Toward a Re-Theorization of Code Switching

Abstract

N My intention in this contribution is to turn the critical spotlight on code switching (CS) as currently conceptualized in mainstream AL, particularly in its application to the local African context. CS is the copresence of elements from two or more languages in a stretch of discourse. It is thus a phenomenon of multiple language environments (Clyne, 1972; Gumperz, 1982; Myers-Scotton, 1993a, 1993b). Much of the work on this subject has been concerned with explaining the relationships between the cooperating languages, the processes of integration or incorporation, as well as the relationships between people as social actors. In most cases, researchers describe CS patterns resulting from the contact between former colonial languages and the indigenous languages. My position is that such engagements misrepresent if not obfuscate the fact that CS has partially evolved from and to some extent reflects the African continent's tortured political history. CS reflects ambivalence in its deployment as a pedagogical tool for reinforcing subject content in English medium instruction across Africa and in its stigmatization through sanction on school grounds. Thus, the more recent critical macrosociolinguistic approach to CS in Kamwangamalu (1998), Heller (1999), Blommaert (1999), Alvarez-C ccamo (2002), and Bhatt (2004) is a welcome development for the discipline. The earlier restricted definition of the term as a microsociolinguistic phenomenon is not broad enough to accommodate the ideological issues that shape a victims' perspective. By victims'perspective I refer to an interest in the connotative properties of CS beyond the immediate physical context of its deployment and the fact that it indexes all sorts of social, political, and historical relationships, some of which may be traumatic. An alternative take on the victims' perspective is the use of CS as a tool in the resistance project. This is a more desirable position, as far as I am concerned, for which reason I make a case for a broader definition of CS that enables us to include not only utterances from contexts of conversational interaction but also other texts, such as song lyrics (the content of which may include individual and group narratives). Such a broader definition would also mean that CS research does not have to include a former colonial language to be worthwhile; it should value switches between local languages. A broader conceptualization of code is already possible within the framework of established sociolinguistic practice. For instance, Rampton (1995) follows Auer (1990) in carrying out such an expansion of the