Kinds of Code Switching

Crystal (1987) suggests that code switching occurs when individual who is bilingualism alternates between two languages during his/her speech with another bilingual person.


There are kinds of code switching as suggested by some sociolinguists:

Blom and Gumperz (1972):

Situational Code Switching

• It occurs when the language change according to the situational in which the conversations find themselves; It can be found in the use of speech level in languages which have speeches levels. Each of the levels has its social function and is used in certain interlocutors. For instance, a young speaker will use the upper (very formal) level of the language to and older listener in kind of situation; and he will use the lower (intimate) level to communicate of the person with same age.

Metaphorical Code Switching

• It has an affective dimension to it: the choice of code carries symbolic meaning, that is, the language fits the message. This is illustrated in a quote attributed to Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor, which indicates attitudes about certain languages being holy, the language of love or male solidarity, or crude or bestial: ‘I speak Spanish to God, Italian to women, French to men, and German to my horse.’

Hoffman (1991):

Tag switching (Emblematic)

• With tag switching, it is the insertion of a tag phrase from one language into an utterance from another language which constitutes a switch, and given the tags are monolingual utterance without syntactic rules, for example: An adult Spanish-American English speaker: “„. . . Oh! Ay! It was embarrassing! It was very nice, though, but I was embarrassed"

Inter-sentential switching (between sentences)

• It occurs outside the sentence or the clause level, and often takes place according to turns taken by speakers in a conversation, example an adult Spanish-English bilingual says: “Tenia zapatos blancos, un poco, they were off-white, you know”

Intra-sentential switching 

• It concerns language alternation that occurs within a sentence or a clause boundary. Sometimes it includes mixing within word boundaries. The switch that occurs within a sentence. It is often occurred when someone uses one language and suddenly switches into another language in a sentence, for example: a French-English bilingual says: “Va chercer Marc (go and fetch March) and bribe him avec un chocolat chaud (with a hot chocolate) with cream on top” 

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Negative Politeness Strategies (Brown and Levinson)

Another kind of politeness strategies is negative politeness. This strategy used when S wants to show that he cares and respect H’s Negative Face. If S did or will do an FTA, he will minimize the threat by using apology, deference, hedges and other strategies. Negative Politeness strategies consist in assurances that the speaker recognizes and respects the addressee’s negative-Face wants and will not (or will only minimally) interfere with the addressee Freedom of Action.

This strategy assumes that there might be some social distance or awkwardness between speaker and hearer and it is likely to be used whenever a speaker wants to put a social brake on his interaction (Brown and Levinson, 1987: 129).

Moreover, they (p. 129) introduce some strategies that included in negative politeness, they are:

1. Be direct
In the formal situation, sometimes the directness is needed to minimize the imposition by saying the point and avoiding the further imposition of prolixity and ambiguity as mentioned by Lakoff (in Goody, 1996). Fortunately, this strategy is rarely used in negative politeness because it is more relevant to be used in bald on-record strategy. For example, “Help me to pick up these boxes!”
In this strategy, S chooses to come rapidly to the point directly when she or he wants something. She does not care about maintaining face of the H but still respects and assure not to disturb the freedom of action of H.

2. Don’t assume about H’s wants
This type tries to avoid assuming that anything in FTA is desired or believed by H. it is stressed by hedging such assumptions in the form of word and phrase that modify the degree of predicate membership. For example, “A swing is sort of a toy’, or “You are quite right”.

3. Don’t coerce H
a. By avoiding coercing H’s response means that S gives H the option not to do a certain act.

b. By avoiding coercion of H means that S minimizes the threat by clarifying S view of the P, D and R values. 

c. Communicate S want not to impinge on H Indicate that S is aware and he takes account in his decision to communicate the FTA is one of the ways to satisfy H’s negative face.

4. Redress others’ wants of H

This is the higher strategy of negative politeness that consists of offering partial compensation for the face threat in FTA. It shows that negative politeness attends to other wants can be derived (H’s desire for territorial integrity and self determination). 

