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Chapter 2

Review of Related Literature

This chapter presents various articles and studies which were consulted

throughout the course of the study. The body of knowledge on this classroom

phenomenon called code-switching gave the researchers additional insights into their

investigation and equipped them with important concepts upon which to build the

framework of the study.

Nature of Code-Switching

Gal (1988) looks at code-switching as “a conversational strategy used to establish,

cross or destroy group boundaries; to create, evoke or change interpersonal relations

with their rights and obligations” (p. 247). Myers-Scotton (1993) affirms this claim when

she stated that each language in a multilingual community is associated with particular

social roles, which she calls rights-and-obligations (RO) sets. Furthermore, her

Markedness Model focuses on social motivations for code-switching. This leds us to the

following questions: What brings a speaker to choose one language variety over the

other and what might cause a speaker to switch from variety X to variety Y? These

questions bring us to the two kinds of code-switching linguists have identified:

Situational and Metaphorical code-switching. The study of Blom and Gumperz (1972) in

a small Norwegian town of 1300 inhabitants located close to the Arctic Circle that uses a

local Northern dialect of Norwegian, Ranamål and one of the standard varieties, Bokmål

showed that situational code-switching occurs when a teacher give some kind of formal

lecture in Bokmål, but the discussion that follows is in Ranamål. Thus, situational code-

switching, as the term implies, occurs when a speaker switches language based on the

situation I which the conversants find themselves; they speak one language in one
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situation and another in a different one. On the other hand, metaphorical code-

switching was cited in the three sets of languages (Hindi and English, Slovenian and

German, and Spanish and English) that Gumperz has studied. Findings of the research

revealed that one language expresses a we-type solidarity among participants which is

suitable for in-group and informal activities whereas the other language is they-oriented

and is appropriate to out-group and formal relationships. Therefore, metaphorical code-

switching possesses an affective dimension; you shift from one code to another as you

redefine the situation - formal to informal, official to personal, serious to humorous, and

politeness to solidarity. In a multilingual setting, code-switching gives speakers the

opportunity to assert power, declare solidarity, maintain certain neutrality when both

codes are used, express identity and so on. Likewise, in a classroom setting, code-

switching can open a variety of functions to both the teacher and the students which

they can utilize to come up with an effective interaction. In a multilingual context, the

ability to speak several languages can obviously be distinctly advantageous. The study of

Finlayson et.al. (1998) cited some of these advantages. Code-switching in a conversation

shows that a speaker can both access varied identities and accommodate others,

allowing the speaker to meet someone else halfway, establish common ground and show

flexibility and openness. Their research in a black South African township which is

home to various languages revealed that residents of Tembisa who speak different

languages are prepared to accommodate each other and believe that it is important to do

so because the issue of communication is at stake. Code-switching here is viewed as a

tool used to reduce possibilities of conflict in situations.

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Code-switching in the Classroom

Researchers are on the same ground in identifying teacher’s motivation for

switching from the matrix language to their embedded language inside the classroom. In

a research conducted by Ibrahim et.al. (2013) entitled “Code-Switching in English as a

Foreign Language Classroom: Teachers’ Attitudes”, data collected through observations,

questionnaires and interviews from Malay students at one of the local universities in

Malaysia revealed that teachers do code-switch in the language classroom, despite their

claim that they do not. Analysis of the data showed that, in most cases, code switching

by teachers was done to serve pedagogical purposes. Furthermore, findings of the

researchers showed that teachers employed different functions of code-switching

namely: (1) as a message reiteration, (2) as message qualification, (3) as personalization

versus objectivization, (4) as interjection or sentence filler, (5) as specific features of

Islamic English, (6) as the transfer of subconscious markers, and (7) as quotation. In

cases where teachers elicit responses from students, the research of Youkhana (2010)

discovered that pupils code-switch less when answering basic level questions and more

when answering advanced level questions. Small groups were observed and they read a

text and answered eight questions. The results showed that the pupils did code-switch

more on the advanced level questions and less on the basic level questions. They code-

switched 15 times on the basic level-questions and 21 times on the advanced level-

questions. Her study focused on three different upper-secondary schools and involved

