Code-Switching in Trigenerational Family Conversations among Chinese Immigrants in New Zealand

Abstract

This is a study of Chinese-English code-switching (CS) by grandparents, parents, and grandchildren in family conversations. Based on a 30,000-word corpus of New Zealand Chinese family conversations, 1,091 tokens of CS were retrieved and coded as “ betweenturns” CS and “within-turn” CS on the basis of structural form. The results generally supported three hypotheses proposed on the bases of Communication Accommodation Theory and the contrasting bilingual competence across the three generations. Between-turns CS occurred more often than within-turn CS (Hypothesis 1), and the ratio of between- to within-turn CS was higher for grandchildren than for either parents or grandparents (Hypothesis 2a). Parents used more within- than between-turns CS, and their propensity for within-turn CS was significantly greater than that of grandchildren but not of grandparents (partial support for Hypothesis 2b). The interpretive function of CS was then examined to identify tokens of CS that facilitated family members communicating with each other despite language barriers. Parents were found to be the main users of interpretive CS. Four tokens of interpretive CS (from a total of 69) were presented to illustrate the kinds of communication problems that occasioned the use of interpretiveCS, and the turnby-turn dynamics in which the interpretive function was collaboratively enacted.