A socio-cognitive approach to code-switching: from the perspective of a dynamic usage-based account of language

ABSTRACT

This study addresses the social-cognitive interactions that occur in code-switching and integrates social and cognitive factors from a usage-based perspective. It investigates code-switching in two different interaction modes – speech and writing – to consider not only the influence of social factors (social networks and attitudes) but also the relative cognitive processing load. The data were gathered from 40 Chinese-English bilinguals in London, derived from interviews and written data on their most active social media site, SinaWeibo. Their socio-biographical data were collected via a questionnaire. A multivariate analysis shows that, rather than there being a simple dominance of either the social or the cognitive factors, there is an interplay between the two. A speaker’s code-switching corresponds to his/her previous exposure through social networks, but personal attitudes, e.g. a positive view of English, can override network-based predictions of use. Crucially, however, we only see attitudes exerting this significant effect within the domain of contexts with low cognitive processing demand (e.g. asynchronous writing). The findings of this study show that personal preference can indeed override language usage in interactive networks, but such effect is constrained by individual differences in cognitive capacities of processing, which in turn relates back to the frequency of usage which automatizes processing.

KEYWORDS:

• Chinese-English code-switching
• usage-based account of language
• cognition
• network
• interaction mode

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank all the subjects for their time and participation in the study and the two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and advice.The research presented in this work was supported by Chinese Scholarship council.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Hong Liu (PhD, Queen Mary University of London) is a full time lecturer of Linguistics with a specialization in sociolinguistics at Lanzhou University, China. Her research interests relate to code-switching, language attitudes and language use in contact situations.

Notes

1 It is well known that the Chinese language consists of many different dialects that may be mutually unintelligible. In many places in China, people are bilingual in standard Mandarin and their local dialect. In order to reduce complications of having effectively trilingual people (local dialect, standard Mandarin and English) who might be doing different combinations of CS, the present study has chosen speakers from the northern dialect area to avoid unnecessary variables.

2 In the wider project by Liu (2015), the self-recordings of 12 participants were collected to compare the usage of CS in the interviews and that in the group meetings where more familiar friends were present to ensure a consistency in the frequency and pattern of CS. A paired t-test was carried out to check whether the average frequency of CS of these 12 participants was significantly different between the interviews and the self-recordings. The results confirmed a lack of a significant difference (t = –1.108, p = 0.292). As a result, it is suggested that the use of CS by these participants in the interviews was not significantly different from that in their natural conversations.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by China Scholarship Council.