‘I’ll meet you halfway with language’ – codeswitching functions within an urban context’

Finlayson, Rosalie; Slabbert, Sarah

doi:10.1080/10118063.1997.9724121

Cited by 41 publications

(8 citation statements)

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“…Few other studies have been done (e.g. Slabbert 1997a and1997b as well as Khati 1992). One problem with comparisons is that other studies to date have reported only individual sentences as examples of CS (i.e.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 97%

Orderly mixing and accommodation in South African codeswitching

Finlayson

Calteaux

Myers‐Scotton

1998

Journal of Sociolinguistics

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Mixed Language,' a characteristic pattern of language use among African township residents in South Africa, may well include words or full constituents from several languages. However, from both a structural and a social perspective, such speech has a systematic nature. In reference to grammatical structure, within any CP (projection of COMP) showing codeswitching, only one language (the Matrix Language) provides the grammatical frame in the data studied. Also, while speakers from different educational levels engage in codeswitching with similar frequencies, the types of codeswitched constitutents they prefer are different. In reference to the social use of language, we argue that specific patterns of codeswitching indicate how language is both an index of identity and a tool of communication in South Africa. In the codeswitching patterns they use, speakers exhibit strong loyalty to their own first languages. Yet, because they recognize that codeswitching facilitates communication with members of other ethnic groups, they use a number of codeswitching strategies as a means of accommodating to their addressees and simultaneously as a means of projecting multiple identities for themselves.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 97%

Orderly mixing and accommodation in South African codeswitching

Finlayson

Calteaux

Myers‐Scotton

1998

Journal of Sociolinguistics

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“…Prowiers amohl -da directions we mers braucht geena mit [...] (quoted from Laird 1972) On the basis of these criteria the much discussed franglais (Étiemble 1973) But what if many languages are mixed to an extent that no one of them is dominant in an utterance? Finlayson (1996) has pointed to situations in Johannesburg townships in which up to five languages are found in the same sentence (English, Afrikaans slang, and three Bantu languages). Where lan guages are structurally very different, and the codeshifts affect larger units, the boundaries between the two are clearcut, as in the following advertisement from Manila: May Ninong ka ba?…”

Section: Divisionmentioning

confidence: 98%

And is it English?

Görlach

1996

EWW

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Varieties of English defined by users (as dialects, sociolects and chronolects) and by uses (according to medium, formality, text type, etc.) have been the object of description in various places, and have of course functioned conspicuously in this journal which has the topic as part of its title. By contrast, the questions of what can be considered English, and how its outer boundaries are defined, have been asked less frequently, and not in any comprehensive way. (In EWW I have followed a pragmatic editorial course in admitting varieties which have some linguistic relationship with English and are in a contact situation/coexistence with English in the speech community discussed.) My paper looks at a few 'problem cases' among utterances, in particular at various forms of broken English and linguistic experiments, at language mix and code-switching and then turns to linguistic systems, with semi-languages, pidgins, Creoles, cants and mixed languages singled out for detailed discussion. A classification of the varieties treated obviously depends on the degree of their divergence from English, their functional range and standardization, users' attitudes and the ways how the language is acquired -four factors which can have different weight for the classification in the individual case.

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“…On the basis of extensive fieldwork in Uganda (Myers-Scotton 1972) and later Kenya, she laid the basis for what came to be known as the Markedness Model (Myers-Scotton 1988, 1993a andelsewhere). The model presents a comprehensive theoretical account of what she considers to be the Social Motivations for Codeswitching (the title of her 1993a monograph), which is widely accepted as a point of reference both in Africanist scholarship (e.g., Goyvaerts and Zembele 1992, Kamwangamalu 1996, Herbert 1997, Finlayson and Slabbert 1997, Amuzu 2012) and beyond. 4 The basic tenet of the model (henceforth MM) is that language users dispose over a markedness metric, an underlying framework that enables speakers to infer which code counts as the normative choice given the particular set of rights and obligations (RO set) between the participants in force for the encounter.…”

Section: Codeswitching Research: Evidence From Africamentioning

confidence: 99%

Situated Language Use in Africa

D’hondt¹

2019

The Cambridge Handbook of African Linguistics

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‘I’ll meet you halfway with language’ – codeswitching functions within an urban context’

Cited by 41 publications

References 3 publications

Orderly mixing and accommodation in South African codeswitching

Orderly mixing and accommodation in South African codeswitching

And is it English?

Situated Language Use in Africa

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