Date:  Wed, 22 Dec 1993 22:59:38 CST

From:  "Donald M. Lance" <ENGDL[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]MIZZOU1.BITNET>

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