Language choice and code-switching among Hong Kong’s Hakka speakers

2015 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-83
Author(s):  
Sherman Lee
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Language Choice ◽  
Code Switching ◽  
Bilingual Speakers ◽  
Linguistic Resource ◽  
Ethnographic Approach ◽  
Age Related ◽  
Community Shifts

Abstract This paper examines the language practices among speakers of Hakka in Hong Kong, a minority Chinese variety still found in the territory. These speakers were largely monolingual a few decades ago but are now primarily bilingual in Hakka and Cantonese as the community shifts towards the latter, the dominant societal language. To explore the process and dynamics of this language shift, the present study adopted an ethnographic approach for observing the actual bilingual behaviours of individuals and families in the community. The informant sample comprised 32 speakers aged between 9 and 82 from nine separate families across Hong Kong. Data was collected through a combination of participant observation, informal interviews and conversational exchanges in the informants’ homes. Examination of their patterns of language choice and language use shows that most of the speakers use Cantonese-dominant patterns, and are ‘shifters’ rather than ‘maintainers’ of the Hakka language; the shift is clearly generation and age-related. The paper also illustrates how bilingual speakers make use of code-switching between Hakka and Cantonese to achieve various discourse purposes in their everyday conversations, suggesting that even among the ‘language shifters’, Hakka remains an important linguistic resource.

Language choice and conversational repair in bilingual interaction

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph Gafaranga
Keyword(s):  
Language Use ◽  
Language Choice ◽  
Code Switching ◽  
Negative Attitudes ◽  
Additional Resource ◽  
Concurrent Use ◽  
Language Alternation ◽  
Conversational Repair ◽  
Research Questions

Research in code-switching, undertaken against the backdrop of very negative attitudes towards the concurrent use of two or more languages within the same conversation, has traditionally been geared towards rehabilitating this form of language use. Now that code-switching has been rehabilitated, the research tradition faces an entirely new challenge, namely that of its continued relevance. This book argues that, in order to overcome this challenge, research should aim to describe specific interactional practices involving the use of two or more languages and outlines a methodology for doing so. This chapter illustrates this methodology by means of a specific case study. The chapter describes the interactional practice of conversational repair in bilingual interaction. Two research questions are raised: (a) where in the repair sequence can language alternation occur and (b) what does language alternation do when it occurs in repair sequences. It is shown that language alternation interacts with repair organisation in two ways. Either language alternation is the focus of conversational repair or it is an additional resource for the organisation of conversational repair.

Linguistic Dominance in Code Switching and Code Mixing Situations (Case of Study the Bilinguals with Albanian as L1)

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 157-161
Author(s):  
Rrezarta Draçini
Keyword(s):  
Language Production ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Code Switching ◽  
Mixing Process ◽  
Linguistic Features ◽  
Bilingual Speakers ◽  
Code Mixing ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Long Time ◽  
Usage Level

Abstract Code switching and code mixing are processes, which happen often to bilingual speakers, depending on the linguistic situations in which they find themselves. These two processes are well known and are being studied for a long time. But, in this work we will concentrate on bilinguals with the Albanian language as L1, because there is a substantial lack of studies for the Albanian language and this particular situation. In the center of this work are the concrete examples, studied and analyzed. We will analyze: the effect that linguistic features of L1 have, while code switching and code mixing occur, because the Albanian language has a grammatical which is complex and is different from that of other languages, like English. The displacement that speakers have from one place to the other cause the relations of language use on the day to day basis communication to change, consequently different linguistic situations occur. How does the effect that L1, L2 languages change in relation to the everyday usage level from the speakers? In the code mixing process a code breach of one language occurs as a consequence of the inclusion in the language production of elements from another language. What are the linguistic features of the words which are included in the code mixing? Parts of our study are Albanian speaking subject, who live in Albania and outside, which have been recorded as they communicate in different linguistic situations. Their analysis has been conducted based on the latest linguistic, psycholinguistic, and sociolinguistic literature.

scholarly journals Language Use and Discoursal Strategies in Peer Religious Mentoring

2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Phyllis Ghim Lian Chew
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Conversation Analysis ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Language Choice ◽  
Code Switching ◽  
Group Support ◽  
Theoretical Frameworks ◽  
Linguistic Strategies

This paper focuses on language use and discoursal strategies in an Islamic boys camp and draws from theoretical frameworks such as the ethnography of speaking, conversation analysis and discourse analysis as a means to examine the phenomena of religious mentoring and socialization.   The article found that mentees were socialized through senior peers’ linguistic strategies such as language choice and code-switching and discoursal strategies such as humor, mock-demonstrations  – all of which played a major role in building solidarity, group support and brotherly bonding.

