Agenda

Speaker: Penelope Gardner-Chloros (University of London - Visiting scholar DSLCC)

Code-switching can be defined as the use by bilinguals of two languages in the same conversation or sentence. Since it was first recognized as a systematic mode of speaking some 50 years ago in the work of John Gumperz (1964), the study of code-switching has ‘come of age’. Its functional nature has been established in multiple contexts, particularly in relation to sociolinguistic and pragmatic aspects. While grammatical regularities have proved harder to pin down in a principled manner, psycho- and neurolinguistic studies of bilinguals have made many relevant discoveries in the last few years. They show that the bilingual’s languages are invariably activated simultaneously, although the specific application of this research to CS remains to be specified. I will briefly review some of this work and present some examples of code-switching from different contexts and different language combinations which illustrate its variety and breadth. This diversity has led Li Wei and others to argue that we need a more inclusive approach - and term - encompassing more than just CS, for which they suggest ‘Translanguaging’. In practical terms, the priority is to achieve greater integration between the study of code-switching and that of (a) language contact and change, and (b) innovation and change in ‘monolingual’ speech (Backus 2005; Auer 2014). The speech of young 2^nd generation speakers of immigrant background can show how these processes relate to one another; this will be illustrated from a recently completed project focusing on young people’s speech in London and Paris (‘Multicultural London English/Multicultural Paris’). CS is thereby shown to have multiple repercussions for our understanding of different aspects of ‘language’.