Literary Code-switching Research Articles

Code-Switching and Polylingual Reality: An Aesthetics of Translation in Nancy Huston’s Trois fois septembre and Danse noire

ABSTRACT If literary code-switching allows authors to play out the plurality of linguistic reality, and crucially the articulation of selfhood and difference in textual representations of polylingual reality, the work of Nancy Huston provides a fruitful space for discussion. Polylingual reality is portrayed in the author’s heterolingual novels in which different languages are represented on the levels of both the story and the text. Huston’s novel Danse noire is a somewhat experimental text in which readers are confronted with linguistic representational hybridity. In contrast to this experiment, Huston’s novel Trois fois septembre, which sees the character Solange translate letters in English to her French-speaking mother, only gives readers access to the French translation by the character, even though there are metacommentaries on the translation process by both characters. This article will work through those features that allow Huston to portray the dynamic use of language at the level of the story and its characters.

Unpacking Language Hybridity: Functions of Code-Switching in Diasporic Arab Texts

This research intends to shed light on the functions of literary code-switching in diasporic Arab texts with a focus on De Niro’s game (2006) by Rawi Hage and Salt Houses (2017) by Hala Alyan. The aim was to provide an insightful analysis of the functions of literary code-switching. Accordingly, a combination of Callahan's (2004) and Montes-Alcalá's (2012) models was adopted for the sake of the analysis. The combination of both models resulted in a total of ten categories of functions of literary code-switching. The findings of this paper revealed that literary code-switching in Arab diasporic fiction achieved all the ten proposed functions with varying degrees of frequency. Further, the results of this research demonstrated that literary code-switching is not a random or unsystematic practice. Rather, it is seen as a valid literary device exploited by diasporic writers to achieve certain literary functions and stylistic effects.

Code-switching as a Conversational Lubricant in the Literature Classrooms: An Explanatory Study Based on the Opine of Fijian High School ESL Teachers

Code-switching in multicultural and multilingual classrooms is a highly acceptable phenomenon that has a repertoire of attributions in a country like Fiji, where English is taught as a compulsory second language (ESL). Naturally, the knowledge of literary code-switching can be considered distinguishable from general code-switching because it is used as a writing tool by the authors of literary texts. As the worldwide changes in teaching ESL methodologies, techniques and strategies concomitants with English Language Teaching (ELT), code-switching is equally considered as the part of a teaching tool that ought to posit effective learning. Presently, this study seeks to discuss the metadiscourse analysis of code-switching by teachers of English literature in the Fijian high school ESL classrooms. The paper intends to give a broader spectrum to the explicit purposes behind teachers' code-switching and their attitudes. This research has adopted one instrument for data collection due to the current pandemic, and it was through an online structured research questionnaire. In totality, twenty-five high school ESL teachers were used as samples from selected high schools between Nadi to Ba corridor. It is envisaged that findings should complement the reasons for code-switching, such as during simple classroom communication in literature classes, elucidating abstract contents, interpreting and introducing unversed terminologies. The research has applied the rudiments of the mixed-method research approach for authentic data collection and analysis of the study.

Codes across languages: On the translation of literary code-switching

Abstract The translation of bilingual literary texts may challenge a translator when s/he needs to transfer some embedded, foreign codes from a language other than the dominant language of the source text (ST) into the target text (TT). This study analyses the way in which code-switching (CS) is transferred into a TT, looking at the translation strategies for CS in a non-European ST into European and non-European target texts. The source language text is Hebrew with Arabic incorporated into the Hebrew text in different ways, most often using CS. The target texts in the study are in Arabic, English, German and Italian languages. The main aim of this study is to show how code-switching in literary paradigms can be translated into a target text language, and to what extent the original structure of instances of CS is maintained, changed or even deleted in the target texts. The study compares four versions of target texts in Arabic, English, Italian and German, followed by an overview of how the same CS instances are transferred across different languages and cultures. Some problems and issues related to the transfer of instances of CS into the target texts are discussed in view of the typology of the CS strategy. The study concludes with an argument that a better understanding of literary CS terminology regarding both linguistic and creative features is necessary for a better translation of bilingual literary texts.

