Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Blog #3 Codeswitching

I found it very interesting when Zentella said "Monolinguals adjust by switching phonological, grammatical, and discourse features within one linguistic code, and bilinguals alternate between the languages in their linguistic repertoire as well." I had never thought about it in that sense before, but once I did, I realized it is so true.

I can only speak English fluently so I am not familiar with being able to codeswitch with other languages but I think we all in a way do this if it is the tone of your voice or the words we are saying. Just because some of us can't switch between languages does not mean we don't codeswitch. I frequently am codeswitching at work because the words I use to communicate with my co-workers might not make sense to the customers so I have to almost translate so they can understand. For example, I will say go to the "cash wrap" when everyone else knows it as the checkout counter. I think this is a good example of codeswitching that occurs not necessarily having to do with two languages, but the words we use around certain people.

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