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CHAPTER 3
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LITERATURE REVIEW
FUNCTIONAL APPROACHES TO CODE-SWITCHING
Since Gumperz’s definition of conversational code-switching “as the
juxtaposition within the same speech exchange of passages of speech
belonging to two different grammatical systems or subsystems”, there have
been attempts at understanding the why’s and how’s of code-switching. By
now, there is a consensus that the use and meaning of code-switching is not
arbitrary but can be interpreted as interdependent “between the subjective,
the objective and the social worlds”. Going along this threefold distinction
of perspectives to the meaning of code-switching, theorists vary in terms of
the significance they contribute to the subjective, objective and social factors
as the most salient in the interpretation of code-switching.
Placing the meaning and interpretation of code-switching in the dimension
of subjective, objective, and social realities, there is also an ongoing discussion
among functional theorists about the divisive issue whether code-switching
can be assumed to index certain constructs of an already existing, ‘objective’
social reality, or whether it must not be assumed to index any social construct,
but only as a linguistic means of constructing, (re)negotiating a ‘subjective’
reality. This ongoing debate can be placed in the wider context of the
discussion of phenomenology ((re)constructivism) and essentialism ((post)
structuralism) in social sciences, that is, how much social reality can be taken
for granted, and from a linguistic perspective, how much of it is constructed
and/or indexed or categorized by language. Specifically, there is a polysemy of
how much interpretation of the instances of code-switching can rely purely on
the linguistic and conversational (‘objective’) meaning of these instances; how
4 John J. Gumperz, Discourse Strategies, Cambridge & New York, Cambridge University Press,
1982, 59
15 Agnes Bolonyai, Who was the best: Power, knowledge and rationality in bilingual girls’ code
choices, Journal of Sociolinguistics, 9 (1) (2005), 24
+19 +