It is interesting that all of us, who work on code switching, have
been interested mainly in the purely linguistic and structural aspects of this
rather undefined phenomenon. We neglect the folk aspect of it: that is,
code-switching is something that people resort to intentionally. They
chose to do it. But why do they do that? the answer might lie in the fact
that they imagine switching leads them to acheiving a certain goal. Switching
itself, is a matter of folk choice: people chose to resort to a certain
language when they want to code-switch in vocabulary, for example.

Hence, it is interesting that people make these collective decissions about
when to switch, and how to switch, and why to switch. They also make the
decission that some certain linguistic behavior is switching while others are
not. These choices and decissions might not correspond to the ideas of
linguists and psycholinguists about what the boundries a of a language are.

Muhammad Al-Sharkawi
Nijmegen

Rhakesh Bhatt has written several papers on OT approaches to codeswitching.
But there's really no reason to think, in my view, that the cs structural
constraints are any "softer" than monolingual constraints. Some of those are
"hard" and some are "soft" too, in the sense of violability.  And there are
definitely cs constraints that are hard to violate. For instance, in
Spanish-English, switching between a clitic and verb is strongly ill-formed:

Yo la saw
I saw her


While I admire Rhakesh's efforts, I think that sort of approach has the same
problem as many others that are focused on constraints, that is, that it
posits cs-specific constraints, and there's no reason to expect that cs would
have constraints that are independent of the mixed grammars.  If there are no
constraints that are independent of the mixed grammars, then there are no
cs-specific constraints.

Jeff


On Tue, 28 Mar 2000, Gary Palmer wrote:


   [NON-Text Body part not included]

I have dealt somewhat with written language code-switching between (16th +
17th century) Yiddish and Hebrew.

Andrew Sunshine

-----Original Message-----
From: Lcallahan@... <Lcallahan@...>
To: code-switching@egroups.com <code-switching@egroups.com>
Date: Tuesday, March 28, 2000 1:37 PM
Subject: [code-switching] Introduction


>My name is Laura Callahan.  I am interested in CS in writing, as well as
>attitudes toward CS.  I work with Spanish and English in the United States,
>but I would like to know of any use of CS in both fiction and non fiction
>texts between any language pair.  I am especially interested in this where
it
>occurs in the absence of CS in speech.
>
>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>To Post a message, send it to:   code-switching@eGroups.com
>To Unsubscribe, send a blank message to:
code-switching-unsubscribe@eGroups.com
>
>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>You have a voice mail message waiting for you at iHello.com:
>http://click.egroups.com/1/2377/0/_/730446/_/954268625/
>
>-- Easily schedule meetings and events using the group calendar!
>-- http://www.egroups.com/cal?listname=code-switching&m=1
>
>

For the macintosh there is an excellent shareware program for printing PDF
files, it only costs $20 as opposed to $300 for the full Acrobat Distiller, and
it is much more robust than Ghostview. In particular, if you are handling fonts
from other languages there is a dialog box to save those fonts as "bitmaps"
which means that you can share text in multiple languages even if the other
person has not installed those particular fonts on their computer! The program
is available at:

<http://www.jwwalker.com>

As for me, my work is on language hierarchies and language policy in Taiwan. As
in any other such situation where the position of different languages within the
social hierarchy is heavily contested, code-switching is one of many tools
employed by people in their daily lives to negotiate these power relations. For
those who are interested, my dissertation proposal is available on my web page.
Although it doesn't deal directly with the topic of code switching, I do explore
more general questions about language and power that might be of interest to
members of this list. I welcome any comments or suggestions:

<http://kerim.oxus.net>

It should be listed under "research."

kerim
________________________________________________________
P. KERIM FRIEDMAN
			 Anthropology, Temple University
			 <mailto:kerim.mail@...>
			 <http://kerim.oxus.net>
________________________________________________________

Gary Palmer

Jose Camacho wrote:

The other possible conclusion is
that strucutral constraints are soft constraints, not hard constraints. A
framework such as Optimality Theory (where constraints are universal but
violable depending on their position in a constraint-hierarchy) would be
particularly well suited for such an account.
 

