CODE SWITCHING

Code switching is a widespread phenomenon is bilingual speech and it is therefore not surprising that a great proportion of research on bilingualism focus this. Most researchers who have paid attention to code switching have however been concerned with the sociological interpretation and discourse functions, i.e. the socio pragmatic aspect of code switching. For this reason, linguists who do not specialize in bilingualism often automatically assume that research in code switching means sociolinguistic research. It is certainly an interesting issue to investigate when and why a speaker chooses one linguistic variety rather than another, this can be explained by stylistic or metaphorical motivation where factors such as interlecture, social role, domain, topic, venue, medium and type of interaction play an important role. In this case, language alternation can also reserve as a conversational cue, expressing attitudes towards language or marking linguistic identity.
Code switching is the practice of moving between variations of languages in different contexts. Everyone who speaks has learned to code switch depending on his situation and setting. In an educational context code switching is defined as the practice of switching between a primary and a secondary language or discourse.
History of code switching
In 1977, Carol Myers-Scotton and William Ury identified code switching as the “use of two or more linguistic varieties in the same conversation or interaction.” That year a small group of parents at Martin Luther Kind Elementary school sued the Ann Arbar School District Board claiming their children were not receiving equal educational opportunities because they were not being taught to use the “Standard English Language”. This case “established the legitimacy of African American Language (AAL) within a legal framework, and mandated the Ann Arber School District teach children using their home language, how to read in the “standard English”. Later in 1996, a major lawsuit in California generated the Oakland Ebonica Resolution which recognize AAL/African American vernacular English (AAVE) as the primary language of the African American students in the district and required that this language be used to assist those students to acquire and master “standard English.”
Primarily due to these mandates sociolinguists began to engage in mere through research on Black English, AAVE, and AAL and the similarities in structure and grammar to “standard English”. Subsequently many large school districts created programmes to address the needs of the students who used these dialects in order to facilitate the acquisition of standard English.”
Social Motivation for code switching
Code switching relates to and sometimes indexes social group membership in bilingual and multilingual communities. Some sociolinguistic describe the relationships between code switching behaviors and class ethnicity and other social positions. In addition, scholars in interactional linguistics and conversation analysis have studies code switching as a means of structuring talk in interaction. Analyst Peter Auer suggests that code switching does not simply reflect social situations but that it is a means to create social situations.
Definitions:
• More precisely, Grosjean (1982) defines CS as the alternate use of two or more languages in the same utterance or conversation. (Grosjean 1982:145).
• Gumperz (1982) refers to CS as a type of contextualization cue, which signals contextual information equivalent to what in monolingual settings in conveyed through prosody or other syntactic or lexical processes. (Gumperz 1982:98)
Gumperz (1972, 1982) tripartite distinction:
Situational CS is triggered by a charge in social situation that is, due to a change in situation, language choice also changes or certain linguistic forums are considered more appropriate.
Metaphorical CS:
Metaphorical CS on the other hand refers to the changes in the speakers language choice when the situation remains the same.
Conversational CS:
Gumperz (1982) introduced the term conversational CS (a development of Blom and Gumperz (1972) situational and metaphorical CS) which includes the following six everyday conversational functions:
Quotations, addresses, specifications, Interjections, reiterations, message qualification and personalization vs objectification.
Markedness Model:
The markedness model developed by Carol Myers-Scotton, is one of the more complete theories of code switching motivation. It posits that language users are rational and chaos a language that clearly marks their rights and obligations relative to other speakers in a conversation and its setting. When there is no clear unmarked language choice speakers practice code switching to explore possible language choices. Many sociolinguists, however, object to the Markedness Model’s postulation that language choice is entirely rational.
