Author ORCID Identifier
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4434-6700
Document Type
Paper Presentation
Presenter Language
English
Research Area
Bilingualism and multilingualism; contact linguistics; language contact; pragmatics and discourse analysis; sociolinguistics
Location
MBSC Dodge Room 302
Start Date
18-10-2024 9:30 AM
End Date
18-10-2024 10:00 AM
Abstract
Gumperz (1982) proposed that, in stratified societies, bilinguals may perceive their primary language as familiar and authentic (in-group) and the common language as foreign (out-group), encompassing how “speakers can shift their own perspective from experience-near to experience-distant” (Woolard, 2006: 77), and how those perceptions of proximity and distance are interrelated with particular languages. Despite the vast research on language mixing within the Hispanic world, little attention has been paid to the Catalan context in the field of code-switching (Casalmiglia and Tusón 1984; Millán 2020; Pérez-Sabater 2022). No studies to date discuss the implications of code-switching into Spanish within Catalan interactions in the bilingual region of Valencia.
I show how bilingual Catalan-Spanish speakers with a predominant use of the former switch to Spanish to represent others – in particular, people with higher social status. I use the publicly available spoken corpora Parlars (informal conversations amongst family and friends) and Museu de la Paraula (interviews to people born before 1940). A total of 15 interactions, 9 conversations and 6 interviews, amounting to 576 minutes, are analyzed. I have used the software MAXQDA24 to transcribe and tag the occurrences of code-switching, including single words and fully-fledged sentences, and I have classified those instances into four different categories: proverbs, cultural references (movies, TV shows), well-stablished loans and borrowings, and out-group representation.
Here, I focus on those accounts of code-switching when speakers momentarily switch to Spanish to represent others. They emulate, project, or imitate people who, despite growing up speaking Catalan, choose to speak Spanish to correspond to their newly acquired socio-economic status or, sometimes, to perform it. Spanish becomes a symbol for higher social statutes, while Catalan is a symbol for lower classes. In interaction, code-switching is a discursive tool to channel certain ideological stances on the languages, becoming a marked choice to represent the others more authentically, while distancing oneself from the language and the group that it comes to symbolize.
(i) Example from Parlars
mira ara ho has dit els de diners pos claro a hablar en castellano
“now that you have said it the rich ones of course off to speak Spanish
Spanish in Catalan interactions: code-switching as an ideological-discursive strategy to represent others
MBSC Dodge Room 302
Gumperz (1982) proposed that, in stratified societies, bilinguals may perceive their primary language as familiar and authentic (in-group) and the common language as foreign (out-group), encompassing how “speakers can shift their own perspective from experience-near to experience-distant” (Woolard, 2006: 77), and how those perceptions of proximity and distance are interrelated with particular languages. Despite the vast research on language mixing within the Hispanic world, little attention has been paid to the Catalan context in the field of code-switching (Casalmiglia and Tusón 1984; Millán 2020; Pérez-Sabater 2022). No studies to date discuss the implications of code-switching into Spanish within Catalan interactions in the bilingual region of Valencia.
I show how bilingual Catalan-Spanish speakers with a predominant use of the former switch to Spanish to represent others – in particular, people with higher social status. I use the publicly available spoken corpora Parlars (informal conversations amongst family and friends) and Museu de la Paraula (interviews to people born before 1940). A total of 15 interactions, 9 conversations and 6 interviews, amounting to 576 minutes, are analyzed. I have used the software MAXQDA24 to transcribe and tag the occurrences of code-switching, including single words and fully-fledged sentences, and I have classified those instances into four different categories: proverbs, cultural references (movies, TV shows), well-stablished loans and borrowings, and out-group representation.
Here, I focus on those accounts of code-switching when speakers momentarily switch to Spanish to represent others. They emulate, project, or imitate people who, despite growing up speaking Catalan, choose to speak Spanish to correspond to their newly acquired socio-economic status or, sometimes, to perform it. Spanish becomes a symbol for higher social statutes, while Catalan is a symbol for lower classes. In interaction, code-switching is a discursive tool to channel certain ideological stances on the languages, becoming a marked choice to represent the others more authentically, while distancing oneself from the language and the group that it comes to symbolize.
(i) Example from Parlars
mira ara ho has dit els de diners pos claro a hablar en castellano
“now that you have said it the rich ones of course off to speak Spanish