Sociolinguistic and Linguistic Foundations of Codeswitching Research

Abstract

This chapter seeks to provide a concise overview of sociolinguistic and linguistic research on codeswitching as a resource to pedagogically focused theories of language mixing and their relationship to teaching and learning. Codeswitching emerged as a field of research in the middle of the last century, driven by broader academic interest in bilingualism, the emergence of the new field of sociolinguistics, and a social and political climate concerned with the nature of the language of disadvantaged groups. Research on codeswitching as language use focuses on how codeswitching functions within the domains, and contrasts with the study of codeswitching as language structure, which focuses on the underlying grammatical structure of language mixing. Codeswitching research has had a long and important history in sociolinguistics, linguistics, and education. Sociolinguists have studied the discourse, social motivation, and conversational contributions of codeswitching, detailing the ways in which bilinguals use language switching to achieve specific conversational effects and perform their linguistic identities.

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