Return from Exile: Diglossia and Literary Code-Switching in Ezra 1–7

Zusammenfassung: Bisherige rhetorische Analysen des Sprachwechsels im Buch Esra wurden durch ihre Fokussierung auf die Zweisprachigkeit beschränkt. Diese Studie wird einen neuen Ansatz für die Poetik von Esr 1–7 angesichts der neueren soziolinguistischen Forschungen über Diglossie und Sprachideologie vorschlagen. Der Schriftsteller von Esra hat literarisches Codeswitching benutzt, um kontrastierende Sprachvarietäten, die besondere ideologische Haltungen vorgeschlagen haben, nebeneinander zu stellen. Durch den Wechsel zwischen Hebräisch, Reichsaramäisch und einer aramäischen Landessprache hat der Schriftsteller eine literarische Reflexion der Diglossie, die das achämenidische Juda charakterisiert hat, erstellt. Er hat sein Codeswitching geordnet, um den Übergang der Judäer von einer Diasporagemeinde in eine stabilisierte Minderheit und die ideologischen Gespräche, die mit diesem Übergang einhergegangen sind, zu spiegeln. Dabei hat er sprachliche Bezugspunkte für das Publikum gestellt, um sich in diesen Gesprächen zu projizieren. Das Codeswitching des Schriftstellers spiegelt also die Rückkehr des Judäers aus dem Exil und lädt das Publikum ein, ihr neues symbolisches Vaterland zu akzeptieren.

Codes across languages: On the translation of literary code-switching

Codes across languages: On the translation of literary code-switching

Multilingualism in literature: A socio-pragmatic reading of Leila Aboulela’s The Translator (1999) and Ahdaf Soueif’s The Map of Love (1999)

Abstract The turn of the twenty-first century has witnessed a growing preoccupation with multilingual texts across the world. Literary code-switching is becoming significantly valuable as it allows readers access to the trans-lingual and transcultural experiences of bilinguals in monolingual majority societies. More importantly, as the recent surge in the body of contact literature in general, and Anglo-Arab fiction in particular, has witnessed a major shift in its purpose, in this paper I argue that it is high time researchers made a similar shift in scholarly investigations of literary code-switching. The new texts are becoming less concerned with contesting the colonizer. Instead, contact literature is becoming increasingly focused on cross-cultural negotiations. Therefore, I attempt to explore the purposes of code-switching in Ahdaf Soueif’s The Map of Love (1999) and Leila Aboulela’s The Translator (2005), while re-evaluating its assumed direct link to asserting the author’s primary identity – a purpose that has been the focus of scholarly work tackling literary code-switching for decades. Two other main purposes are highlighted in this paper, namely: (i) changing attitudes towards multilingualism; and (ii) adding authenticity to the experiences delineated in a foreign language.

Subversive Boundary Drawing in Jonah: The Variation of אשׁר and שׁ as Literary Code-Switching

This study presents literary code-switching as the best explanation for the variation of אשׁר and שׁ in the book of Jonah. The use of Hebrew אשׁר and a Phoenician-based שׁ in the world of the narrative is used both to create and destroy identity boundaries. The switch between אשׁר and שׁ is the central linguistic strategy supporting the subversion of the intended audience’s natural reading sympathy (initially with Jonah) and theology (an ethnically exclusive Yahwism). Jonah’s use of שׁ represents a linguistic flight from his Hebrew identity, while the sailors’s and Ninevite king’s use of אשׁר represents their recognition of Yhwh as a god worthy of devotion. And Yhwh’s use of both אשׁר and שׁ signals the author’s view that Yhwh does not exclusively belong to (or care for) the Hebrew people.

Arabic Codes in Hebrew Texts: On the Typology of Literary Code-switching

In the late 1950s, Iraqi Jews were either forced or chose to leave Iraq for Israel. Most Iraqi Jewish authors found it impossible to continue writing in Arabic in Israel and so faced the literary challenge of switching to Hebrew. As bilinguals, Iraqi Jewish novelists have employed Arabic in some of their Hebrew literary works, including strategies of code-switching. Conversational code-switching is traditionally divided into three types: intersentential code-switching, intrasentential code-switching, and tag-switching. Although code-switching in literary texts has its distinct features, research on written code-switching generally follows the typology applied to conversational code-switching. This article focuses on the typology of code-switching in literary texts. It investigates Arabic codes used in three Hebrew novels written by Iraqi Jewish novelists. The article suggests three main types of literary code-switching in view of the mutual relationship between author, text, and reader: Hard-Access, Easy-Access, and Ambiguous Access code-switching.

