Same same but different: Code-Switching in Schweizer SMS – ein Vergleich zwischen vier Sprachen

Abstract

This study examines the formal and functional aspects of code-switching (CS) in a Swiss corpus of 26'000 text messages (SMS). Four corpora (Swiss-German, French, Italian and Romansh) are compared with regard to the absolute number of CS, the languages used for CS, the grammatical properties of the CS elements and their potential functions. The aim is to find out: a) which patterns are representative of one or more individual lan-guages and b) which patterns are characteristic for SMS-communication in general and/or are valid for Switzerland as a whole. With regard to the differences in the number of CS and the languages used, the respective patterns seem to mirror the different lan-guage contact situations in Switzerland. As for the described CS-types, the corpora under scrutiny seem to share the extensive use of one-token alternations (isolated items) that carry out framing functions and may point out a shared type of minimal multilingual practice.

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