------------------------------------------------------------------------
To Post a message, send it to:   code-switching@eGroups.com
To Unsubscribe, send a blank message to: code-switching-unsubscribe@eGroups.com

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Special Offer-Earn 300 Points from MyPoints.com for trying @Backup
Get automatic protection and access to your important computer files.
Install today:
http://click.egroups.com/1/2344/0/_/730446/_/954281870/

-- Talk to your group with your own voice!
-- http://www.egroups.com/VoiceChatPage?listName=code-switching&m=1

Dear listmembers,

I would like to thank Celso for creating the cs list.  I would also like
to introduce
myself very briefly. My name is Jariah Mohd. Jan and I work at the
Department of English Language, University of Malaya, Malaysia.

Code-switching is one of my areas of interest other than pragmatics and
conversational discourse. My work has been mainly on Malay/English
code-switching and focusing more on the aspects of inter-gender and
power relations.

Anyway, I am indeed happy to be participating in the list.

Salam (Regards) to all

Jar


Jariah Mohd. Jan, Ph.D
Department of English Language
Faculty of Languages and Linguistics
University of Malaya
50603 Kuala Lumpur
MALAYSIA

E-mail add.: r1jariah@...
Fax: 03-6325452

As you've probably realized, a member of the list had activated
an automated Reply function to forward messages to another
account. Please DO NOT DO THIS.

This person's right to send messages to the list has been
temporarily deactivated until he fixes this problem.

I do not apologize ;-) for the problem with this user,
as it was a technical matter beyond my control.

Saúde,
-celso

--
Celso Alvarez Cáccamo              Tel. +34 981 167000 ext. 1888
Linguística Geral, Faculdade de Filologia     FAX +34 981 167151
Universidade da Corunha                          lxalvarz@...
15071 A Corunha, Galiza (Espanha)  http://www.udc.es/dep/lx/cac/

The response to the newly created list has been amazing. The differences in
perspective seem to suggest the notion "code-switching" is not very
meaningful, unless delimited in some way. In particular, several people
have suggested that it is not possible to describe grammatical constraints
on code-switching. However, it seems likely that code-switching can be
approached from different perspectives, and that several levels of analysis
must be considered. Suppose, for example, that someone decided to study
"language", and after looking at the syntax of Spanish or English, decided
that syntax is a useless tool because it cannot account for sociolinguistic
variation in the use of double negation. From a linguist's perspective,
this would probably be the wrong answer. Rather, the usual answer is to
posit different levels of analysis for which different tools and different
goals are defined.
	 In this same sense, it is unlikely that a single, unified explanation of
code-switching will account for all the relevant generalizations that can
be made about the phenomenon. Some of the evidence for grammatical
constraints on code-switching seems relevant; just as the obvious pragmatic
and sociolinguistic, conversational effects seem important. If the claim is
that code-switching ONLY has grammatical constraints, this is obviously
incomplete, but conversely, if the claim is that code-switching can only be
approached from a conversational interaction perspective, this also misses
some important generalizations in the code-switching literature.
	 So, suppose one finds evidence for speakers where structural constraints
on code-switching are not present. The conclusion could be that structural
constraints are not relevant in general for code-switching, but then one
should provide an alternative account for the abundant evidence in the
literature in favor of those constraints. The other possible conclusion is
that strucutral constraints are soft constraints, not hard constraints. A
framework such as Optimality Theory (where constraints are universal but
violable depending on their position in a constraint-hierarchy) would be
particularly well suited for such an account.
	 So perhaps it would be more useful to see the extent to which each level
of analysis can account for code-switching phenomena. Of course, this
depends on one's theoretical perspective to some extent. To take an
example, from my perspective, the fact that code-switching may be
predictable does not contradict the fact that it may be innovative or
surprising. Code-switching seems like part of natural language, and as
such, it must fall within the boundaries of natural language. It would be
surprising if it didn't.