Communication Accommodation Theory:
The Communication Accommodation Theory (LAT) developed by Howard Giles, professor of communication at the university of California, Santa Barbara seeks to explains the cognitive reasons for code switching, and other changes in speech as a person seeks either to emphasize or to minimize the social differences between him or herself and the other person(s) in conversation. Prof. Giles posits that when speakers seek approval in a social situation they are likely to converge their speech with that of the other person speaking. This can include but is not limited to the language of choice, accent dialect and para linguistic features used in conversation. In contract to convergence speakers might also engage in divergent speech with which an individual person emphasize the social distance between him or herself and other speakers by using speech with linguistic features characteristics of his or her own group.
Code switching and Diglossia:
In a diglossic situation some topics and situation are better suited to one language over another. Joshua Fishman proposes a domain-specific code switching model wherein bilingual speakers choose which code to speak depending on where they are and what they are discussing. For example, a child who is a bilingual Spanish-English speakers might speak Spanish at home and English in class, but Spanish at recess.
Mechanics of code switching:
Code-switching mostly occurs where the syntaxes of the languages align in a sentence; thus, it is uncommon to switch from English to French after an adjective and before a noun, because, in French, adjectives usually follow nouns. Even unrelated languages often align syntactically at a relative clause boundary or at the boundary of other sentence sub-structures.
Linguists have made significant effort toward defining the difference between borrowing (loanword usage) and code-switching; generally, borrowing occurs in the lexicon, while code-switching occurs at either the syntax level or the utterance-construction level.
In studying the syntactic and morphological patterns of language alternation, linguists have postulated specific grammatical rules and specific syntactic boundaries for where code-switching might occur. None of these suggestions is universally accepted, however, and linguists have offered apparent counter-examples to each proposed constraint. Some proposed constraints are:
The Free-morpheme Constraint:
Code-switching cannot occur between bound morphemes.
The Equivalence Constraint:
Code-switching can occur only in positions where “the order of any two sentence elements, one before and one after the switch, is not excluded in either language.” Thus, the sentence: “I like you porque eres simpatico.” (“I like you because you are likable.”) is allowed because it obeys the relative clause formation rules of Spanish and English.
The Closed-class Constraint:
Closed Class items (pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions, etc.), cannot be switched.
The Matrix Language Frame:
The Matrix Language Frame Model distinguishes the roles of the participant languages.
The Functional Head Constraint:
Code-switching cannot occur between a functional head (a complementizer, a determiner, an inflection, etc.) and its complement (sentence, noun-phrase, verb-phrase).
Note that some theories, such as the Closed-class Constraint, the Matrix Language Frame model, and the Functional Head Constraint, which make general predictions based upon specific presumptions about the nature of syntax, are controversial among linguists positing alternative theories. In contrast, descriptions based on empirical analyses of corpora, such as the Equivalence Constraint, are relatively independent of syntactic theory, but the code-switching patterns they describe vary considerably among speech communities, even among those sharing the same language pairs.
Approaches to the study of code switching:
The sociolinguistic approach is interested in the questions ‘why do bilinguals switch languages and what are the social parameters that dictate it?’. Studies focus either on the ‘macro-level’, that is, language choice at the community level, or the 'micro-level' where CS is analyzed at an interactional level.
The psycholinguistic approach has been reviewed by Grosjean (1995: 259-275) and is concerned with the operations that take place during language processing and the bilingual speakers switching ‘language modes’.
Grammatical perspectives on CS focus on syntactic or morphosyntactic constraints on language alteration and have received the most linguistic attention.
Types of switching and reasons for code switching:
One of the first categorizations of code-switching was provided by Appel and Muysken (1987). They distinguish between five reasons for why speakers code-switch:
• Referential function
• Directive function
• Expressive function
• Phatic function
• Metalinguistic function
Speakers will use the referential function of code-switching to compensate for shortcomings in the matrix language. This may either make up for lexical gaps in the matrix language, or help the speaker to maintaining a smooth speech flow. The directive function refers to a situation in which a speaker either wants to associate with, or dissociate themselves from other interlocutors. The phatic function signals a change in 'tone'. The metalinguistic function occurs when speakers comment on a specific feature of a language by using the other language.
