Multilingualism, Globalization & Code Switching

Communities of Practice: another example

NAMING

"tagging" with GREETINGS

Outside of the United States, multilingualism is considered a natural and necessary and unremarkable skill. The MONOLINGUAL perspective usually derives from the possession of a POWERFUL LANGUAGE of wider communication.

• 1/4 of the world's languages are spoken by fewer than 1000 people
• globalization has led to an increase in migration and language admixture, resulting in the movement of languages and "creolization (admixture) " of forms
• no universally accepted criteria for determining the distinction between language and dialect (as we already know).

ALL THIS makes it difficult to precisely describe multilingualism in the world.

EXAMPLES:
India: 437 Languages from 6 Language families

• 1947 (post Independence)
• HINDI (OFFICIAL LANGUAGE); an attempt to pull together disparate ethnic groups & bolster nationalism
• 15 recognized NATIONAL LANGUAGES, state boundaries established by virtue of linguistic homogeneity, but some states have no linguistic majority, so boundaries are disputed.
• Each State can also choose a REGIONAL LANGUAGE to use in local government affairs and education
• WRITING SYSTEMA: 11 different scripts
• ENGLISH, and its role:
• spoken by many
• used as a lingua franca in national government
• marker of advanced (university) education (elite status)
• used in the courts
• NOT associated with any ethnic group (neutral) so avoids increasing prestige of Hindu speakers in the north

• Standardization: Sanskritization of pronounciation
• Coined words for new terms gotten from mass media and formed by compounding, all examples of CHANGE FROM ABOVE
• Aspirin matre (aspirin tablet)
• cancer roga (cancer disease)
• akasavana (radio-voice from above)
• vicara sankirana symposium-thought confirmation)

• Lingusistic Minorities:
• language policies try to encourage uniformity of language and culture
• minority languages are marginalized and so are the people who speak them
• Elites favor English because it is less accessible to the masses
• 3 language formula for education is disputed in many states:
• regional, Hindi, English

•  Canada: French vs English
• Policy: "official bilingualism", blunts Francophone nationalism and economic lure for government jobs. Rejected by the province of Quebec for MONOLINGUALISM in French
• Predjudical stereotypes
• By age 12, people tested through matched guising see English as far superior to French, as well as the people who speak it

• English Only Amendment in the USA
• 1981: HR-123
• Proposition 227 (C); Reversed bilingual education laws
• Why are we so opposed to multilingualism here in the United States?

• Native Americans (US and Elsewhere)
• language attrition and death based on no formal status
• Use of Boarding Schools to Assimilate children
• missionization to facilitate assimilation

• Creole Languages
• Characterized by minimal morphological complexity
• no plurality on nouns
• no gender on pronouns
• no tense on verbs
• aspectal divisions are well-established

• rarely found in monolingual settings, instead characterized by situations of DIGLOSSIA
• low form next to a standard (high). Always associated with poverty, little education, low cultural esteem
• May be adopted as a NATIONAL or OFFICIAL language to express solidarity of a new nation (Jamaica, Haiti, Tanzania)
• examples
• haitian creole/french
• jamaican creole/english
• tagolog/spanish

CODE SWITCHING (LINK)... (LINK)

• WHY do people code-switch?
• People who switch a lot between their languages in bilingual encounters will not do so with speech partners who understand only one of their languages.
• Some linguists have stated that ‘true’ code-switching is only possible when a speaker is fully proficient in two (or more) languages, or a ‘balanced bilingual.’ But how many people are equally native-like proficient in two or more languages? 
• Sometimes people switch when they don’t know a word in one language. Most multilinguals have a ‘better’ language, but it all depends on the topic and speech partners.
• Sometimes people switch because they want to show their speech partners that they also know the other language, or because it ‘sounds better’ in the other language.
• Code-switching identification is a powerful tool for identification.

A Turkish/Dutch girl I know told me that she curses in Dutch and not in Turkish because in Turkish it would sound more serious, more severe. When a Dutch-Arabic bilingual living in the Netherlands wants to talk about Islam, (s)he will prefer Arabic, but when (s)he talks about school, Dutch is preferred. The same person might feel uncomfortable speaking Dutch to his or her parents and Arabic to friends.

• HOW do people code-switch?
• Whenever switching takes place within a sentence, there are strict grammatical rules to be obeyed. People who switch within a sentence have to know the grammar of both languages. 

In English, for example, the verb comes right after the subject. In German subordinate sentences, the verb is the last word of the sentence. So when you want to switch from English to German in a subordinate sentence, and you already used the verb in English (and you don’t want to violate either grammars), you have a problem, as in this example:

(1)  (…) because he wanted to buy books yesterday

(2)  (…) weil er gestern Bücher kaufen wollte (German)
(…) ‘because he yesterday books buy wanted’

Where would you switch from one language to the other in the sentence above without making grammatical errors?

• Even when there are no word order difficulties such as those listed above, you still can only switch at certain points, not randomly. 

For example, switching after every second word as in examples (5) and (6) below leads to impossible sentences. (Sentences (3) and (4) below are the monolingual equivalents.)

(3)   I bought the last copy (English)
(4)   Ik kocht het laatste exemplaar (Dutch)

(5)   I kocht the laatste copy
(6)   Ik bought het last exemplaar

Sentence (5) and (6) are simply wrong. Bilinguals just would not say something like that. However, the next two sentences sound much more acceptable:

(7)  Ik kocht the last copy
(8)  I bought het laatste exemplaar

• And not only between spoken languages but also between spoken and signed languages. Deaf people are also able to switch between sign language and a spoken language, and they do so when they are communicating with other bilingual speaking/signing people.

• Types of Code-Switching
• Situational-based on factors of the communicative encounter (topic, participants, social setting, etc.)
• Metaphorical-each code represents or symbolizes a set of social meanings
• Tag Switching-expresses social meaning like ethnic identity (end of sentence)
• Affect-based on emotional meaning
• Lexical borrowing- don't know a word or have an equivalent 
• Intra-lexical (creates new words) , intra-sentinel, inter-sentional 

• Functions of Code-Switching
• show group identity
• lack facility
• lack register
• attract attention
• show approval
• amusement/artistry
• take control of a conversation or change topic