Date: Wed, 22 Dec 1993 22:59:38 CST From: "Donald M. Lance" Subject: Re: modren metathesis On code-mixing and code-switching. And Sali's comments/questions. I respond with less than full confidence. The question is, surely, largely a labeling matter. Labels can hurt. Uninformed popular comments about the language behavior of bilinguals in relaxed conversation have included statements like "She gets the two languages all mixed up," far less often statements like "She switches from one language to another." The former, whether commenting on the language of bachelor farmers around Lake Woebegone or third-grade drop-out laborers in the Valley, was definitely not a clinical comment on the nature of linguistic interaction, and the latter was less caustic but certainly not clinical either. This is one factor in Haugen's recommendation to me and my immediate understanding and acquiescence in switching to the less "judgmental" term. Another factor, I suspect, was the American structural view of language systems. Now, after much research on style-shifting, registers, etc., my own reaction to the term 'code-mixing' is less visceral, and younger linguists may, as Sali indicates, not share Rudy's and my reaction to 'mixing'. Thirty years ago, when I was teaching Spanish and English in high school in Corpus Christi, I had a student who had difficulty participating in class discussions. She would often bog down and say a few words in Spanish, because she knew I understood, and then terminate her attempt to participate. She was not stupid by any means. She claimed that she truly could not stay in one language for extended periods of time. From her behavior (verbal performance and embarrassment) I believed her but was puzzled. When I was invited to that class's 25th reunion, one of the first things she said to me was that she had had that problem throughout her adult life. What was in her head? Did she have two separable codes between which she could switch intra- or inter- sententially? Did she have a mix of English and Spanish phonological, morphological, syntactic, and lexical systems? I never observed her in the kind of social situation in which Chicanos participate in context-free code-switching/mixing, so I have only a partial picture of her language behavior. I suspect that she would get bogged down where her English was temporarily "blocked" for some reason, perhaps inability to remember a word in English, or perhaps by an "urge" to switch to Spanish that she had to abort because code-switching/mixing is "registrally anomalous" in a classroom setting. It was NOT the case that she didn't know the right word in one language or the other; the topic of conversation was never so complex that she did not know the English words, though she may not have known academic terms in Spanish. That was in the early 60s; all discussion in Spanish classes was in English, Spanish being appropriate for exercises and examples. My apologies for a long posting that does not lead to an answer. This case has remained in my mind for some time. To answe Sali more directly: I too think there are language behaviors that manifest what could be called 'mixing' as well as some that seem to be abrupt and complete 'switching' between languages. But I haven't worked with bilingual data much in recent years. Maybe related: This past summer, for an independent study, a student analyzed several rap recordings, transcribed from recordings. I did some transcribing myself (schwer!). Most of the rappers used a combination of obviously intentional BVE (e.g., "Black" r-lessness alongside rhotic pronunciations). These were New York City groups. As I was working with that data, the question of 'mixing' versus 'switching' entered my mind, but the project was interrupting other things I need to be finishing up (like this unnecessary e-mail interruption in my preparation for MLA/ADS/ANS), so I just let the thougts come up. Whether we're looking at bilingual or "bidialectal" data, I think we should be open to Sali's suggestion: Code-switching is just an extension of the same trend, even though some might consider it less messy to deal with than "code-mixing". (Salikoko Mufwne) DMLance