Jose Camacho
Spanish and Portuguese and Linguistics
105 George St
New Brunswick, NJ 08901-1414
732-932 9412 x32

Hi,

This is Gary Palmer at UNLV.  My interest in code-switching is recent,
acquired along with my recently acquired interest in Tagalog language
and culture. Just to give you a taste of my interests, in an analysis of
the language in the Tagalog film "Dreaming Filipinos", I included the
following in the conclusions:

"Code switching occurs both within and between sentences.  Code mixing
is also common, taking the form of verbal derivations and inflections on
word roots borrowed from English. Most of the expressions used in
intrasentential code-switching come from one of three semantic domains:
imperialism, formal education, and consumerism.  Education and
imperialism provided the vast majority of the terms and these occurred
mainly in Paul's conversations with Sammy (scene 6) and Sammy's
monologue (scene 13). The language of consumerism appears mainly in
scenes with and about Toni, the bored housewife, and in the final scene
in which Paul describes his life in America. Intersentential
code-switching occurred most frequently in the language of Toni.  But
Dreaming Filipinos also has a third, macro level of code-switching in
which whole monologues or even scenes may be presented in English, as
with the history teacher (scene 3) and in Paul's dream of his teacher as
immigration officer (scene 14)."

The paper, called "What's wrong with Dreaming Filipinos? Grammar and the
subversion of cultural imperialism
in a Tagalog film", will appear in the proceedings of the 2nd
International Conference on Southeast Asia "Ruptures and Departures:
Language and Culture in Southeast Asia," January 19-21, 2000, University
of the Philippines - Diliman, Manila.  It is on the web at
<http://www.nevada.edu/~gbp/> --> Downloadable Papers.

On Tue, 28 Mar 2000 14:16:55 -0500 (EST) MORABUNNIE@... wrote:

> In my paper, I suggested that cs may occur more frequently in classes where:
> a) the teacher has knowledge of the students' L1; and b) the number of
> students who speak that L1 in the class (given that the ESL classes were of
> heterogeneous language speaking populations).

That is interesting, because the difference between our class
observation settings provide two instructional contexts for CS, other
than English Language Learners (ELLs) in mainstream classes:

1. ELLs (of varying degrees of linguistic homogeneity) in ESL, where
L2 is the curricular language, and L1 usage constitutes a divergence
from that. Unlike most mainstream classes, the content is about
language, not say, social studies or science.

2. ELLs (predominantly of the same language background, but varying
proficiency levels in both languages) in L1 maintenance class, where
L1 is the curricular language, and L2 usage constitutes a divergence
from that. Here the content is language-heavy, but includes math
also.

Yet, I would expect that both of your suggestions apply to my
setting (#2), with qualifications. I would apply a) to the teachers'
varying knowledge levels in students' L2 (i.e. English), and b) to
the students' general level of L2 proficiency.

Thank you for the food for thought.

Mark


----------------------------------------
Mark Langager
Email: Mark_Langager@...
Harvard University Graduate School of Education

Hi, I've just created a new folder called Data in The
Code-Switching Forum webpage, where we can store transcripts
(in HTML, plain text, or PDF) or recordings of code-switching
data.

For audio recordings, I suggest the RealAudio format, which
is much smaller than WAV files and is decoded in real time
through Internet connections. To obtain the free RealEncoder
program in order to encode RealAudio, visit and
browse http://www.real.com . Also, these audio files can be
linked to HTML pages. RealAudio files can be reversed to
WAV for speech analysis.

Oh, the link for Ghostview is:
http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/aladdin/get600.html

-celso
--
Celso Alvarez Cáccamo              Tel. +34 981 167000 ext. 1888
Linguística Geral, Faculdade de Filologia     FAX +34 981 167151
Universidade da Corunha                          lxalvarz@...
15071 A Corunha, Galiza (Espanha)  http://www.udc.es/dep/lx/cac/

My name is Jim Fidelholtz.  My interest here is principally in
bilingualism, especially English-Spanish, and especially as it affects
the borrowed lexicon.
	 When I have some time, however, I plan to return to a little
Texas town we passed through about 5 years ago to do some field work on
CS.  We stopped at a small store, and while I was there, a guy entered
carrying a little girl with her leg in a cast, the guy quite agitated,
and began describing some events to the women who worked there.  The
whole conversation was conducted (at least so it seemed to me, who's
fluent also in Spanish) alternating between Spanish and English AT EACH
WORD!  The town is Del Rio, TX, but I think there are a number of other
towns where similar things go on.  I couldn't believe my ears!  Talk
about knocking down every possible structural theory of CS!
	 Jim