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Concept of Face and FTA (Face Threatening Acts)

Face
Based on Brown and Levinson (1987: 61) “Face is derived from the notion of Goffman and English people which is related to the idea of being embarrassed or humiliated, or ‘loosing Face’.” Since Face is something that is emotionally invested, can be lost, maintained, or enhanced, a person has to pay attention to his interlocutor’s Face. In other words, the speaker and the hearer must cooperate in maintaining each other’s Face in interaction. The action of maintaining each other’s Face called ‘Face work’.
Moreover, Goffman in Renkema (1993: 13) introduces the concept of face as an image which is projected by a person in his social contacts with others. Face has the meaning as in the saying to loose fact. Based on the opinion of Goffman, every participant in the social process has the need to be appreciated by others and the need to be free and not to be disturbed. He calls the need to be appreciated as a ‘positive face’ and the need to be free or not to be disturbed is called as ‘negative face’.
While negative face is defined as the desire of every member that he has Freedom of Action as well as freedom of imposition (the desire to not to be disturbed). For example is a father who is in the middle of giving advice to his children expects that his children do not tend to interrupt his speech (freedom of imposition).


Face Threatening Acts (FTA)
Politeness strategies are developed for the main purpose of dealing with the FTA’s. We understand the notion of ‘face’ previously from the dramaturgical theories of Erving Goffman that individuals as social actors perform (present a public self) on the stage of everyday life. The acts that threaten either the negative or positive face of the hearer are called ‘Face Threatening Acts’ (FTA) (Brown and Levinson, 1987: 65). There are acts that threaten the H’s Negative Face such as order, request, suggestion, advice, reminding, threat, warning, offer, promise, compliment and expression of negative emotion. Here, the speaker does not intend to avoid impeding H’s Freedom of Action. For example, when you ask someone to lend you some money, you are considered threaten that person’s Negative Face. It happens since you have violated his want to be free from being imposed.
In contrast, there are acts that threaten the H’s Positive Face such as expression of dissatisfaction, criticisms, complaints, accusation, and insult, disagreement, out of control emotion, irreverence, and bringing bad news about H or boasting about S, raising divisive topics, and blatant non-cooperation in an activity. All these acts indicate that the speaker does not care about the addressee’s feeling or wants. For example, disagreeing with someone’s opinion also causes a threat to his Positive Face, as it means that you indicate that he is wrong about something.

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LANGUAGE MAINTENANCE AND SHIFT OF FLORES PEOPLES AS A MINORITY ETHNIC IN MALANG

The paper focuses on the processes of language maintenance and shift among the Flores community, which become minority, in Malang. Malang as the city of education has become a city of multi-culture and thus multi-language. This situation affects greatly not only in the way of world seeing but also the use of language of the peoples living there. The multilingual interactions with non-Flores peoples in many social cultural occasions and situations trigger shift in the language choice and even change. However, in fact, still, they tend to hold tightly their sense of regional primordialism as their identity. Therefore, this paper is aimed at finding out the patterns of language shift and maintenance of Flores peoples as a minority ethnic in Malang and what social cultural factors affect them. Descriptive qualitative design is used in this research with utterances of members of Flores community in Malang as its data source. The data collection is done by using several techniques: observation, recording, field note, and interview. The data obtained is analyzed based on Miles and Huberman analysis model. The result shows that there are three patterns of language shift occurred: (1) from their interaction with other East Nusa Tenggara (NTT) languages like Weejewa and Kambera, resulted the shift of accent; (2) with Bahasa Indonesia resulted the convergences of code choice: code switching and code mixing and diglossia; and (3) with Javanese resulted the shift in terms of politeness strategies used. Furthermore, the social cultural factors influencing them are: situations and conditions, ethnical background, educational degree, kinship system, and topics of discussion.

Key words: Flores ethnic, language shift, language maintenance 

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Different Language or Dialect?

Key words:

Isogloss, Mutual intelligibility, Dialect continuum, Dialect boundary

Sometimes in a big city like New York, in which so many people come from different countries and regions reside and visit,  not so difficult to identify whether the interaction done by the people use the same language or not, since it is already clear enough that the indigenous society of that city is extremely difficult to find nowadays. In other words, most of the people who reside in that city are immigrants. There are more or less 140 languages spoken in New York City; however, at least only four communities which  become the biggest of all, those are: Arabic spoken community, Chinese, French Creole, and Spanish. Those four communities speak their language among the members of their society and English for different members of community. English becomes a lingua franca, language that is widely used as a means of communication among speakers of different languages, since those four share mutual intelligibility through it.