Although this model covers a number of functions, it cannot really answer the question of why speakers use code switching. In their study on Ranamål and Bokmål -- the two variants spoken in the mentioned example in northern Norway -- Blom and Gumperz argue that there are mainly two functions of code switching: Situational and metaphorical code switching.
The question of why speakers switch codes was addressed by psychologists like Howard Giles (1973) who took an audience centred approach. Giles stated that speakers code-switch in order to either
a.) Associate with the interlocutor or
b.) Dissociate from the interlocutor.
The underlying assumption is that an audience will evaluate a speaker more beneficially who tries to put effort into showing his ties to an audience, while they will disapprove of those who distance themselves from the audience.
Finally, there are also pragmatic approaches to code-switching.
Scholars use different names for various types of code switching.
• Intersentential switching occurs outside the sentence or the clause level (i.e. at sentence or clause boundaries).
• Intra-sentential switching occurs within a sentence or a clause.
• Tag-switching is the switching of either a tag phrase or a word, or both, from language-B to language-A, (common intra-sentential switches).
• Intra-word switching occurs within a word, itself, such as at a morpheme boundary.
Urdu-English:
In our society Urdu, English code switching is very common thing. Here is an example:-
He said it was not his fault and wo bilkul thek that.
Here is another example of such mixing within the sentence, but this time it is English which completes the Urdu sentence:
Jo Africal se aye thay they were very worried.
In our classroom situation, teacher usually switches tow languages English and Urdu. There are several reasons behind this. The main reason is that it is helpful for better understanding. There are some terms some specific words which need to explain for better understanding.
Reasons for Urdu-English Code-switching:
Code switching is a significant phenomenon in society. To this context, it must be an area of considerable interest within sociolinguistics. Code switching is clearly related to such factor as topic, situation, function and role. Here we shall examine code switching within a local context and with special reference to language contact as observed between Urdu and English. There are some aspects of this interesting bilingual phenomenon which appear to promote code switching in Pakistan.
Prestige:
It is important to note that class and language have a direct relationship. The language spoken by the more influential classes has more prestige that that used by less privileged classes. We shall observe this factor at work throughout the development of the English language. Urdu owes its particular status. Those who already have a good command of Urdu are the ones most likely to enhance their social standing still further through their secondary ability in English. The ability to use both languages almost interchangeably is considered a great accomplishment. Hence prestige is added to prestige.
Facility:
Certain expressions in English are apt and to the pint, speakers are prepared to use them to give their Urdu and added dimension. For instance, when inviting someone to start a conversation, or any other form of action for that matter, the word “please” is frequently used. When apologizing the very used word “sorry” is found to be most convenient. This form of code switching is a kind of stylistic device which gives bilingual speakers an advantage over monolinguals. It gives them more linguistic options.
Another kind of switching for the sake of facility is when a non native speaker sometimes leaves a sentence unfinished in English but adds to it or completes it, in his own language.
Here is such an example:-
I am not telling a lie bl k men such keh raha hon.
Familiarity:
Urdu is composed of a number of languages and during the Mughal period it was “personalized”. Now, when speakers come across Persian terms they appear difficult and encourage the use of familiar English substitutes. Here are just two examples:-
English: Speed thermometer
Persian:
It is interesting to note in passing that the easier English word thermometer is, in fact, itself or classical origin — Greek.
Structural Models for Code-switching:
Four mayor approaches to the structural study of code-switching canb be distinguished:
• Descriptive accounts (Timm 1975, Pfaff 1979)
• Accounts involving surface constraints and a 'third grammar' for code-switching (Poplack 1980; Sankoff and Poplack 1981)
• Principle-based accounts with code-switching specific mechanisms and constraints (Belazi et al. 1994; Bentahila and Davies 1983; Di Sciullo et al. 1986; Joshi 1985; Woolford 1983)
• Principle-based accounts without code-switching specific mechanisms and constraints (Mahootian 1993, 1996a, 1996b; Myers-Scotton 1993)

Descriptive accounts can be regarded as reactions to the assumption that code-switching occurs randomly and unpredictably. Timm and Pfaff (1979) were able to show that there are specific rules restricting code-switching, e.g. the constraint disallowing switches that would violate the surface order of either the matrix language or the embedded language. The 'three grammar approach' states that bilingual speakers must not only inherit one grammar for each language, but build a third, code-switching grammar as well. There is a wide range of principle-based approaches, for example Di Scullio et al.'s (1986) 'government constraint', which states that elements in a government relation have to be from the same language. Finally, there are principle-based accounts that assume no special mechanisms and that rely on general principles of sentence structure, rather than code-switching specific rules, as for example the 'head-compliment principle model'.
