Blackwell Reference Online

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Any unified treatment of the bilingual's capacity for language use has to account for two fundamental aspects of bilingual linguistic competency: language separation and language integration. It is often observed that bilinguals can switch from one language to another with as much ease and competence as a driver of a stick-shift car changes gear under appropriate conditions. Although this bilingual behavior has been the subject of linguistic investigation for quite some time, general attitudes toward language mixing have often been based on fundamental misconceptions about these two aspects of bilingual linguistic competency. This chapter focuses on the following four questions concerning bilingual verbal behavior: • Is language mixing or switching a random phenomenon? • If it is not, what motivates bilinguals to mix and alternate two languages? • What is the social evaluation of this mixing and alternation? • What is the perception of bilinguals themselves about their language mixing? (The question of the grammar of mixing and switching, as opposed to its motivation, is addressed in chapter 11 .) A distinction has often been made in the research literature between code switching and code mixing. We will use these terms as follows. We use the term code switching (CS) to refer to the use of various linguistic units (words, phrases, clauses, and sentences) primarily from two participating ... log in or subscribe to read full text