James L. Fidelholtz 	 e-mail: jfidel@...
Posgrado en Ciencias del Lenguaje tel.: +(52-2)229-5500 x5705
Instituto de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades fax: +(01-2) 229-5681
Beneme'rita Universidad Auto'noma de Puebla, ME'XICO

In a message dated 3/28/2000 1:57:48 PM Eastern Standard Time,
mark_langager@... writes:

> In class observations that I am conducting on-site I notice there is
>  more code switching at some sites than at others.

My name is Bunnie Piltch and I am a doctoral student at Temple University.
I observed a middle school ESL teacher and noticed a difference in frequency
of cs occasions between the classes taught by the same teacher.
In my paper, I suggested that cs may occur more frequently in classes where:
a) the teacher has knowledge of the students' L1; and b) the number of
students who speak that L1 in the class (given that the ESL classes were of
heterogeneous language speaking populations).

I'd be interested in hearing about your findings in the classroom setting as
well.

Bunnie

My name is Hal (Harold) Schiffman, and I work on the Tamil language in the
various nation-states it is spoken in (India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia,
Singapore).  The connection with cs is that Tamil is severely diglossic,
so there is a certain amount of cs between different varieties; there's
also Fishman-style diglossia and therefore, cs, between Tamil and English
(and also Sinhala, Malay, Hindi...)  In fact educated Tamils always use a
certain amount of English in their Tamil, and trying to get them to
suppress this is unnatural and unrealistic.

I'm also interested in rule-making about language, i.e. language policy
writ large; standardization in "non-standard" languages; areal features
and contact phenomena; and lately, how are "emotion" and "sentiment" coded
in language.

=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
			   Harold F. Schiffman
							   Academic  Director
Henry R. Luce Professor of Language Learning  Penn Language Center
Dept. of South Asia Regional Studies 	       715-16 Williams  Hall
820 Williams Hall, Box 6305 				   Box  6305

			 University of Pennsylvania
			 Philadelphia, PA 19104-6305

Phone:  (215) 898-5825    		       	              (215) 898-6039
Fax:  (215) 573-2138 			          Fax (215) 573-2139

Email:  haroldfs@... 		      plc@...
WWW:  http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/    http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~plc/

The Penn Language Center is a facility supporting language teaching in the
less-commonly-taught languages, as well as research in language pedagogy
and interdisciplinary language-related issues.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hi.

My name is Mark Langager and I am studying a number of educational
facilities for Japanese expatriates living on the East Coast of the
US. My focus is on how they prepare their children for the big U turn
back to Japan, and how they manage their children's bilingual
academic and social development with that U turn in mind.

In class observations that I am conducting on-site I notice there is
more code switching at some sites than at others. I am joining this
list serve to read what others are saying about code switching and
further familiarize myself with its implications.

Yoroshiku!

Mark Langager

----------------------------------------
Mark Langager
Email: Mark_Langager@...
Harvard University Graduate School of Education

My name is Laura Callahan.  I am interested in CS in writing, as well as
attitudes toward CS.  I work with Spanish and English in the United States,
but I would like to know of any use of CS in both fiction and non fiction
texts between any language pair.  I am especially interested in this where it
occurs in the absence of CS in speech.

My name is Jim Wilce, and I work in the relatively ethnically homogeneous
nation-state of Bangladesh.  Its ethnic homogeneity doesn't preclude some
interesting code-switching (CS) among its dominant Muslim population. CS in
Bangladesh is potentiated by a kind of diglossia between forms of Bengali
(or Bangla), by the ongoing if diminishing role of Urdu (the official
language of Bangladesh's former state, Pakistan), by the ritual use of
Arabic, and by the use of English.  I don't profess to understand the
structural constraints on CS.  My interests include identity play,
multivocality, and language in relation to *madness.*  While trying to
avoid romanticizing madness, I explore how those labeled mad in Bangladesh
seem to be particularly adept at particular forms of CS.  Urdu has
interesting functions in their speech as a code associated with the Mughal
era.  Enough for now.
Jim Wilce, Associate Professor
Anthropology Department
Box 15200
Northern Arizona University
Flagstaff AZ 86011-5200

fax 520/523-9135
office ph. 520/523-2729
email jim.wilce@...
http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~jmw22/ (includes information on my 1998 book,
Eloquence in Trouble: The Poetics and Politics of Complaint in Rural
Bangladesh, ISBN 0-19-510687-3.  Call OUP NY office at 800/334-4249.
http://www.nau.edu/asian