As mentioned earlier, each of these models has been subject to criticism. For example, some models have been claimed not to be able to predict code-switches; other models may allow for some such predictions, but have deficiencies on other parts. The only model that has not been severely criticized is that of Muysken (2000), which tries to incorporate insights gained in all previous models, with a stronger focus on sociolinguistic than on structural aspects.
Many teachers, who are in favour of the applications of communicative techniques in the language teaching environment, oppose any form of native language use during classroom instruction. Contrary to this, supporters of the use of native language in the form of code switching, suggest that it may be an effective strategy in various aspects. Following the ideas of these two parties, some weak and strong sides of the use of code switching in foreign language classroom settings will be mentioned with a critical perspective.
Cook (2002:333) handles the subject matter considering multilingual classrooms in saying that the application of code switching in classes which do not share the same native language may create problems, as some of the students (though few in number) will somehow be neglected. So, at this point it may be suggested that the students should share the same native language, if code switching will be applied in instruction. Another point to consider in this respect is that the competence of the teacher in mother tongue of students also plays a vital role, if positive contributions of code switching are expected. A further discussion is put forward by Eldridge, as he suggests “the learners have no guarantee that their audience will share knowledge of their mother tongue” (1996:309). This perspective concerns the interaction of students with native speakers of the target language, as mutual intelligibility may not be possible if the learner switches his language during communication.
In supporting the existence of code switching in language classrooms, Skiba (1997) suggests that in the circumstances where code switching is used due to an inability of expression, it serves for continuity in speech instead of presenting interference in language. In this respect, code switching stands to be a supporting element in communication of information and in social interaction; therefore serves for communicative purposes in the way that it is used as a tool for transference of meaning. Additionally, the functions of the teacher’s code switching as mentioned in III stand as supportive explanations for the strong sides of the phenomenon. All these in general lead to the idea that the use of code switching somehow builds a bridge from known to unknown and may be considered as an important element in language teaching when used efficiently.
Code-switching in Practice:
Language response: The correctionist approach
Rebecca Wheeler and Rachel Swords contend that the correctionist approach to language response “diagnoses the child’s home speech as ‘poor English’ or ‘bad grammar,’ finding that the child does not know how to show plurality, possession, and tense,’ or the child ‘has problems’ with these.” This approach assumes that “Standard English” is the only proper form of language and tries to do away with the child’s home language. Because classrooms are not culturally or linguistically monolithic, this approach tends to exclude those students who are not fluent in “Standard English.”
Language response: The contrastivist approach
Wheeler and Swords maintain that the primary principle of the contrastivist approach is that “language comes in diverse varieties.” This “linguistically-informed model” recognizes that the student’s home language is not any more deficient in structure than the school language. In this approach, teachers “help children become explicitly aware of the grammatical differences” between the formal “Standard English” and the informal home language. “Knowing this, children learn to code-switch between the language of the home and the language of the school as appropriate to the time, place, audience, and communicative purpose.” When an educator prepares a student to code-switch, the student becomes explicitly aware of how to select the appropriate language to use in the given context.
How to move from corrective to contrastive
Recognize the vernacular patterns in writing and use this to teach a whole class lesson on the differences between the “Standard English” version and the home language.
Initiate conversations about how people speak differently in diverse settings. Engage students in a role-playing activity where they imitate different people they know within the community, and have students examine the differences in the way these people speak.