Moreover, the term mutual intelligibility refers to  a situation in which speakers of two different languages can understand each other in their communication. It becomes an indicator whether they share a same language or not.  When your hearer can understand thing that you've said and vice versa means that you and your hearer has mutual intelligibility, although you may find certain differences in terms of dictions, pronunciations, or even the structures, in his language,  as long as you can still understand the language he uses and vice versa, you speak a same language. Furthermore, those differences in the study of sociolinguistics refers to what so called dialect. Therefore, you share a same language but different dialect. 

A

B

C

D

E

F

G

H

I

Just say in one island has nine communities: A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, and I. Can you guess when the member of A communicate with B, do you think that they will understand each other or not? Of course it is very possible that they can, although they may find few differences but many similarities in the language they use; but that as they move farther away the similarities become fewer and fewer. So, A is very similar to B, less similar to C, even less similar to D, and by the time they get to G, H or I, can you guess what happen when they meet? Do you think that they still have mutual intelligibility? the possibility of this is so tiny. This is the illustration of what so called dialect continuum. According to  Bloomfield it refers to a range of dialects spoken across some geographical area that differ only slightly between neighboring areas, but as one travels in any direction, these differences accumulate such that speakers from opposite ends of the continuum are no longer mutually intelligible.

The different items that shape a dialect is called isogloss. As you know that British has football while American has soccer, this one difference represents one isogloss. The compilation of isoglosses found within two different communities will shape a line abstractly which separates those two regions, this abstract line is called dialect boundary.   

A

B

However, not all theories are applicable, according to this theory the key to differentiate  language or dialect is mutual intelligibility. Have you ever go to China? There are so many regions/ provinces China has. If you ask the China authorities how many languages the Chinese speak in their daily activities, surely you will get answer, only one namely Chinese language, with many different dialects. However, when you closely observe when two people from different provinces meet and speak their own dialect, you will find that between them there is no mutual intelligibility, or in other words, they speak different language. To unify those provinces, the Chinese government claims that they only speak different dialect but still in the same language.

Or Indonesia and Malaysia for instance, those two countries claim that they have their own language, Indonesia has Bahasa Indonesia and Malaysia has Malay language; however, if you pay attention carefully, there are so many similarities among those two languages, and in fact they share mutual intelligibility. In other words, they are a same language, but due to political consideration Indonesian and Malaysia claim that those are two different languages.

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Sociolinguistics: Language Variation

Two people who share mutual intelligibility of a language may have different style in using the language. It can be from the way how he speaks, the diction he chooses, or even the grammatical rules he uses. These cases become one of the concern areas of sociolinguistic study, namely language variation.

Talking about the language variation, it is divided into two kinds, internal and external. The first is simply defined as the variation of a language within the language itself, which means that, it refers to the variation in each level of constructions of language: phones, morphemes, words, phrases, clauses, sentences, paragraph, and finally meanings. Some English speakers will pronounce the word "today" as /tedaI/ and some pronounce it /tedeI/, this different shows the variation of language in the level of phone, phonological variation. Some also may say theirselves” for “themselves" to show a morphological variation in English. Or in many Southern dialects to find the word "done" used as an auxiliary, as in "she done already told you" or "I done finished a while ago.“ which become the cases of syntactic variation. Furthermore, semantic variation, variation in the level of meaning, has two kinds of cases in common, fist, same concept represented by two different terms, such as, football and soccer to refer to a kind of sport game played by two teams of eleven players using a round ball. Players kick the ball to each other and try to score goals by kicking the ball into a large net. Second, a term refers to two different concept, such as "Soda", British use it for seltzer water or club soda only, and American for any kinds of soft drink.

On the other hand, external variation refers to the variation of a language influenced by factors outside the language; it will lead us to the distinction between idiolect, dialect, sociolect, and chronolect.

Idiolect

All speakers of English can talk to each other and pretty much understand each other. Yet, no two of us speak exactly alike. Some differences are the result of age, sex, social situation, and where and when the language was learned. These differences are reflected in word choices, the pronunciation of words, and grammatical rules. The language of an individual speaker with its unique characteristics is referred to as the speaker’s idiolect. English may then be said to consist of anywhere from 450 million to 850 million idiolects, or the number of speakers of English (which seems to be growing every day and is difficult to estimate).