24 pupils whose age varied from 16 to 19. On the part of the students, Hait’s (2014)

research revealed that some of the students use code switching in order to add a comic

sense to his/her utterances, and therefore attract the interlocutors’ attention. Despite

the fact that they study at an international school, they switch codes as it is hard to find
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proper equivalents especially to culturally loaded terms. Also, students switch codes in

order to avoid misunderstanding. Students feel comfortable and confident in using more

than one language within the same discourse. However, students believe that code

switching is used haphazardly and unconsciously without paying attention to the

syntactic rules that govern each language. The findings of the researcher’s first question

which is “What are the functions of code switching used by secondary students in

English classes at the Modern American School (MAS)?” indicated that students use

code switching more frequently with their peers than using it with their English teacher

at school. The answer to the proceeding question, “How does code switching affect the

linguistic aspects of language varieties among secondary students in English classes at

the Modern American School (MAS)?” prove that students must be exposed to the

English language for long periods of time in order to become compound bilinguals and

master the English language, which facilitate using well-formed expressions of code

switching that abide morphosyntactic rules of both languages. In the context of a

classroom where English is taught as a second language, Johansson (2013) investigated

the when and why teachers in upper secondary school code-switch when teaching L2

English. It has also looked into what language the students preferred in different

classroom situations. Five teachers were interviewed and 96 students taking English 5

and 6 responded to a questionnaire. The results showed that the teachers generally tried

to code-switch as little as possible but that they did code-switch in some of those

situations where the students preferred either a combination of Swedish and English or

only Swedish. Two of these situations were grammar instructions, where a majority of

the students preferred a combination of English and Swedish, and one-to-one

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situations, where a majority of the students preferred Swedish. A clear majority of the

students (87%) wanted their teacher to make them speak more English.

Grammatical versus Sociolinguistic Perspective of Code-switching

There are two seemingly inseparable focus of code-switching: the sociolinguistic

and the grammatical aspect. Sociolinguistic approach is concerned with code-switching

as a very useful social skill. The markedness theory of code-switching assumes that

language use in a community is characterized by sets of rights and obligations (RO sets)

which are part of the speakers’ social knowledge code choices, according to Myer-

Scotton , are indexical of the RO sets participants recognize in a given situation. Up to

this point, this account builds on the idea of symbolic code-switching first developed in

Gumperz’s (1982) pioneering work. Therefore this approach is concerned with the role

of social factors in the occurrence of code-switching, its patterns and how these maybe

affected by social factors such as context and speakers role relationships. On the other

hand, the grammatical approach has greater interest for structure-focused code-

switching research. Li (1998) describes how in the interaction of Cantonese-English a

bilingual of three successive immigrant generations in Newcastle upon Tyne, code-

switching fulfills such organizing functions. Li, demonstrates how speaker switch for

various locally contingent reasons: to draw the interlocutor’s attention; to comply with

the interlocutor’s choice of language; to help conversation along. On the basis of his

observations he concludes that it seems far-fetched to suggest that by making their

choices ‘speakers are trying to index some predetermined, extra-linguistic RO sets’ (Li

1998:161). This study suggested the three levels of code-switching; intra-sentential,

inter-sentential and tag-switching. Lastly, intra-word switching occurs within a word

itself, such as at a morpheme boundary.

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In this study, Hiligaynon, the L1 of the research respondents has been given great

emphasis. In a grammatical perspective, at this point, the researchers will discuss the

origin of the language Hiligaynon, its scope, distinctive features, grammar and

structure. According to Wikipedia’s online article, Hiligaynon, often referred to as

Ilonggo, is an Austronesian language spoken in the Western Visayas and Negros Island

Region of the Philippines. It is concentrated throughout the provinces of Iloilo, Negros

Occidental, Guimaras and Capiz, but is also spoken in the other provinces, such as

Negros Oriental, Antique, Aklan, Romblon, Masbate and Palawan, and in many parts of

Mindanao such as Koronadal City, South Cotabato, Sultan Kudarat and in other parts of

North Cotabato. It is also spoken as a second language by Karay-a speakers in Antique,

