Lancaster University, UK
Workshop
| Code-Switching in Hyphenated American Novelists | Cecilia Montes-Alcalá |
| Linguistic and generic hybridity in web writing: the case of fan fiction | Sirpa Leppänen |
| Literary Codeswitching: Shaping culture and identity | Carla Jonsson |
| Mixed-language texts and websites: a framework for analysis | Mark Sebba |
| The role of social context in language choice: the politics of the bicultural identity | Shahrzad Mahootian |
New approaches to written code-switching and multilingual texts
After many years in which interest in language alternation has focussed almost entirely on spoken code-switching, recently there has been renewed interest in written mixed-language texts. This seems largely to have been driven by new media on the one hand – the potential of email, SMS messaging, websites and blogs (among others) to provide new, less regulated spaces where language mixing can take place – and new methods on the other: for example, researchers in this area have begun to explore the potential of Critical Discourse Analysis, various ethnographic methods, and new ways of analysing images and signs such as those offered by Kress and van Leeuwen (1996/2006) and Scollon and Scollon (2003). However, at the moment there is no general agreement on what constitutes the subject area and there is no widely applicable framework for analysis, the existing frameworks having all been developed for spoken data.
This panel will bring together researchers working with a variety of types of data – in ‘new’ and ‘old’ media – and with a range of approaches, all concerned with texts (in the broadest sense) which include two or more languages.
The conference theme of Micro and Macro connections is addressed in a number of ways. Mixed-language texts can be seen as a ‘micro’ representation of a community or society’s ‘macro’ language practices. Writers of such texts shape the readers' view of the culture in which the text is produced, at the same time as ‘macro’ forces such as power relations determine the forms which are acceptable within the text.
The session will be organised as a thematic panel with seven papers and a discussant.
The key questions raised will be methodological: the scope of the field, its relationship to the field of spoken code-switching research, the development of frameworks to account for written mixed-language texts, and any pedagogical applications.
Keywords: bilingualism, code-switching, written discourse, literacy, genre, computer-mediated communication
Paper topics
(1) Mixed-language texts and websites: a framework for analysis
(2) Critical Discourse Analysis of code-switching in written media
(3) Literary Code-switching: Shaping culture and identity
(4) Linguistic and generic hybridity in web writing in English and Finnish
(5) Code-switching in Spanish- English bilingual novelists
(6) Code-switching in diasporic internet writing among Jamaicans
(7) Code-switching in text-messages, e-mails and instant messaging in Senegal
References
Kress, Gunther R. and T. van Leeuwen (1996/2006) Reading images : the grammar of visual design. Routledge.
Scollon, Ron and Suzie Wong Scollon 2003. Discourses in Place: Language in the Material World. London: Routledge