Language Contact and Code-Switching/Mixing

Language Contact and Code-Switching/Mixing

What is language contact?

CONTACT, a term used in sociolinguistics to refer to a

situation of geographical continuity or close social proximity (and thus

of mutual influence) between languages or dialects. 

The result of contact situations can be seen linguistically, in the growth of loan

words, patterns of phonological and grammatical change, mixed forms of language (such as creoles and pidgins), and a general increase in bilingualism of various kinds. In a restricted sense, languages are said to be ‘in contact’ if they are used alternately by the same persons, i.e. bilinguals.

 Considering the bulk of literature produced on language contact issues in the last decades, one cannot but be surprised that definitions of language contact are scarce. While some definitions are rather simplistic, others are more specific as regards the elements involved. 

The definition quoted above has, in my view, two advantages. On the one hand, it is explicit about the different meanings of the term ‘contact’. On the other, it incorporates several elements of relevance such as geographical continuity, social proximity, alternating use, bilingualism and bilingual speakers. I do not intend here to provide my own definition of language contact but discuss the main elements any good definition should include by linking such elements to the specific contact situations .     

Any definition of language contact includes three basic elements, namely: two or more languages, the speakers of these languages, and a socio-cultural setting in which contact takes place. Of course, this is a simplification of facts since every contact situation is different, depending on a large number of variables going from the strictly linguistic to the social.

Contact involves two or more languages or dialects of one language. In the latter case we speak rather of dialect contact. In the Ecuadorian Highlands, for example, an intensive contact exists between speakers of urban and rural dialects of Spanish, and between the Mestizo speakers of these dialects and the Indian speakers of Spanish. 

Their contact led to a dialect continuum stretching from standard urban varieties of Spanish to interlanguage varieties of second-language Spanish spoken by Quichua native speakers in the cities, where they migrate seasonally for work.

The same continuum is reported for dialects of Quichua, faced. On the one side are the speech communities; on the other, the individual speakers. A tendency prevails in language contact studies which focuses on languages (a systemic approach) and speech communities (a social approach). Individual speakers are generally set aside from the discussion, thereby obscuring the fact that speakers are the real agents of language contact. Considering both speech communities and individual speakers enables a more comprehensive interpretation of socio-linguistic factors such speaker’s perceptions and attitudes towards language contact and its outcomes. Moreover, an speaker approach opens a largely unexplored field in contact linguistics: the psycho-linguistic processes at work when two or more languages or dialects are in contact. address the individual dimensions of bilingualism in the analysis of borrowing.

The socio-cultural setting is the third element of language contact. Sociocultura To state that language contact is as old as language itself may sound as an exaggeration to the ears of those who consider languages self-contained entities developing on their own, but it is less so if we think for a moment that it is not languages per se that are in contact, but speakers. In these terms, language contact is expected every time two or more groups of speakers meet, and thus language contact implies as much motion of people as transfer of languages. 

To what extent the borrowing of lexicon and grammar is rule-governed in language contact and reflects the internal organization of the languages involved, and to what extent social and cultural factor  play a role in such process are the main questions I attempt to answer.

Most Indians living in a multi-lingual setting use more than one language. If educated, they use English as well as their mother tongue (the regional language in most cases). If living in areas where Hindi is a lingua franca, most of them use Hindi in addition to their mother tongue. Indians in a multi-lingual setting often switch from one language to another.

The switching occurs not only at a passage/sentence level (code-switching) but also at a phrase/word level (codemixing). The switching and the mixing seem to be done in order to make communication smoother between the speakers or to make a conversation more effective. Indians seem to do the switching and the mixing consciously at sometimes and unconsciously at other times. The reason why many Indians often change, switch and mix one language to/with another is that India is a multi-lingual nation and more than one language is complementarily used particularly in the urban areas where people from different places get together. Therefore, one language is not at all enough for urban Indians’ communication. Even when talking with one person about one topic, many Indians prefer changing one language to another. It seems that they speak more than one language so that they feel the conversation more comfortable and effective.