Linguists agree that bilingual communities that practice codeswitching to fully expresstheir dual identity should by no means be judged as linguistically inadequate or inferior tomonolingual communiti

Spanish/English bilingual codeswitches reflect linguistic competence and social appropriateness, and indeed bilingual speakers strategically alternate between Spanish andEnglish to influence the outcome of their conversations. No

earch findings describedabove verify that Spanish/English bilinguals codeswitch in ways that are structurally congruous with both language systems, as well as functionally congruous with social contexts

Spanish/English bilingual codeswitching is not an ad hoc mixture of two languages.Conventional linguists, psycholinguists, and sociolinguists have examined this behavior,and their findings unanimously recognize it as an indication of competence in two languages, thereby disproving earlier suspicions of language deficiency. In fac

sh. In accordance with Valdes-Fallis's findings in regardto associative responses, McClure reported that bilingual children who perceive theiraddressee to be of a higher status relative to their own social identity codeswitch in ways thatreflect the language choice of their superior: "Children at play have been observed to switchfrom Spanish to English when switching from a peer relationship to a teacher-pupil relationship" (1981, 76

se. Valdes-Fallis found that when the message is sent in eitheSpanish or English, but not both, bilingual interlocutors use the last language used by thespeaker in order to follow suit with a sequential response. On the other hand, when the message is sent as a blend of the Spanish and English code systems, the bilingual interlocutresponds symmetrically with a codeswitched response resembling that of the original speaker (1976, 70

s. In the case that one of the bilinguals was not as fluent as the other participants,researchers' data have shown that the nonfluent bilingual's native language would be selected as the appropriate linguistic code for that particular spee

In general, Zentella found that "bilingual subjects speak the best language of the addressee"(1990a, 80).

s of the setting wherethe speech act takes place, sociolinguists have found that if a Spanish or English monolingual enters the conversation the language will be switched accordingly. With regard

Spanish/English bilinguals skillfully and strategically alternate between languages to influence the outcome of their conversations. By consciously switching from one language to theother, the bilingual sends a signal to the addressee to search for additional meaning beyondthe content of the mess

It has been demonstrated that the direction of the language shift in Spanish/Englishcodeswitching may or may not influence the outcome of the conversation. Notwithstanding,because most of the Spanish/English bilingual subjects under investigation live in Hispaniccommunities, they tend to use Spanish as their intimate and personal code in order to convey a sense of intimacy and community solidarity; the English code is often reserved formore objective and impersonal communicative exchanges associated with the external community. (

Lipski's findings reveal a context in which the direction of the language shift mayprovide the Spanish/English bilingual with more persuasive power: "In the United StatesHispanic communities it is usually a shift from English to Spanish which conveys the subtle insinuation of favors, since Spanish is felt to be 'closer to the heart' " (1985, 13).

In addition, bilingual speakers often use codeswitching as a controlling device to makedirect and indirect requests. Most of these switches attempt to persuade the addressee bymaking suggestions; however, others seek to control the interlocutor by means of commands.

strategy of changing topics is often utilizedby monolingual speakers as well; however, bilingual speakers have an advantage by beingable to magnify a shift in topic by employing a simultaneous shift in language.

For example, a bilingual speaker may be informally discussing the weather in Spanish with a client and then codeswitch to English inorder to signal a desire to discuss the terms of a contract. On the other hand, a topic shiftmay also represent a bilingual speaker's attempt to evade a particular topic.

In addition to codeswitching to indicate a shift in discourse modes, bilingual speakers alternate between languages to change the topic of the conversation. A given

arious researchers have demonstrated that bilingual codeswitching can be used as a strategy to indicate a shift in discourse modes, e.g., from narration to comment or from assertionto question.

heswitch to English or Spanish may not alter the content of the message, but it may emphasizethe message by changing the tone of the conversation. Lips

ilingual speakers emphasize or contrast a given message by shifting codes to changethe tone of the conversation.

