Elusive or self-evident? Looking for common ground in approaches to code-switching

Abstract

The study of code-switching has been tackled by three distinct strands of research, namely linguistic, psycholinguistic and sociolinguistic. The linguistic strand has been concerned with the search for universal grammatical constraints to code-switching. The psycholinguistic strand has focused on how bilinguals’ linguistic systems are stored and accessed in the cognitive system. Finally, the sociolinguistic strand has paid attention to the social motivations behind code- switching. The methodologies employed in all three strands range from observation in naturalistic settings, more associated with the sociolinguistic strand, to experimental elicitation, more associated with the psycholinguistic strand. The linguistic strand, in turn, does not necessarily identify explicitly with any methodology for data extraction. A need for bringing together these three strands has been increasingly felt, giving rise to a few multidisciplinary overviews of code- switching studies, among which the most recent is an edited volume by Isurin et al. (2009). The present volume emphasizes commonalities of approaches to code-switching. Despite the theoretically and methodologically eclectic character of code-switching studies, it seems feasible to bring together various approaches to code-switching spanning all three strands as long as they meet the criterion of allowing for the influence of social explanations. This is the point of view that we took while editing this volume. This volume also seeks to widen the empirical basis of the study of code-switching by including a richly diverse range of contact settings encompassing the countries of Cameroon, Hong Kong, Suriname, Burkina Faso, Dutch Antilles, French Guiana, Netherlands, Papua New Guinea, United Kingdom, South Africa, Luxembourg and Australia, and using primary data from languages representing a broad variety of linguistic types and affiliations (Niger-Congo, Sinitic, Germanic, Indic, Austronesian, Pama-Nyungan, Celtic, as well as Afro-Caribbean and Pacific English-lexifier Creoles and Mixed Languages).