VOLUME PRESENTATION

Peter Auer

      During recent years, we have experienced an unexpected surge of scientific interest in phenomena of bilingual speech, and in particular, code-switching. While code-switching had previously been investigated as a matter of peripheral importance within the more narrow tradition of research on bilingualism, it has now moved into a more general focus of interest for sociolinguists, psycholinguists and also general linguists (in particular, syntacticians). The new development has resulted in the publication of numerous monographs, articles, and in the foundation of an ESF network on code-switching and language contact.

      From both earlier and more recent research we know: (a) that code-switching can be related to and indicative of group membership in particular types of bilingual speech communities, such that the regularities of the alternating use of two or more languages within one conversation may vary to a considerable degree between speech communities, and (b) that intrasentential code-switching, where it occurs, may be constrained by syntactic and morphosyntactic factors which may or may not be universal in nature. Accordingly, the dominant perspectives on code-switching represented in previous research are macro-sociolinguistic (in the narrow sense of the term, i.e. as referring to relationships between social and linguistic structure), or grammatical (referring to constraints on intrasentential code-switching). In the first tradition, we find both quantitative, correlational work (such as Poplack 1988) and qualitative approaches (such as Myers Scotton 1993a, Gardner-Chloros 1991, Heller 1995); the central question of this type of research is how language choice is negotiated as a consequence of power and inequality, or as an index of the “rights and obligations” attributed to incumbants of certain social categories. The second tradition is exemplified by the work of Shana Poplack (1980) as well as by more recent publications, e.g. by Joshi (1985), Bentahila & Davies (1983), Myers Scotton (1993b), Muysken (1995) and many others. It usually addresses the question of syntactic constrains from within the framework of a particular grammatical theory, and is sometimes complemented by a psycholinguistic interest in the ‘switchability’ of languages (cf. Grosjean 1995).

      However, these two traditions leave a gap which is well known to every linguist working on natural data from bilingual settings. The gap is due to the fact that, on the one hand, macro-sociolinguistic aspects of the speech situation never completely determine language choice and type of code alternation (or the absence of it), but rather leave a considerable amount of conversational structure (involving code-switching and similar phenomena) unspecified and thus open to local processes of language negotiation and code selection. On the other hand, the gap is also due to the fact that code-switching is never restricted to intrasentential loci which may be amenable to a strictly syntactic analysis; on the contrary, whenever intrasentential code-switching occurs, intersentential switching is a matter of course, but not all code-switching situations/communities which allow intersentential switching also allow intrasentential switching. This means that neither the sociolinguistic approach (sensu stricto) nor the grammatical approach explore the whole range of observed regularities in bilingual speech. The lacuna is precisely in those patterns of code-switching which go beyond the sentence, i.e. code-switching between conversational “moves” or “intonation units”, each representing full “constructional units” in terms of their syntactic make-up.

      This volume puts forward the claim that conversational structure should be considered a third level of structure in bilingual language use - a level which is sufficiently independent both from the macro conditions of switching and its syntactic constraints on in order to be explored in its own right. Of course, these conversational patterns of code alternation are as closely linked to their larger social context as are the syntactic regularities of intra-sentential switching (a point which is easily verified by a look at the conversational data in this volume, which come from a variety of social contexts/multilingual communities). However, reference to the larger-scale “situation” in which bilinguals converse does not account for the structural regularities in the local uses of the two or more languages involved, nor does it reveal their governing principles.

      The case for independent treatment of conversational structure in bilingual interaction is made by the papers in PART 1 of the present volume. Li Wei (“The ‘why’ and ‘how’ questions in the analysis of conversational code-switching”) contrasts a CA type approach to code-switching with the so-called markedness model advocated by C. Myers-Scotton and argues that the latter model is only applicable in macro-linguistic contexts of diglossia. Giovanna Alfonzetti (“The conversational dimension of code-switching between Italian and dialect in Sicily”) demonstrates that, even in a situation of dialect/standard alternation (such as in Sicily), the “codes” involved may be used by participants in such a way as to delimit them clearly from each other. Alfonzetti finds a high number of recurrent conversational patterns in which the two codes, although structurally relatively close, are functionally juxtaposed in conversation. Melissa Moyer (“Bilingual conversational strategies in Gibraltar”) describes conversational code-switching in Gibraltar using a triple classificatory schema relating to the “base language”, the patterns of language choice across turns, and a typology of switching forms.