There are four strategies that Spanish/English bilinguals have recourse to in order toconvey additional stylistic meaning and achieve personal communicative intentions: (1)emphasis or contrast, (2) mode or topic shift, (3) controlling the addressee, and (4) personalization or objectivization

Bilingual codeswitches are not always triggered by unconscious factors; on the contrary,bilingual speakers also make conscious choices to alternate between languages in order toinfluence the outcome of their conversations with others

Kolers's Information-Processing Model has demonstrated that the bilingual memorycan also be described as having two distinct yet overlapping components to help bilingualsreconcile their two symbol systems in a systematic way.

Agar describes this duality that characterizes a bilingual speaker's personality and speech behavior: "Often bilingual speakers havesplit minds; all the particularities which language conveys ... are embodied in the bilingualtwice; he is neither here nor there; he is a marginal man" (1991, 172)

is providesfurther evidence to indicate that many bilingual codeswitches may be unconsciously triggered by internal mechanism

uerta maintains that bilinguals tend to switch to English to refer to items relating to thebusiness world and modern technology because they most likely learned such vocabularyoutside the home from speakers of English or books written in English

onsequently, bilinguals'codeswitches to these language-specific items are unconsciously triggered, and bilingualsare often unaware of their alternation between languages.

Psycholinguists have demonstrated that lexical items will be more available to bilingualspeakers in language A than in language B if they are exposed to these verbal symbols ata higher frequency rate in language A

ipski maintains that sufficient evidence hasbeen found "to indicate that the bilingual speaker knew the appropriate words in both languages and simply produced the one that was closest to the tip of the tongue" (1980, 36)

Kolers's bilingual subjects' performance data revealed that wordsreferring to concrete objects that are common to most people and cultures are more likelyto elicit similar responses in both of the bilinguals' languages. This piece of evidence supports the common story tank hypotheses. On the other hand, abstract words and wordsrelated to speakers' emotions were more closely bound to the language by which they werestored or experienced. This finding provides supporting evidence for the separate storagetank hypothesis

ot unlike conventional linguists, who found that bilinguals neither possess two totallyseparate grammars nor two completely merged grammars, Kolers's results indicate that abilingual speaker combines parts of both hypotheses. He t

e used a metaphor to help clarify this issue of storing verbal symbols in the mind. In thecase of the interdependent memory hypothesis, Kolers regarded the mind as one central storage tank, with the two languages acting as different taps in order to produce language chunksin two separate codes. In the case of the independent memory hypothesis, Kolers suggests thatbilinguals would store language-specific lexicons in two separate tank

hes). Sankoff and Poplack concluded that nonfluent bguals are less skilled codeswitchers, and therefore they try to avoid switch points that ar"risky." Switching from language to language is easier for them between sentences becausit "allows them to participate in the codeswitching mode without the fear of violatigrammatical rule of either of the languages involved" (1981

seemingly straightforward way to determine the psychological motivations for a particular switch would be to ask bilingual speakers directly to describe their intrinsicmotivation for alternating between languages immediately following a given switch.

nce bilingual codeswitches have been structurally analyzed by directly observable "out ofthe mouth" speech data, the psycholinguist must go one step back in order to determine thepsychological factors that triggered the switches in the first place. Given that "in th

For example, Fina has reported cases in which the structural conflict between languages isdisregarded by fluent speakers in order to create conversational effects. She states that "thisconflict may lead to completely ungrammatical sentences ... because considerations of conversational effectiveness may be stronger than fear of structural conflict" (1989, 119-20

nglish. She explains that switchingavoided in negative constructions because "English requires the dummy morpheme do or amodal auxiliary or negative support, whereas Spanish negates by inserting the negative particle immediately before the verb" (1981, 17

Despite these potential structural conflicts, Sridhar and Sridhar found that when adjective switches occur they obey both of these language-specific constraints. This finding iscongruent with Poplack's data: less than 1 percent of the adjectival switches producedbilinguals violated the adjective placement rules of Spanish and