Code-switching in Italo-Brazilian literature from Rio Grande do Sul and São Paulo: A sociolinguistic analysis of the forms and functions of literary code-switching

Italo-Brazilian prose texts from São Paulo and Rio Grande do Sul, written from the 1920s until today, either in Brazilian Portuguese with Italian code-switches, or in the Venetian koiné spoken by the Italian immigrants in Rio Grande do Sul, sometimes switching to Portuguese, are an early, but so far largely neglected example of literary code-switching representing the multilingual immigrants’ communities. In a sociolinguistic analysis of these texts I will argue that the conversational functions of literary code-switching, especially in reported speech, are comparable to those found in spontaneous utterances, if considered in a continuum between conceptually oral and conceptually written language ( Koch and Oesterreicher, 1985 ). On the micro-level the stylistic function of code-switching plays a more prominent role in literature than in other genres, but on the macro level this kind of code-switching can also be regarded as a response to bilingual identity. In this respect, literary code-switching is used as an approximation strategy between the two closely related contact languages that gives the minority language prestige and thus contributes to its preservation.

Code-switching in US Latino literature: The role of biculturalism

While mixing languages in natural speech production has often been inaccurately ascribed to illiteracy or lack of linguistic competence, doing so in writing is a long-standing practice in bilingual literature. This practice may fulfill stylistic or aesthetic purposes, be a source of credibility and/or communicate biculturalism, humor, criticism, and ethnicity, among other functions. Here, I analyze a selection of contemporary Spanish–English bilingual literature (poetry, drama, and fiction) written by Mexican American, Nuyorican, and Cuban American authors focusing on the types, and significance, of code-switching (CS) in their works. The aim of the study is to determine to what extent the socio-pragmatic functions that have been attested in natural bilingual discourse are present in literary CS, whether it is mimetic rather than rhetorical, and what differences exist both across literary genres and among the three US Latino groups. I also emphasize the cultural aspect of CS, a crucial element that has often been overlooked in the search for grammatical constraints.

Mind the gap: What code-switching in literature can teach us about code-switching

This article argues that contrary to sociolinguistic practice which emphasizes spontaneous speech as the main or only source of evidence, the study of literary code-switching (CS) can be relevant to an understanding of CS in general. CS is first distinguished from other forms of literary multilingualism and from borrowing. We then consider how CS fits in with the mimetic function in literary dialogue, and how its functions can be compared with those of natural speech. We will see that literary CS can provide a wealth of sociolinguistically relevant information on speech modes found in various communities, and is particularly apt to portray postcolonial tensions. More stylized CS in poetry and drama can also embody complex multicultural identities and patterns of language choice, even in the absence of strict verisimilitude.

Code-switching in early English literature

Code-switching has been a frequent feature of literary texts from the beginning of English literary tradition to the present time. The medieval period, in particular, with its complex multilingual situation, has provided a fruitful background for multilingual texts, and will be the focus of the present article. After looking at the linguistic background of the period and some specifics of medieval literature and of historical code-switching, the article discusses the main functions of code-switching in medieval poetry and drama, especially in regard to the different but changing status of the three main languages of literacy: Latin, French and English. This functional-pragmatic approach is complemented by a section on syntactic aspects of medieval literary code-switching, which also contains a brief comparison with modern spoken code-switching and shows some important similarities and differences between the two sets of data.

Literary Code-Switching in Contemporary Swahili Popular Fiction in Tanzania

Literary Code-Switching in Contemporary Swahili Popular Fiction in Tanzania

“‘Ruottiksi’, translated Paul Muotka patiently. ‘Kiitos.’” Mikael Niemi, Meänkieli and Readers Inside and Outside Tornedalen