Aklanon and Malaynon speakers in Aklan, and Capiznon speakers in Capiz. The unique

attributes of the language includes: (1) case markers which do not determine which

noun is the subject and which is the object; rather, the affix of the verb determines this,

though the ang-marked noun is always the topic, (2) no direct translation for the

English copula "to be" in Hiligaynon instead, the terms mangin- and nangin- may be

used to mean will be and became, respectively, (3) lacks the marker of sentence

inversion "ay" of Tagalog/Filipino or "hay" of Akeanon, (4) to indicate the existence of

an object, the word may is used, (5) when an adjective modifies a noun, the linker nga

links the two, (6) The interrogative words of Hiligaynon are as follows: diin (where),

san-o (when), sin-o (who), nga-a (why), kamusta (how), ano (what), and pila(how

much/how many).

Symbolisms and Functions of Code-switching

In an online journal published by Marco Hamam from Università di Sassari

(Italy), he discussed that Gumperz (1982) specifies “symbolic value” by saying that
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"rather than claiming that speakers use language in response to a fixed, predetermined

set of prescriptions, it seems more reasonable to assume that they build on their own

and their audience’s abstract understanding of situation norms, to communicate

metaphoric information about how they intend their words to be understood". Burke

(1966) would agree that meaning is created through a symbolic codification and

decodification of speech/text and that behavior, and especially linguistic behavior, has a

polysemic character. The writer continues by discussing that for Burke and Gumperz,

speakers/writers are not passively influenced by the situation but they manipulate it

conveying specific metaphoric information. In the context of the society, code-switching

functions in a myriad of ways. Furthermore, the study of Heller (1982) conducted on the

use of two languages in a Montreal hospital during the summer of 1977 revealed that

language plays a symbolic role in our lives, and when there is a choice of languages the

actual choice may be very important, particularly when there is a concurrent shift in the

relationship between the languages. Heller also observed that negotiation in

conversation is a playing-out of a negotiation for position in the community at large.

Wardhaugh (2006), in his book, An Introduction to Sociolinguistics, cited Singapore, a

multi-lingual country as an example. Singapore has four official languages: English, the

Mandarin variety of Chinese, Tamil and Malay, which is also the national language.

However, the majority of its population promotes English as a trade language, Mandarin

as the international ‘Chinese’ language, Malay as the language of the region, and Tamil

as the language of one of the important ethnic groups in the republic. This means that a

typical Chinese child growing up in Singapore will likely speak Hokkien with parents

and informal Singapore English with siblings. Conversation with friends will be in

Hokkien or informal Singapore language. The languages of Education will be the formal
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variety of Singapore English and Mandaron. Any religious practices will be conducted in

the formal variety of Singapore English if the family is Christian but in Hokkien if

Buddhist or Taoist. On the other hand, the language of government employment will be

formal Singapore English but some Mandarin will be used from time to time.

Code-switching: Its Implications to L2 Teaching and Learning

In conclusion, this chapter seeks to pay one last intent look at the implications of

code-switching to language teaching and learning at different higher institutions of

learning beyond Western Visayas. It aims to bring readers back to the description of

code-switching phenomenon.

Some of the critics view code-switching as a strategy utilized by weak language

performers to compensate for language deficiency (Alenezi, 2010) however, in the

contemporary era, in many parts of the world, an ability to speak more than one

language (multilingualism) is considered a norm. In an online article published by

Doctors Dora Alexopoulou, Napoleon Katsos and Teresa Parodi of the Department of

Theoretical and Applied Linguistics in Cambridge University, children who speak more

than one language are multiply advantaged over their monolingual playmates – in

communication, cognition and social interaction. The article continues by stating that

one aspect of such research shows that bilingual children ‘notice’ better how language

works and outperform monolingual children in tasks linked to language awareness, such

as distinguishing whether a sentence is grammatically well-formed from whether it is

truthful. Dr. Alexopolou further explained that “Studies show that a bilingual child is

better able to cope with tasks that involve attention, memory and concentration. The

mental gymnastics needed to constantly manage two or more linguistic systems

increases cognitive flexibility and makes learning easier”.