Interspeaker code-switching use in school-aged bilinguals and its relation with affective factors and language proficiency

Abstract

AbstractBilingual children may choose to reply to utterances in one language with another language. This behavior, which we call interspeaker code-switching, reportedly varies in frequency across children yet the sources of such variation are not well understood. While its use has been linked to variation in proficiency both concurrently and longitudinally, quantitative analyses of this relationship are limited. Here we measure frequency of interspeaker code-switching in a new population, French–English bilinguals in France (ages 5–8), using parental report and relate it to children’s self-reported language attitudes and perceptions of dominance, English receptive and expressive vocabulary, and sentence repetition ability. These children use interspeaker code-switching infrequently and nearly exclusively in the direction of French. Use is predicted by children’s expressive lexical and grammatical proficiency but not their attitudes toward English and French and exhibits only a marginally significant relationship with self-reported dominance. It shows a closer relationship with proficiency than other more well studied experience variables such as current exposure and output, especially for children with lesser English use. These results support a strong link between interspeaker code-switching and proficiency but not for children’s attitudes in a context where they are generally favorable.