Hello,

Thanks to all for their introductions. Please keep them coming.

A) SUBSCRIPTIONS - A couple of people ask about subscription options. The
place to look for options is:

http://www.egroups.com/list/code-switching , then
-> members
-> look for your own name
-> edit (left column)
-> delivery mode
    The options are:
    -individual e-mails
    -daily summaries
    -daily full-text digest
    -read it on the Web only

B) PDF - Yes, it is possible to upload files or URL's to the page "vault".
As Jeff Macswan says, the best format is PDF (Portable Document File).
Fortunately, Jeff is wrong ;-) and you don't need the commercial, very
expensive Adobe Acrobat to convert any document to PDF. I believe in
freeware -- I use a free utility called Ghostview. The procedure is
relatively simple:

1) Open your document with your wordprocessor and convert it to a
PostScript (PS) document; in order to do this:

a) previously install a PostScript printer definition in your computer

b) once opened, "print" your file with the option "print to document" (not
to your real printer!), with the extension .PS or .PRN

2) open the .PS or .PRN file with Ghostview and "print" it to document
again, choosing the built-in option pdfprinter.

When I'll have time, I will add the URL for Ghostview in the Forum web
page.  Ghostview comes for PC and for Mac.

Best,
-celso

   ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
   Celso Alvarez-Cáccamo              Tel. +34 981 167000 ext. 1888
   Linguística Geral, Faculdade de Filologia     FAX +34 981 167151
   Universidade da Corunha                          lxalvarz@...
   15071 A Corunha, Galiza (Espanha)   http://www.udc.es/dep/lx/cac
   ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A nice feature of this eGroup system is that we have a "vault" available to us
in which we can place shared documents. From the looks of things, you can add
either a URL or actual files to the vault, then others can fetch them at will.

I want to suggest that people post their dissertations on cs in that space,
and other articles too, perhaps. The best form in which to save them is .pdf.
That's better than using Word because the .pdf file preserves any special
fonts, pagination, etc. It keeps things looking just like they came off your
printer. To put a file in .pdf, you need the commercial Adobe Acrobat
software. That will allow you to "print" to a .pdf file which you can then
upload to the eGroup vault.

It's also possible to just list URLs (web addresses) in the fault, and those
don't take up space from our quota. So if you can put your dissertation or
other work on a university server, then just post the URL, that would be even
better.

I posted the URL for the manuscript version of a paper I did which will appear
next month in Grosjean and Muysken's new journal Bilingualism. If you have a
chance, please try to download it and check it out.

To get to the eGroup vault, you just go to

http://www.egroups.com/group/code-switching/

and click on "vault." Then you'll have the option to upload your dissertation
or other work.

Wonderful listserv!  Thanks again to Celso Alvarez Caccamo for creating it for
us!

Best,
Jeff

Dear listmembers,
I want to thank Celso for the idea of creating the list and introduce
myself very briefly. My name is Anna De Fina, I work at Georgetown
University and code-switching is one of my areas of interest. I think
that
I have gone through the typical "code-switching stages" in my own
research,i.e. first trying to apply syntactic contraints to my data, then
looking
into functional explanations, then finding lots of phenomena that are
unclassifiable under any approach, then trying
conversational approaches. In brief, I am very interested in participating
in the list. My work has been mainly on Spanish/Italian code switching and
on phenomena of mixing which, as other researchers, I used to define
'attrition'. I have become quite unsatified with that notion too, though.
Anyway, I am happy to be in the list.