Dialect

Like individuals, different groups of people who speak the same language speak it differently. Bostonians, New Yorkers, Texans, blacks in Chicago, whites in Denver, and Hispanics in Albuquerque all exhibit variation in the way they speak English. When there are systematic differences in the way groups speak a language, we say that each group speaks a dialect of that language. Dialects are mutually intelligible forms of a language that differ in systematic ways.

Suppose that there are two friends, Awin and Alice, who come from different regions, south and east of East Java Province, in which those two regions have the same language as their means of communication, reside in the same city located in the center of East Java Province, which also has the same language like the other two. However, when they communicate each other there are so many differences among them in using the language. Awin representing the east region people tends to use "rude" version of Javanese language which is strongly influenced by Surabaya style which is "very rude” and Alice tends to use "polite" version of Javanese since the people in her region is strongly influenced by Blitar style in their daily language. The different of geography shapes the variation of the language they use. This kind of variation which is influenced much by geographical factors is called dialect.

Sociolect

Among many languages in the world, Javanese is unique. it has three levels of politeness, Ngoko, Kromo Madya, and Kromo Inggil, each has its own vocabularies but similar in its rules and share mutual intelligibility. Moreover, in its society strata, the social of class is divided into three: priyayi, the term to call nobleman, santri is educated and religious people, and abangan is for both educated and uneducated but irreligious people. the highest strata uses kromo inggil and kromo madya in their daily communication but they also master ngoko, santri use kromo madya and ngoko and only few of them can speak kromo inggil; while abangan use ngoko as the dominant and kromo madya for only in certain occasions. When a Javanese talks to someone older or more honorable than him, he will use the highest level of politeness that he has mastered. He will use (1)'sare/ nendra' (kromo inggil) for sleep instead of (2)'tilem' (kromo madya) or (3)'turu'' (ngoko) when he speaks to his parent or boss, use the second to someone older than him, and third to someone of the same age. This variation of language which is influenced by social class in a society is called sociolect.

Chronolect

This term refers to variation of language due to the factor of time. by using diachronic method it can be discovered the variation of a language.

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Sociolinguistic Handout

Among many branches of linguistic, this study is my favorite. For some, linguistic is considered as difficult course to study since it deals with something that sometimes so alien in their ears, abstract thing boring to learn, and so many terms that can drive you mad. You may say it is only wasting time to study this course. However, take a deep attention to surrounding you, first thing that you can learn about it is that almost all the parts of your life cannot be separated to what so called language, not even a tiny part of your life which is nothing to do with it.

Have you ever observed why in a same language spoken community has certain differences in using the language? for instance Javanese, the spoken community of this language almost spread widely in Java Island, however, each of them have their own style in using the language, in terms of pronunciation and diction,  how can that be? Why does in certain region the society use more than one language to communicate? why does certain community use secret language to communicate among them? why do in the different situations you have to pay attention carefully to your language that you're going to use? Or why does English become an international language which serves as a bridge to connect people from  different countries? Why English? How can it happen? Or is it possible Bahasa becomes an international language? Or can a language extinct? Or is it possible to create new languages? If you have those bunch of questions in your head, you are about to like this course, since it will answer them all.

 

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Bilingualism

The ability to speak two languages is often seen as something of a remarkable achievement, particularly in the English-speaking countries. However, over 70% of the earth population are thought to be bilingual or multilingual (able to speak three or more languages) and there is a good reason to believe that bilingualism or multilingualism has been the norm for most human beings at least for the last few millennia.

Bilingualism is" the condition in which two living languages exist side by side in a country, each spoken by one national group, representing a fairly large proportion of the people".

The practice of alternatively using two languages will be called here as bilingualism, and the person involved is Bilingual. Unless otherwise specified, all remarks about bilingualism apply as well to multilingualism, the practice of using alternately three or more languages.

So, bilingualism is the ability of using two languages to the other people. Many people in the world speak more than one language. It is a natural way of life, because each people want to try increasing their knowledge through bilingualism. Most of nations are thought bilingual.


There are some factors that are taken into account when describing bilingualism. They are:

a. Compound bilingualism
Compound bilingual, where two sets of language sign were associated with the same set of representational mediation processes this came about as a result of having learnt a foreign language in the traditional situation (and via the intermediary of the first language) or through the individual growing up in an environment where two languages were spoken more or less interchangeably by the same people in the same situation.

b. Coordinate bilingualism
Coordinate bilingual, where the two languages correspond to two independent meaning systems, this came about by learning two languages in totally differentiated circumstances, one in home and the other outside, or where the second languages was learnt in a totally different cultural environment from the first.