      However, the volume additionally inquires into the theoretical and methodological foundations of the analysis of conversational structure in code-switching. Thus, PART 2 centres around problems in the conceptualizations of the “codes” in “code-switching”: When is a code a code? When is variability code-switching? Is what linguists perceive as two distinct codes still an instance of code-switching when seen from the bilingual members’ perspective?

      At least two points in this equation of linguists’ and lay participants’ conceptions of “codes” are questionable. One is the distinction between code-switching and borrowing, which leaves an area of ambiguity in which non-sedimented, unstable take-overs from the other code nonetheless do not seem to be used functionally. The notion of “nonce borrowings” suggested by Poplack & Sankoff (1984) to account for these intermediate cases is highly disputed. The second weak point in the above equation is the emergence of “mixed codes” in which what monolingual linguistics might see as a more or less structured amalgamation of elements from two codes assumes the status of a new variety of its own (cf. Nortier 1989).

      The contributions in this part cast some doubt on such a simple equation of members’ and linguists’ codes, arguing from within an interpretive sociolinguistic framework. In order to overcome the tedious discussion of what, e.g., is code-switching and what is borrowing, the problem of the definition of “codes” is addressed from the perspective of the bilingual speakers themselves. The new approach focuses on the evidence we find in the ways in which participants employ their repertoire in order to show that they orient to the “other-language-ness” of the element in question. As a consequence, a number of structures that might be seen as involving the juxtaposition of two “codes” from the linguist’s perspective are dismissed as not constituting a case of code-switching from the participants’ perspective (cf. Auer 1983/84, 1990). This means that code-switching is closely tied to its functions or “meaning” in conversation: there are no “codes” without functions.

      Celso Alvarez-Cáccamo (“From ‘switching code’ to ‘codeswitching’: Toward a reconceptualization of communicative codes”) introduces the discussion in theoretical terms, “tracing back the origin and development of the notion of code-switching to its earliest formulations as connected to information theory”. He proposes to distinguish between variety-switching (where a variety is held together by co-occurrence restrictions between linguistic forms) and code-switching (where a code is characterized by situational co-occurrence expectations). A very similar point is made by Rita Franceschini (“Code-switching and the notion of code in linguistics”) who also argues for a strictly functional approach to code-switching. Both authors develop a notion of code-switching which leaves ‘non-functional’ cases outside of a conversation-analytic or otherwise interpretive approach.

      The problem of the delimitation and definition of “codes” is perhaps most obvious in those social contexts in which the varieties involved are structurally very close (as in Alvarez-Cáccamo’s Galizan/Castilian d ata and in some of Franceschini’s Italian/French/Italian dialect materials). On the other hand, Michael Meeuwis & Jan Blommaert (“A monolectal view of code-switching: Layered code-switching among Zaireans in Belgium”) show that s tructurally distant “codes” such as Lingala/French or Swahili/French may nevertheless be amalgamated into a “mixed code”; that this code assumes the characteristics of a “monolectal code” is proven precisely by the fact that the “mixed codes” themselves can be used in functional code-switching.

      A testing field for the “codes” of code-switching is that of discourse markers, which have often been shown to be easily integrated into a newly emerging mixed code. A careful conversational analysis is required in order to distinguish discourse markers as part of such a mixed code from those markers on which the use of the other language is employed functionally. Cecilia Ösch-Serra (“Discourse connectives in bilingual conversation: The case of an emerging Italian-French mixed code”) argues that in the linguistic behaviour of Italian migrants in French-speaking Switzerland, the phonetically and pragmatically similar markers (Ital.) ma and (Fr.) mais are re-organized into a new mixed system in which each of them takes on new discourse-related duties different from those of the respective monolingual codes (Italian and French). An even more complex situation is depicted in Yael Maschler’s contribution (“On the transition from code-switching to a mixed code”). Working on data from Hebrew-English bilinguals in Israel, she traces the course of grammaticalization from code-switching into a mixed code on the basis of a careful analysis of language use in discourse markers which in some cases are said to constitute code-switching, in others they are part of an emerging Hebrew-English code.

