Variation in attitudes towards codeswitching and codeswitching frequency among multilingual speakers

ABSTRACT

The current study replicates the research conducted in Dewaele and Li ([2014a]. “Intra- and Inter-Individual Variation in Self-Reported Code-Switching Patterns of Adult Multilinguals.” International Journal of Multilingualism 11 (2): 225–246; [2014b]. “Attitudes Towards Code-Switching among Adult Mono- and Multilingual Language Users.” Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 35 (3): 235–251) and explores variation in attitudes towards codeswitching and the frequency of its usage among 391 multilinguals from different sociocultural contexts. The findings indicate that multilingual respondents who have lived abroad or grew up in an ethnically and linguistically diverse environment tend to code-switch more frequently. On the other side, the number of spoken languages and gender as well as personality traits, such as tolerance of ambiguity, cognitive empathy, social skills and emotional reactivity are significantly linked with more positive attitudes towards codeswitching. Further in-depth analysis has shown that the respondents generally code-switch more frequently with friends and colleagues than with family members. However, some inter-speaker variation exists in this respect too and females and high-school respondents tend to code-switch more frequently with friends than males and more highly-educated respondents, while males and respondents with a higher educational level code-switch more frequently with work colleagues and family members.

KEYWORDS:

• Codeswitching
• attitudes
• frequency
• variation
• personality traits

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.