Code-switching and Code-mixing

Seminar paper from the year 2006 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 2.3, University of Stuttgart (Institut für Linguistik), 40 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: The aim of this paper is to provide a complete overview over the phenomenon ofcode-switching and code-mixing. The history of the research of code change hasundergone various periods that have shown how complex the phenomenon of codeswitchingand code-mixing are.In the course of research of code change it has become clear that code-switchingand code-mixing can be investigated from different perspectives. Researchersfocused on code change after they had realized that linguistic forms and practicesare interrelated. And code-switching/-mixing, in their turn, embodies not only variation,but the link between linguistic form and language use as social practice. Researchfrom a linguistic and psycholinguistic perspective has focused on understanding thenature of the systematic of code change, as a way of revealing linguistic andpotentially cognitive processes. Research on the psychological and socialdimensions of code-switching/-mixing has largely been devoted to answering thequestions of why speakers code change and what the social meaning of codechange is for them. The sociological perspective later goes on to attempt to use theanswer to those questions to illuminate how language operates as a social process.Throughout the history of research on code-switching/-mixing it has been proposedthat it is necessary to link all these forms of analysis and that, indeed, it is thatpossibility that is one of the most compelling reasons for studying code-switching/-mixing, since such a link would permit the development and verification ofhypotheses regarding the relationship among linguistic, cognitive and socialprocesses in a more general way (Heller, Pfaff 1996). As with any aspect of language contact phenomena, research on code- switchingand code- mixing are firstly plagued by the issue of terminological confusion. In communications, a code is a rule for converting a piece of information (forexample, a letter, word, or phrase) into another form or representation, notnecessarily of the same sort. In communications and information processing,encoding is the process by which a source (object) performs this conversion ofinformation into data, which is then sent to a receiver (observer), such as a dataprocessing system (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code). . .In semiotics, the concept of a code is of fundamental importance. Saussureemphasized that signs only acquire meaning and value when they are interpreted inrelation to each other.