      PART 3 of the volume is dedicated to the “interface” between conversation-analytic and ethnographic approaches to code-switching, widening the scope to notions of identity and power negotiation in bilingual conversation.

      Mark Sebba & Tony Wootton (“We, they and identity: Sequential vs. identity-related explanation in code-switching”) present a conversational account of switching practices between London Jamaican and London English and then ask the question of how social identities are symbolized through language choices. In answering this question, John Gumperz’ distinction between “we” and “they” codes is revitalized in new terms after it had long fallen in disrespect. The authors come to the conclusion that “we code” and “they code” may be subsumed within more local and more changeable social identities which are made salient from time to time in conversation; since there are only two “codes” involved, but a multitude of social identities need to be expressed, the relationship between language use and identity is by necessity created and negotiated in the conversation itself.

      This analysis of “we” and “they codes” is echoed in the following paper by Ben Rampton (“Language crossing and the redefinition of reality”). In a Bakhtin-inspired approach, Rampton considers the relevance of “crossing” (i.e. the sporadic use of a minority language or vernacular by majority speakers) for code-switching research which he criticises for not having paid enough attention to incongruity and contradiction in usage patterns, and for treating it exclusively as a background “contextualization cue” but not as part of the “main action”, which it may become in the case of crossing. The model Rampton proposes on the basis of his analysis distinguishes between situational and figurative code-switching (“double-voicing”), which, in turn may appear in a metaphorical (unidirectional) or an “ironic” (vari-directional) form.

      While both Sebba/Wootton and Rampton deconstruct the identity-aspect of code-switching (in the simple way as used, for instance, in Myers-Scotton’s work), Normann Jørgensen (“Bilingual children’s acquisiti on of code-switching for power-wielding”) transforms the macro-sociological notion of “power” into a micro-ethnographic one in order to analyze how Danish school-children use Turkish at two stages of their linguistic and social development. Although these children’s use of code-switching to wield power over others is sometimes in indirect and complicated ways related to macro-societal aspects of the Turkish minority in Denmark, there is no way to explain what is going on in the interaction unless its conversational development is taken into account.

      In the continuum of combined usages of ethnographic and conversation analytic methods of analysis, Christopher Stroud (“Perspectives on cultural variability of discourse and some implications for code-switching”) repr esents the most ethnographically inclined position. He places his analysis of code-switching between Tok Pisin and Taiap in Papua New Guinea from the very start in a cultural-semantic environment in which the local ideologies of personhood and self-conception play a central role. He uses an antagonistic speech genre (the kros) in order to demonstrate how women “are renegotiating or transforming traditional gender roles by the skillful use and juxtaposition of Taiap and Tok Pisin”. Here, code-switching is viewed as a “valuable motor in the discursive production of multivocality”, i.e. it is characteristically indexical and open topolyphonic readings; this, in turn, needs to be understood against the background of the linguistic ideology shared by the Gapuners.

      This volume covers a wide range of language pairs (English/Spanish, English/Chinese, London English/London Jamaican English, British English/Hindi-Urdu, Castilian/Galizan-Portuguese, Italian/French, Italian/Sicilian, Turkish/Danish, Swahili/French, Lingala/French, Tok Pisin/Taiap, Hebrew/English) and of sociolinguistic situations (Gibraltar, Chinese in the UK, West Indians in the UK, Indians/Pakistanis in the UK, Galiza, Italians in Switzerland, Sicily, Turkish children in Denmark, Zairean emigrants in Belgium, American immigrants into Israel, Papua New Guinea), yet, all papers also address theoretical and/or methodological questions in substantial ways.

REFERENCES

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Gardner-Chloros, P. , 1991, Language selection and switching in Strasbourg. Oxford: Clarendon.

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