Code-switching - Examples of Code-switching

Examples of Code-switching

Spanish and English

Researcher Ana Celia Zentella offers this example from her work with Puerto Rican Spanish-English bilingual speakers in New York City. In this example, Marta and her younger sister, Lolita, speak Spanish and English with Zentella outside of their apartment building.

Lolita: Oh, I could stay with Ana?

Marta: — but you could ask papi and mami to see if you could come down.

Lolita: OK.

Marta: Ana, if I leave her here would you send her upstairs when you leave?

Zentella: I’ll tell you exactly when I have to leave, at ten o’clock. Y son las nueve y cuarto. ("And it’s nine fifteen.")

Marta: Lolita, te voy a dejar con Ana. ("I’m going to leave you with Ana.") Thank you, Ana.

Zentella explains that the children of the predominantly Puerto Rican neighbourhood speak both English and Spanish: "Within the children’s network, English predominated, but code-switching from English to Spanish occurred once every three minutes, on average."

French and Tamil

This example of switching from French to Tamil comes from ethnographer Sonia Das's work with immigrants from Jaffna, Sri Lanka, to Quebec.

Selvamani: Parce que n’importe quand quand j’enregistre ma voix ça l’aire d’un garçon. ( "Because whenever I record my voice I sound like a guy.")

Alors, TSÉ, je me ferrai pas poigné ("So, you know, I’m not going to be had.")

Selvamani: ennatā, ennatā, enna romba ciritā? ( "What, what, what's so funny?")

Alors, qu’est-ce que je disais? ( "So, what was I saying?")

Selvamani, who moved from Sri Lanka to Quebec as a child and now identifies as Québécois, speaks to Das in French. When Selvamani's sister, Mala, laughs Selvamani switches to Tamil to ask Mala why she is laughing. After this aside, Selvamani continues to speak in French. Selvamani also uses the word tsé ("you know") and the expression je me ferrai pas poigné ("I will not be handled"), which are typical of the working-class Montreal dialect Joual and not standard French.

Hopi and Tewa

Researcher Paul Kroskrity offers the following example of code-switching by of three elder Arizona Tewa men, who are trilingual in Tewa, Hopi, and English. They are discussing the selection of a site for a new high school in the eastern Hopi Reservation:

Speaker A: Tututqaykit qanaanawakna. ( "Schools were not wanted.")

Speaker B: Wédít’ókánk’egena’adi imbí akhonidi. ( "They didn’t want a school on their land.")

Speaker C: Naembí eeyae nąeląemo díbít’ó’ámmí kąayį’į wédimu::di. ( "It’s better if our children go to school right here, rather than far away.")

In their two-hour conversation, the three men primarily spoke Tewa; however, when Speaker A addresses the Hopi Reservation as a whole, he code-switches to Hopi. His speaking Hopi when talking of Hopi-related matters is a conversational norm in the Arizona Tewa speech community. Kroskrity reports that these Arizona Tewa men, who culturally identify themselves as Hopi and Tewa, use the different languages to linguistically construct and maintain their discrete ethnic identities.