The present study in the research field of literary multilingualism and literary codeswitching is based on Mikael Niemi's novel Mannen som dog som en lax (2006) [The man who died like a salmon]. The novel is set mainly in Tornedalen, a widely bilingual area in Sweden where many people speak both Swedish and Meänkieli, a national minority language in Sweden since 2000. All instances of codeswitching in the material studied were identified and an analysis, based on Eriksson and Haapamäki's model designed to analyse literary multilingualism and literary codeswitching, was performed. The model consists of three main components: (1) the communicative context of the analysed work; (2) the form of codeswitching in the analysed work; and (3) the possible literary functions of codeswitching in the analysed work. The sender, Mikael Niemi, does not consider himself bilingual and most intended receivers are not bilingual either, even though linguistic conditions are central to the theme of the novel. Swedish is the base language of the novel, while elements of Meänkieli/Finnish, varieties of Swedish, and other languages represent a small fraction of the entire text. Implicit literary codeswitching predominates in the material in the form of metalinguistic comments and contextualization cues. By far the most common type of explicit literary codeswitching is between Swedish and Meänkieli/Finnish. The novel contains examples of literary codeswitching used in attempts to reproduce authentic usage and depict an authentic linguistic setting. In other examples, Tornedalen, Tornedalians and Meänkieli/Finnish are depicted as exotic phenomena compared with the majority society. Likewise, there are examples of how certain passages in the novel may include or exclude readers, depending on their understanding of Meänkieli/Finnish. Certain elements of Meänkieli can be interpreted as expressions of linguistic emancipation and the liberation of identity that empowers speakers of Meänkieli and the community of these speakers.

Code switching in Ahdaf Soueif's The Map of Love

This article examines the phenomenon of code switching in The Map of Love (1999) by the Egyptian—British writer Ahdaf Soueif. Though she chooses English as a medium for her creative expression, Soueif deploys Arabic in her narrative to represent different aspects of the linguistic and cultural norms of Egyptian society. The article's methodology is informed by Kachru's framework on contact literature and his categorization of the occurrence of literary code switching or bilingual creativity into different strategies that encompass cultural and linguistic processes. The results indicate the predominance in The Map of Love of the discourse strategies of employing lexical borrowing, culture-bound references and translational transfer. Finally, the article analyzes the functional motivation of code switching in the postcolonial context of the novel and how the use of certain creative strategies might enhance or diminish the narrative's effectiveness and readability.

Intentionality and the markedness model in literary codeswitching

Myers-Scotton's Markedness model (1983, inter alia) and face-action theory (Brown and Levinson, 1987) provide the theoretical framework for examining the motivations for codeswitching (CS) by low-status individuals in their interactions with high-status individuals from outside their social group. The data are taken from dialogue in three dramatic works by Luis Valdéz. This paper shows that low-status individuals with few opportunites for upward mobility use marked CS as a face-threatening strategy. In their interactions with powerful members of a dominant social group, these individuals resort to CS as a way to express their interactional power and seize control of the interaction. Marked choices may serve an additional function: In symmetrical relationships, a marked choice may act as the means to defuse a potentially threatening situation. In addition, the analysis suggests that speakers project their intentions through ostensive communicative acts, and listeners infer speakers' intentions as part of their communicative competence. The data show that a spekaer's intentions are made manifest not necessarily by the referential meaning of an utterance, but by the code the speaker selects. The intention is derived from the extent to which it deviates from the established unmarked setting for the interaction.

Multilingualism and Ranges of Tone in Nabokov's Bend Sinister

”… ‘Oh, I love her hands, Van, because they have the same rodinka (small birthmark), because the fingers are so long, because, in fact, they are Van's in a reducing mirror, in tender diminutive, v laskatel'noy forme’ (the talk—as so often happened at emotional moments in the Veen-Zemski branch of that strange family, the noblest in Estotiland, the grandest on Antiterra—was speckled with Russian, an effect not too consistently reproduced in this chapter—the readers are restless tonight).“—AdaThe interpolation of other-language material into the primary language of discourse is a well-known phenomenon in the speech of bi- and multilinguals. Social scientists studying bilingualism have termed this practice “code-switching.” In literature, code-switching is potentially available to any writer who commands another language besides his own and is not restricted from its use by literary canon. Practitioners of code-switching in the West include Petronius and Cicero, medieval translators, Rabelais and Montaigne, Sterne, Tolstoy, Pound, Eliot, Joyce, e. e. cummings, Hemingway, and Anthony Burgess. The motives for literary code-switching are many—terminological precision, connotative nuance, citation and allusion, display of erudition, an illusion of verisimilitude, irony, and word play.