Code Switching

By: Bassaddouk Mohamed

Bara Jamila

Review of the literature

Code Switching or language alturantion in linguistics take place when the

speaker alternates from a language to another, or language varities, in the same
conversation. Code Switching is a linguistic stratigy which is widely used in
multilingual speech communities all over the world, it could be either spoken or
written.

(AS cited in Code-switching by Penelop Gardner-Chloros, 2009: 9) For a long

time, code switching was scarcely noticed by linguuists writing about language
contact. Milory and Muysken (1995), who described it as "perhaps the central
issue in billingualism research ", point out that research on code switching was
slow to start compared with, say, research on borrowing on what used to be
termed interfernce in the seminal language in contact (1953), Weinreich reffered
to the " Transfer of words" from one language to another by billinguals, but
dismissed this as a " mere oversight" (1953:73,74). Huagen, writing at around the
same time, also apparently overlooked the significance of code switching, and
wrote that: " the introduction of elements from one language to an other means
merely an alteration of the second language, not a mixture of the two" (1950:211)

Over the last forty-odd years, there has been an explosion of interest in code
switching. Code switching had remaind more or less "invisible" in research on
bilingualism until the work f Gumperz and his associates in the 1960s and the
early 1970s ( Gumperz 1964,1967; Gumperz and Wilson, 1971; Blom and
Gumperz, 1972). Thereafter the subject took off - and there has been no sign of a
downturn- as people realized that code switching was not isolated, quirky
phenomenon but a widespread way of speaking. But research in this field is
complicated by the multilayered significance of code switching. Each new case
which is documented can be looked at from multiple perspectives, so from the
outset, a certain depth of engagement with the data is necessary.

Furthermore, by definition, studying code switching implies dealing with

several languages. Grasping the significance of a transcription where the reader or
researcher is not familiar with one or both languages involved can be off-putting.
This problem should be somewhat reduced in the future by various technical
developements of use to the linguistic researcher, such as standardized
transcription and coding systems, sound-text linking, and the possibility of
collaborating on and sharing data over the internet.

According to (Nilep: “Code Switching” in Sociocultural LinguisticsPublished by

CU Scholar, 2006: 2) the study of language alternation has been fruitful over the
past several decades. The identification of various constraints, though
sometimes controversial, has inspired a great deal of work in syntax,
morphology, and phonology. A structural focus has been similarly
constructive for production models (e.g. Azuma 1991) or as evidence for
grammatical theory (e.g. MacSwann 2000; Jake, Myers-Scotton and Gross 2002).
By ignoring questions of function or meaning, though, this structural focus fails
to answer basic questions of why switching occurs.2 Auer (1984) warns,
“Grammatical restrictions on code-switching are but necessary conditions” (2);
they are not sufficient to describe the reason for or effect of a particular
switch. If linguists regard code switching simply as a product of a
grammatical system, and not as a practice of individual speakers, they may
produce esoteric analyses that have little importance outside the study of
linguistics per se, what Sapir called “a tradition that threatens to become
scholastic when not vitalized by interests which lie beyond the formal
interest in language itself” (1929:213). Over the last century , linguists have
proposed to bring their own studies closer to other fields of social inquiry. In
1929, Edward Sapir urged linguists to move beyond diachronic and formal
analyses for their own sake and to “become aware of what their science may
mean for the interpretation of human conduct in general” (1929:207). He
suggested that anthropology, sociology, psychology, philosophy and social
science generally would be enriched by drawing on the methodologies as
well as the findings of linguistic research. He also exhorted linguists to
consider language within its broader social setting.Sapir was not alone in his
hopes for a more socially engaged linguistics. Indeed the development of
sociolinguistics and psycholinguistics during the 1930s-1950s suggests that, at
least for some linguists, social interaction and human cognition were as
important as the forms and structures of language itself. Nonetheless, by the
1960s some scholars once again felt the need to argue for a more socially
engaged linguistics. In a special issue of American Anthropologist, Hymes
(1964) lamented that the socially integrated linguistics Sapir had called for was
disappearing. Hymes and others worried that new formal approaches, as well as
the push for linguistics as an autonomous field, threatened to once again
isolate linguists. At the same time, though, the growth of
ethnolinguistics and sociolinguistics offered a venue for the socially engaged
linguistics Sapir had called for four decades earlier.

From all that was mentioned above, we can say that code switching is about
transfering words from one language to another by billinguals. many researchers
such as Grumperz, Wilson and Blom tried to investigate in code switching, these
researchers made this subject become a widespread way of talking over years
with their studies/ researches. Inaddition people nowadays have become more
familliar with code switching in their everyday's conversation, people all over the
world got used to code switch or code mix two languages or more in one
sentences. we can say that over the years code switching has become a speaking
style, code switching has been no longer confinded to only billinguals, you can
find eldery people, young people, and also children code switch easly due to
culturediversity, media, classrooms and also social netwerok. People have become
open to other cultures and languages more than before