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Style and Register

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Politeness strategies

According to Brown and Levinson (1990) politeness strategies are developed in order to save the hearers' "face" Face refers to the respect that an individual has and maintenance that "self-esteem" in public or in private situations. Or simply we can say that 'face' refers to the image that a person projects in his social contacts with others. Usually you try to avoid embarrassing the other person, or making them feel uncomfortable. Since every participant in the social process has the need to be appreciated by others and the need to be free and not interfered with. The need to be appreciated is called 'positive face' and the need to not be disturbed refers to 'negative face. Face Threatening Acts (FTA's) are acts that infringe on the hearers' need to maintain his/her self esteem, and be respected.

• The bald on-record strategy does nothing to minimize threats to the hearer's “face”

• The positive politeness strategy shows you recognize that your hearer has a desire to be respected. It also confirms that the relationship is friendly and expresses group reciprocity

• The negative politeness strategy also recognizes the hearer's face. But it also recognizes that you are in some way imposing on them. Some other examples would be to say, “I don't want to bother you but...” or “I was wondering if...”

• Off-record indirect strategies the main purpose is to take some of the pressure off of you. You are trying to avoid the direct Face Threatening Act of asking something.

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Code Choice

Key terms:
• Diglossia
• Bilingualism
• Multilingualism
• Code-Switching,
• and Code Mixing

Diglossia vs. Digraphia

Charles Ferguson (1959)

“Situations where two varieties of the same language are used for different social functions”

Janet Holmes defines diglossia as having three crucial features:
1. In the same language, used in the same community, there are two distinct varieties. One is regarded as high (H) and the other low (L).
2. Each is used for distinct functions.
3. No one uses the high (H) in everyday conversation.

• The "High" form (called "Modern Standard Arabic") is normally used in FORMAL situations.
• The "Low" form (referred to as "dialects," such as Cairene, Levantine, etc.) is used in INFORMAL situations, such as conversations, etc.

Digraphia??

Bilingualism??
Multilingualism??

It is important to note from the outset that "diglossia" and "bilingualism/multilingualism" refer to different, although similar, sociolinguistic situations.

• The key difference is that in a bilingual situation certain INDIVIDUALS (communities, etc.) will use Language A, while other INDIVIDUALS (communities, etc.) will use Language B, but EVERYONE will use the SAME LANGUAGE for all situations.

• Code-Switching??
In conversation
• Code Mixing??
In single utterance

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Language, Dialect, and Varieties

Key terms:
Language variations
Language
Dialect
Accent
Idiolect
Sociolect

Internal Variation: the property of languages having different ways of expressing the same meaning. Importantly, this refers to within language, not across language, differences. (Phones, words, sentences)

External Variation?

Always remember DIALECT is NOT synonymous with accent

Regional Dialect

What are Isogloss, Dialect boundary, and Dialect continuum?
Criterion of mutual intelligibility

 Language issues and non linguistics factors
Prestige (standard vs. non-standard) Overt Prestige vs. Covert Prestige
The standard dialect is the dialect that is associated with prestige in the society at large.

Register (Class)
Politic

 Kinds of variation
• Phonological variations
• Morphological variations
• Syntactic variations
• Semantic variations


Can you give the examples for each?

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What is Sociolinguistics?

Key Terms:
What is Sociology?
What is Linguistics?
What is the different between Sociolinguistics and. Sociology of Language?
What is Sociolinguistics concerned about?

Sociology: a study of the characteristics, behaviors, and developments of society. The branch of Social Science which studies about a society and its influences to the human life.

Who is August Comte?

Language:
Linguistics:
Who is Ferdinand De Saussure? (Structuralism)
Language
Langue
Parole

Sociolinguistics vs. Sociology of Language

Sociolinguistics: Language  Society

Sociology of Language: Society  Language

Sociolinguistics (Currie, 1952)

The Areas of Sociolinguistics
1. The influence of society as institutions and its members on the use of language.
Internal vs. External Variety
Internal  Phones, letters, morphemes, sentences
External Dialect, Sociolect, Chronolect.

2. The functions of language in society
- Instrumental
- Interaction
- Personality
- Problem solving
- Imaginative
- Informative

3. The way the language is used by and in society
How language develops culture.

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