Abstract
Code-switching and code-mixing, two by-products of language contact situations, are widely used linguistic strategies, not only in informal conversational contexts but also in the informal media discourse. The reasons hitherto applicable for the mixing of codes seem non-relevant in some code-mixing situations today. This is true to certain segments of the Sri Lankan media context, too, in that the popular Sri Lankan commercial broadcasting media is accused by prescriptivist groups of making excessive use of code-mixing. The purpose of this paper is to synthesize and explore the seminal research articles available in the field of code alternation so as to better understand the Sri Lankan situation of code-switching and code-mixing, as practiced by its general bilingual populations and by the popular commercial media channels.
Highlights
The origin of the term ‘code-switching’ lies in the communication sciences, but with a different meaning (Bullock and Toribio 2009: xixii)
Language contact situations can be resultant in processes such as borrowing, pidginization, language death (Gardner-Chloros, 2009:4), language shift, lingua francas, multilingualism (Trudgill, 1992: 45) and linguistic alternation which includes code-switching and code-mixing
Linguistic alternation may take place inter-sententially or intrasententially, within the same conversation, and in an unchanged setting. This phenomenon may include intra-word alternation which is a linguistic change-over within a word and tag-switching, or the substitution of a tagword/phrase of one language with that of another, which is commonly considered as one manifestation of intra-sentential language alternation, or code-mixing
Summary
The origin of the term ‘code-switching’ lies in the communication sciences, but with a different meaning (Bullock and Toribio 2009: xixii). In linguistics and bilingual studies, the terms ‘code-switching’ and ‘code-mixing’ are used to refer to the practice of alternating between two languages or two language varieties in verbal interaction This includes switching and/or mixing between languages, dialects, or even between different styles and registers within the same language (Coupland, 1984). Linguistic alternation may take place inter-sententially or intrasententially, within the same conversation, and in an unchanged setting This phenomenon may include intra-word alternation which is a linguistic change-over within a word (for example, the alternation at a morpheme boundary) and tag-switching, or the substitution of a tagword/phrase of one language with that of another, which is commonly considered as one manifestation of intra-sentential language alternation, or code-mixing
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