These results, which demonstrate that fluent bilinguals are more skilled codeswitcherthan nonfluent bilinguals, provide further evidence in favor of the assertion that codeswiting is an indicator of bilingual ability, rather than a deficiency in either of the languageinvolve

The quantitative analysis of their switches revealed that both fluent and nonfluent biguals were able to codeswitch frequently and still maintain grammaticality in both Englisand Spani

Like Woolford, Sankoll and Poplack found that codeswitching, rather than being a resultimperfect competence in either of the two monolingual language systems, represented anintegrated knowledge of the rules of both languages, including their similarities and diffence

oolford explains that the bilingual speaker can switch back and forth betweenmars while freely drawing phrase structure rules from eithe

any way. She believes that the bilingualer's two monolingual grammars must be structurally compatible in order for codeswitto occu

The question that immediately arises in the consideration of this proposed cooperativeanism, which maintains the integrity of both grammars, is how such sentencesgenerated by drawing from two separate grammars at the

Bilinguals possess a verbal mode that allows them to codeswitch without interruptingtheir speech flow while drawing on rules from two separate gram

his debate over whether discourse containing codeswitches is generated by the alternate useof the two monolingual grammars or whether a single codeswitching grammar exists, whichcombines elements of the monolingual grammars, has been abandoned to emphasize thecooperative and integrative elements existing between the two gram

onolinguals usually have a negative attitude toward codeswitching behavior and oftenassign pejorative names such as "Tex-Mex" or "Spanglish" to this speech pheno

Bilingual codeswitching requires a switching competence, which accordindenotes "a formidable syntactic knowledge by switching at points that maintainmatical integrity of both languages at the same tim

inguals assert that this alternation between their two languagesallows them to convey their message more precisely, more naturally, and more personally.

ilingual speakers have twice as many options to choose from as monolingual speakers whenexpressing their thoughts and ideas because their language repertoire is twofold; not only canbilinguals choose from a variety of styles of speech within the same language, but also theycan switch from one language, or code, system to the other. A

Finally, applied research (e.g., Altarriba & Santiago-Rivera, 1994) hasrevealed that code switching is oftenused strategically in counseling settings, as clients choose to speak in asecond language when trying to distance themselves from emotionalevents. Because the first language isoften associated with a broaderrange of emotions than the secondlanguage, language switching becomes a defense mechanism

Bilinguals switch languageswhenever a word in a base languageis not currently accessible. A

n implication ofthis interpretation is that duringearly stages of bilingualism, whenbilinguals tend to rely more ontheir first language, their codeswitching would mostly involveintrusions from their first languageas they communicate in their second language. However, as the second language becomes the dominant language, their code switchingwould tend to consist of intrusionsfrom the second language as theycommunicate in their first language.

n other words, thesecond language becomes morereadily accessible than the first language, and the bilingual comes torely more on it. O

mmunicate in their firstlanguage. This would be becauseof their limited knowledge of theirsecond language. Although thismay be the case for beginning bilinguals, Spanish-English bilinguals in south Texas report moreEnglish interference when theycommunicate in Spanish, and littleor no interference from Spanishwhen they communicate in English. In other words, these bilinguals code-switch more when theycommunicate in Spanish thanwhen they use English

As a consequence,the first language is always accessed faster, and is always the primary language

hen the participants read the sentences aloud, they were slower toread the mixed-language passagesthan the monolingual ones (Kolers,1966)

A general finding in the bilingual literature is that sentencescontaining code-switched wordstake longer to read and comprehend than monolingual sentences.

One of the most frequent explanations of why bilinguals code-switchis that they do it to compensate forlack of language proficiency. The argument is that bilinguals codeswitch because they do not knoweither language completel

odeswitching, or language mixing, occurs when a word or a phrase inone language substitutes for aword or phrase in a second language (Li, 1996).

Bilingual speakers oftencode-switch from one language to another, especiallywhen both languages are usedin the environment.

nguals assert that this alternation between their two languagesallows them to convey their message more precisely, more naturally, and more personally