Contemporary best practices in the profession encourage teaching as much as possible in the target language, but when university faculty were observed teaching Spanish, the majority spoke English during instruction and many engaged in frequent code switching (alternations) between English and Spanish. Findings indicate that instructors used…

Formal means for describing the syntax of code switching are proposed and illustrated with examples from Puerto Rican Spanish and English. The role of code switching constraints in determining the way two monolingual grammars may be combined in generating discourse containing code switches is analyzed. Intrasentential code switching is…

Patterns of code switching were studies from two aphasic and two neurologically normal Kannada-English bilinguals. Conversational analysis of the samples based on the Matrix Language Frame (MLF) model (Myers-Scotton, 1993) revealed consistent code switching between two languages by all the subjects. The aphasic subjects demonstrated a greater…

Background: Cantonese-English mixed code is ubiquitous in Hong Kong society, and yet using mixed code is widely perceived as improper. This paper presents evidence of mixed code being socially constructed as bad language behavior. In the education domain, an EDB guideline bans mixed code in the classroom. Teachers are encouraged to stick to…

This paper challenges the characterization of bilingual behavior derived from the code-switching model, and especially the notion of linguistic independence on which psychological studies of bilingualism have focused almost exclusively. While linguists have concentrated on the situational determinants of code-switching, psychologists have focused…

Focusing on the alternation of languages in a bilingual classroom, a conceptual framework is discussed that utilizes the teacher's communication competence. Language alternation on the part of the teacher and the student is an active process of negotiation, creating a high level of linguistic and social exchange. (SLD)

The focus of this paper is on speakers' rationalisations of their everyday linguistic choices as members of a multilingual academic department in the US. Given the monolingual macro-context, the myriad of native languages spoken by participants, and the professional stake in language competence, the question of how speakers arrive at language…

This article focuses on the identity accounts of a group of Chinese children who attend a heritage language school. Bakhtin's concepts of ideological becoming, and authoritative and internally persuasive discourse, frame our exploration. Taking a dialogic view of language and learning raises questions about schools as socializing spaces and…

This study aims to investigate the role of mediation in the learning process from a sociocultural perspective, activity theory in particular. This study was carried out in a primary English immersion school within the CCUEI Programs in Mainland China. Data were collected mainly through observations and interviews, which were then supplemented by…

The theory of diglossia developed by Charles Ferguson in 1959, and a later, expanded version by Joshua Fishman are outlined and contrasted, and some of the major objections to them are discussed. Diglossia delineates communities using two or more linguistic varieties for differing functions within a single speech community. Ferguson's theory…

The report of a sociolinguistic study of language usage in Montreal describes the historical and current roles of French and English, discusses Montreal's current linguistic situation in terms of two sociolinguistic concepts (code switching and the speech community), and outlines a survey examination of language use in retail transactions. (MSE)

Of the bilinguals in the United States, 22 million are Spanish-English speakers. Spanish-English bilinguals have been producing literature in Spanish, in English, and gradually in mixtures of both languages from the earliest days of contact in the U.S. This paper explores manifestations and meanings of Spanish-English bilingualism in Latino…

Examines the characteristics of diglossia and applies them to the current sign language situation in the United States. Concludes diglossia does not exist and argues that what is really happening is code switching between languages and style shifting within a language. (EKN)

Examined African Americans college students' perceptions of audiotaped people using: Black English (BE), Standard English (SE), and appropriate or inappropriate code switching (CS). Surveys indicated that participants rated SE and appropriate CS speakers more favorably than BE and inappropriate CS speakers, and they wanted to get to know and work…

This study, part of an on-going investigation, analyzes the syntactic aspects of code-switching. A series of empirical studies has confirmed that there are only two general linguistic constraints where code-switching may occur, the free morpheme constraint and the equivalence constraint. This study describes in formal terms how the two constraints…