Best to all

Anna De Fina

Cool!  How computer literate are we now??!!  I can believe i am
subscribing to an online chat thingy about code-switching though -
i think i must be more stressed than i thought!!

See you later!

Kat x

hiya katie! I've just subscribed to it too! now i know it's you who's
this ksnell person i always see in the ciommunications room!

Hello,

I am currently undertaking a study of Spanglish/Chicano as part of
a university course and would really appreciate any useful links or
information that anyone could give me.  I'm concentrating on code-
swiching in its different forms, discourse strategies, etc.

Thanks!

Katie Snell

Dear Peter:

I'm interested in your thesis.
Would you please send me a copy?

Thanks and good luck
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
       /|/|    It is only with the heart that one can see rightly;
    /00  |          what is essential is invisible to the eye.
  |/^^\
    \m_m_| Su, Cheng-chao (w53007@...)
*******************************************************************

My Ph.D thesis "A Corpus-Driven Study of Turkish-English Language Contact in
Australia" (1998, Monash University, Melbourne) deals with a few of the
questions listed in Prof Alvarez-Caccamo's welcome message. I worked within
a corpus framwork and collected 1000 texts written by the Turkish migrants
in Australia. I took the mixed collocations as the basis of the emerging
code and proposed an "Empty Lexicon" approach to the definition of the
"code" in Language Contact (code-switching, mixing and borrowing) after
Sinclair(1996).

I would be happy to send an e-copy of my thesis to the interested
subscribers.  Please e-mail <pkurtboke@...>

With best wishes

Petek Kurtboke





______________________________________________________

I would like to introduce myself too: Doris Sommer, professor of Latin
American literature at Harvard University. My interest in code-switching
develops from some preliminary thoughts about a "bilingual aesthetic,"
which could be a contribution to studying Latino literature in teh USA.  Is
code-switching only practiced in predictable patterns, or is it a field of
creativity and an opportunity for sruprising linguistic games?  Evidently,
I'm more sympathetic to the second option, becaue it will give more space
for appreciating crative agency, as opposed to noticing a linguistic gridlock.

	 su solidariDoris


At 12:36 AM 3/28/00 +0200, you wrote:
>Hello,
>
>My name is Celso Alvarez Cáccamo (or Alvarez-Cáccamo in the
>Anglo style). I am from Galiza, in northwest Spain. One of
>my research interests is so-called "code-switching" as a
>device to recontextualize talk. In this sense, some of my
>work has dealt with Galizan-Portuguese/Spanish conversation.
>
>If I use quotation marks over "code-switching" is because
>I believe that the notion -- or host of them -- is still far
>from having a commonly accepted sense. To me, much of
>code-switching research has overemphasized the structural
>aspects over the interactional ones, based
>on a questionable identification between "codes" and
>linguistic varieties. I think some current lines of research
>(grammatical, anthropological, semiotic) are hinting at
>questioning seriously the scope of "code-switching" and its
>relations with other (supposedly interlingual) phenomena and
>with the notion of grammar itself. However, I am not sure where
>this convergence will lead to, and perhaps this forum will
>help us understand this question better. Since we probably
>come from very different disciplinary perspectives, we
>perhaps need to first find a common ground as to what is
>theoretically significant in so-called "code-switching".
>For example, some ascribe to a lexicalized version of the
>term, "codeswitching", and this choice may even have the
>theoretical import of attempting to delimit the phenomenon
>as a clearly identifiable object.
>
>-celso
>--
>Celso Alvarez Cáccamo              Tel. +34 981 167000 ext. 1888
>Linguística Geral, Faculdade de Filologia     FAX +34 981 167151
>Universidade da Corunha                          lxalvarz@...
>15071 A Corunha, Galiza (Espanha)  http://www.udc.es/dep/lx/cac/
>
>
>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>To Post a message, send it to:   code-switching@eGroups.com
>To Unsubscribe, send a blank message to:
code-switching-unsubscribe@eGroups.com
>
>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>You have a voice mail message waiting for you at iHello.com:
>http://click.egroups.com/1/2377/0/_/730446/_/954207283/
>
>-- 20 megs of disk space in your group's Document Vault
>-- http://www.egroups.com/docvault/code-switching/?m=1
>
>

Hello,

My name is Celso Alvarez Cáccamo (or Alvarez-Cáccamo in the
Anglo style). I am from Galiza, in northwest Spain. One of
my research interests is so-called "code-switching" as a
device to recontextualize talk. In this sense, some of my
work has dealt with Galizan-Portuguese/Spanish conversation.

