Relationship between code-switching and emotional identity in Junot Diaz's short stories

Abstract

The purpose was to check whether Yunior, character/narrator in three short stories by Junot Díaz (2012), reduces the use of codeswitching (Cs) to Spanish (his first language, L1) from the first chronological story to the third one: “Invierno”, “Nilda”, and “The Pura Principle”, respectively. We hypothesize a reduction in the number of words used in his mother tongue and a decrease in emotional words, implying a change in his emotional identity. (Costa et al., 2017; Dewaele, 2010; Ferré et al., 2010; Pavlenko, 2008). From the latter, we qualitative and quantitatively analyzed Yunior’s Cs to L1. A change in Yunior’s emotional identity could not be found probably due to the small size of the vocabulary corpus and the lack of emotional ratings for many of these words. Yunior keeps using Cs to his L1 for family and intimate matters in the three stories and English when seeking detachment.