Bilingualism as Interactional Practices

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph Gafaranga
Keyword(s):  
Language Use ◽  
Research Direction ◽  
Language Choice ◽  
Code Switching ◽  
Negative Attitudes ◽  
Advanced Level ◽  
Concurrent Use ◽  
Conversational Repair ◽  
Interactional Functions ◽  
New Research

Research in code-switching, undertaken against the backdrop of very negative attitudes towards the concurrent use of two or more languages within the same conversation, has traditionally been geared towards rehabilitating this form of language use. From being seen as a random phenomenon reflecting the user’s lack of competence, code-switching is currently seen as sign of an advanced level of competence in the languages involved and as serving different interactional functions. However, as a result of its success, the research tradition now faces an entirely new challenge: Where to from here? How can research in code-switching continue to be relevant and interesting now it has largely achieved its original purpose? This books seeks to answer this programmatic question. The author argues that, in order to overcome this challenge, the notion of bilingualism (multilingualism) itself must be redefined. Bilingualism must be seen as consisting of multiple interactional practices. Accordingly, research in bilingualism and in code-switching in particular must aim to describe each of those practices in its own right. In other word, the aim should be an empirically based understanding of the various interactional practices involving the use of two or more languages. In the book, this new research direction is illustrated by means of three case studies: language choice and speech representation in bilingual interaction, language choice and conversational repair in bilingual interaction and language choice and appositive structures in written texts in Rwanda.

Woordproduktie bij Tweetaligen

1994 ◽  
Vol 48 ◽  
pp. 9-18
Author(s):  
Kees de Bot ◽  
Robert Schreuder
Keyword(s):  
Production Process ◽  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
Experimental Research ◽  
Language Choice ◽  
Code Switching ◽  
Word Retrieval ◽  
Bilingual Speakers ◽  
The Moment ◽  
Retrieval Language ◽  
Selection Of

An attempt is made to validate an adaptation of Levelťs (1989) Speaking model to bilingual speakers. It is concluded that the best empirical evidence available at the moment comes from research on speech errors and code switching. Data from the latter source suggests that in word retrieval, 'language' serves as one of the cues for the selection of a specific lemma. Such cues can have more or less weight, and their impact will vary accordingly. Language choice in code switching can be regarded as the result of an interaction between communicative intentions and the information that is available in time during the production process. In order to arrive at a full-fledged model, observational data will have to be supplemented with experimental research using real-time techniques.

Language choice and speech representation in bilingual interaction

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph Gafaranga
Keyword(s):  
Language Use ◽  
Language Choice ◽  
Code Switching ◽  
Negative Attitudes ◽  
Research Tradition ◽  
Concurrent Use ◽  
Speech Representation

Research in code-switching, undertaken against the backdrop of very negative attitudes towards the concurrent use of two or more languages within the same conversation, has traditionally been geared towards rehabilitating this form of language use. Now that code-switching has been rehabilitated, the research tradition faces an entirely new challenge, namely that of its continued relevance. This book argues that, in order to overcome this challenge, research should aim to describe specific interactional practices involving the use of two or more languages and outlines a methodology for doing so. This chapter illustrates this methodology by means of a specific case study. In the chapter, the interaction practice of speech representation in talk in two languages is described. It is shown that, in talk in two languages, language choice in the interactional site of speech representation follows a three-path map: language choice may be an incidental aspect, it may be as a supportive aspect and it may be the depictive element in speech representation.

Code-switching and language control

2016 ◽  
Vol 19 (5) ◽  
pp. 883-884 ◽  
Author(s):  
DAVID W. GREEN ◽  
LI WEI
Keyword(s):  
Speech Production ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Code Switching ◽  
Production Mechanism ◽  
Bilingual Speakers ◽  
Rapid Changes ◽  
Interactional Context ◽  
Dense Code ◽  
Language Control

Bilingual speakers can use one of their languages in a given interactional context or switch between them when addressing different speakers during the same conversation. Depending on community usage bilingual speakers may insert single lexical forms from one language into the morphosyntactic frame of another or alternate between languages at clause boundaries. They may also engage in dense code switching with rapid changes of language within a clause during a conversational turn (Green & Li, 2014). These varieties of language use configure the same speech production mechanism and so a theory of code-switching must be part of a theory that accounts for the range of bilingual speech. Does the proposal described in Goldrick, Putnam and Schwartz (2016) meet these criteria?

scholarly journals A Case Study of Code-Switching among Thai Waiters in a Cambridge, UK Restaurant

MANUSYA ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 106-125
Author(s):  
Nicola Prin
Keyword(s):  
Language Proficiency ◽  
Sequential Analysis ◽  
Language Choice ◽  
Code Switching ◽  
Specific Work ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Bilingual Speakers ◽  
Role Relationship ◽  
Initial Sequence

Abstract This study explores Thai bilingual speakers’ code-switching in a formal work setting. Although code-switching may appear to be random, there is an underlying choice which speakers decide upon when switching between languages: Language proficiency, the initial speaker’s language choice, the setting, and role relationships all contribute to these choices. This study investigates the factors contributing to code-switch decisions by participants within their specific work environment. The main findings show that adopting one language over the other depends on two main factors: first, the initial sequence of the interaction; second, the role relationship that the participants wish to maintain. This study has drawn upon the conversational approach and Auer’s sequential analysis to collect and interpret data from ethno-graphic observations, questionnaires, and semi-structured interviews.

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