User:Lsolares/Code-switching

In linguistics, code-switching or language-mixing occurs when a speaker alternates between two or more languages, or language varieties, in the context of a single conversation or situation. Multilinguals, speakers of more than one language, sometimes use elements of multiple languages when conversing with each other. Thus, code-switching is the use of more than one linguistic variety in a manner consistent with the syntax and phonology of each variety. There are several different reasons why code-switching is beneficial which are listed below in addition to different types of code switching and theories behind it.

Use
The earliest known use of the term code-switching in print was by Lucy Shepard Freeland in her 1951 book, Language of the Sierra Miwok, referring to the indigenous people of California. In the 1940s and the 1950s, many scholars considered code-switching to be a substandard use of language. Since the 1980s, however, most scholars have come to regard it as a normal, natural product of bilingual and multilingual language use. The term "code-switching" is also used outside the field of linguistics. Some scholars of literature use the term to describe literary styles that include elements from more than one language, as in novels by Chinese-American, Anglo-Indian, or Latino writers. In popular usage, code-switching is sometimes used to refer to relatively stable informal mixtures of two languages, such as Spanglish, Taglish, or Hinglish. Both in popular usage and in sociolinguistic study, the name code-switching is sometimes used to refer to switching among dialects, styles or registers. This form of switching is practiced, for example, by speakers of African American Vernacular English as they move from less formal to more formal settings. Such shifts, when performed by public figures such as politicians, are sometimes criticized as signaling inauthenticity or insincerity.

As switching between languages is exceedingly common and takes many forms, we can recognize code-switching more often as sentence alternation. A sentence may begin in one language, and finish in another. Or phrases from both languages may succeed each other in apparently random order. Such behavior can be explained only by postulating a range of linguistic or social factors such as the following:


 * Speakers cannot express themselves adequately in one languages so witch to other to make good the deficiency. this may trigger a speaker to continue in the other language for a while.
 * Switching to a minority language is very common as a means of expressing solidarity with a social group. The language change signals to the listener that the speaker is from a certain background; if the listener responds with a similar switch, a degree of rapport is established.
 * The switch between languages can signals speaker's attitude towards the listener - friendly, irritated, distant, ironic, jocular and so on. Monolinguals can communicate these effects to some extent by varying the level of formality of their speech; bilinguals can do it by language switching.