas/webpages/PPTfiles/L260_03/Lectures/L260_03tut1.ppt) Usually discourse markers: like, you know etc.
Inter-sentential: switching at either clauses or between sentences. Clauses/sentences are wholly in one language or another, and conform to the rules of both languages.
E.g. Sometimes I start a sentence in English y termino en Espanol. A: Are you going to eat? B: Bu yao
Intra-sentential: switching in the middle of sentences or clauses, or even words. Syntactically risky indicates competence in both languages. (Opposite to Weinreich.)
E.g. Are you hui jia-ing
So not only just switching between two languages, but syntactic structure. Also social context.
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Summary
Romaine (1995) disagrees with an over-reliance on the syntactic categories of code-switching proposed by Poplack (1980) It is all very well to develop a syntactic-grammatical model of codeswitching But code-switching is equally well understood as a social phenomena structured as a discourse-pragmatic strategy It is a strategy of bilingualism Bilingualism is not incompetence, but rather an enhanced competence Code-switching by bilinguals is not fundamentally that much different from style-shifting by monolinguals, it just has a bigger linguistic repertoire to draw from Ultimately, language is a means to get things done And as long as the task is accomplished
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