Demonstrate how to self-correct written work for a formal purpose, and when students feel more comfortable, encourage them to read their work aloud.
Try to be more accepting of the fact that everyone code-switches. Remember the way we respond to a friend’s question might be completely different than how we would answer the principal or superintendent’s queries.
Introduce dialectical language through literature. Culturally rich literature is available at every grade level.
Greene and Walker also recommend not taking for granted that students and teachers set clear expectations for navigating between “Standard” and Black English and suggest that teachers take engage in the following practices:
• Make certain teacher goals are communicated in a clear manner and that the students understand those goals.
• Explain how and when certain language usage is or is not appropriate.
• Make sure students understand how certain contexts require code-switching.
• Demonstrate code-switching in the classroom.
• Affirm for students that their language is viable and valuable.
• Make sure students understand that you understand the historical importance of their language.
Teaching students to code switch is more of a learner-centered approach to teaching. This type of approach to learning also fits the standardized testing model because teachers demonstrate for students how to interpret a standardized test, which can sometimes be written in what appears as a foreign language.
Code-mixing and Code-switching:
Extremely complex and not well understood are the numerous examples for a bilingual having a conversation with another bilingual who has exactly the same language background, yet changing from one language to another in the course of a conversation. This linguistic behaviour is widely known as language-switching or code-switching and may frequently be observed in multilingual situations. The act of changing from one language to another takes many forms associated with a certain mood of speaker, circumstances of speech production or the inter-locators being present. At a sentence produced by a bilingual may begin in one language and finish in another, phrases from both tongues often succeed in an apparently random order.
According to linguistic investigations into the field of code switching factors that bring about the phenomenon are numerous and extremely varied. Here, it is only possible to list a few cases when code switching regularly takes place. For instance, the speakers cannot express himself adequately in one language and therefore switches to the other to make good the deficiency. This may trigger the speaker to continue in the other language for a while. Experiments have proved that code switching of this type tends to happen a great when the speaker is upset, tired or otherwise distracted. However, if the switch takes place into a minority language, it is usually thought of a means of solidarity with a social group. In this case, the majority language speaker’s change into the minority tongue signals to the listener that a good support is going to be established. There are certain examples, though, when the same change between languages may occur to exclude other people from the conversation who do not know the language. A further possibility is when the switch from one language to another signals the speaker’s attitude toward the listener—whether friendly, irritated, ironic or jocular. Monolinguals can communicate these effects to some extent by varying the level of formality, the intonation or tone of their speech. If two bilinguals normally talk to each other in language-A, the choice of B is bound to create a special effect. A common example is a mother telling her child to do something in one language and then, if the child fails to obey, to switch to the other language, thereby showing her stronger emphasis or displeasure. The interesting point here is that some issues may be discussed in either code but the choice of code adds a distinct flavour to what is said about the topic.
Conclusion:
To conclude we may say that code switching is a very natural phenomenon of language behaviour. The reason for it are sometimes simple and at the other time very complex. However, the fact that in Pakistan the majority of people are bilingual in Urdu and a regional language, and that a very influential minority is also bilingual in Urdu and English is a great advantage. A great international language like English can co-exist with the national language Urdu without detracting in any way from the latter’s status. As in code switching one complements the other.
Code switching initiated by trigger words demonstrate that is plausible to assume one shared language store, where all items are interconnected. Jointly active language material is especially likely to be strongly connected and will be activated simultaneously.
We tend to arrive at the conclusion that a bilingual is a person who speaks two languages, having achieved native like fluency in each one. However, this criterion is for too strong. People who have perfect fluency in tow languages do exist, but they are the exception, not the rule. The vast majority of bilingual do not have an equal command of their tow languages, for most of the time one of them is more fluent than the other, interferes with and imposes its accent on the other, or simply is the preferred language in certain situations.
However, accuracy requires one to rely on definitions provided by various dictionaries of linguistics. One such definition terms bilingualism in the following way, bilingualism is, the use of at least two languages either by an individual or by a group of speakers such as the inhabitants of a particular region or a nation.