If I use quotation marks over "code-switching" is because
I believe that the notion -- or host of them -- is still far
from having a commonly accepted sense. To me, much of
code-switching research has overemphasized the structural
aspects over the interactional ones, based
on a questionable identification between "codes" and
linguistic varieties. I think some current lines of research
(grammatical, anthropological, semiotic) are hinting at
questioning seriously the scope of "code-switching" and its
relations with other (supposedly interlingual) phenomena and
with the notion of grammar itself. However, I am not sure where
this convergence will lead to, and perhaps this forum will
help us understand this question better. Since we probably
come from very different disciplinary perspectives, we
perhaps need to first find a common ground as to what is
theoretically significant in so-called "code-switching".
For example, some ascribe to a lexicalized version of the
term, "codeswitching", and this choice may even have the
theoretical import of attempting to delimit the phenomenon
as a clearly identifiable object.

-celso
--
Celso Alvarez Cáccamo              Tel. +34 981 167000 ext. 1888
Linguística Geral, Faculdade de Filologia     FAX +34 981 167151
Universidade da Corunha                          lxalvarz@...
15071 A Corunha, Galiza (Espanha)  http://www.udc.es/dep/lx/cac/

Hello All,

Barely three days after its creation, The Code-Switching
Forum already has about 140 members. I am very glad that
the initiative has had such a positive response. Thank you
to all who have joined the list. We have a very varied
international representation.

I sent two preliminary Welcome messages only a couple of
days ago, when the list was much smaller. But, since we've
grown so rapidly, I think it's about time for us to start.

Let me tell you a little about how this idea came about.
One of my topics of interest is code-switching, about which
I will say a little in another message. Occasionally, messages
on code-switching appear on lists such as LINGUIST, LANGUSE,
LINGANTH, DISCOURS or others I am not aware of. However,
I believe this is the first list that focuses explicitly
on the topic. My intention is, precisely, to help create
such a gathering space.

Now, I would like to say something about my own role in
this forum. The eGroups server was chosen because it is
extremely easy to create a list in a few minutes. In my
experience (I manage two other, smaller lists), eGroups
works fairly well in distributing messages promptly. The
larger the list, however, the more chances there are that
a message gets lost for someone. That is why eGroups stores
all messages in a web site,
http://www.egroups.com/list/code-switching .
In order to access some parts of our page, you will need
to "register" your login and a password with eGroups. This
process is independent from your subscription to the
code-switching list. I recommend visiting the site
periodically to check for past messages. The inconvenience
of eGroups is, of course, that it is a commercial site (in
the USA), and some discrete adds are placed at the end of
messages. It would have been possible to resort to an
educational institution, and, perhaps, this is a possibility
for the future. On my part, I have no problem in receiving adds
that I do not even read (!) if this guarantees our
autonomy in managing the list. eGroups explicitly states that
the addresses of list members are in no way used or distributed
for any commercial purpose (apart from the adds in messages).
However, in order to reduce this small nuisance, I STRONGLY
recommend that we only use plain text (such as this message),
not HTML.

There are four subscription options as to how each member
would like to receive messages. Please read the previous
Welcome messages for explanations. A monthly reminder will
also be sent with this technical information.

A few more words, and I will conclude. My intention is to be
exclusively the list's technical manager. Messages are not
filtered or screened. Formally, I am what is called the
list "owner", but I do not want to have that responsibility
forever. In fact, my idea is that in a reasonably near future
some other masochistic ;-) member would accept to take over
the role of list "owner" and manager, which is a fairly
simple matter. Every few months, for example, we could take
turns in this role, in order to guarantee the Forum's
continuity.

I will send another message with a self-introduction.
I would like to ask list members to do the same, as a way
to start with discussions. Please title the message descriptively
with something such as "Introduction".

Again, thank you very much for joining The Code-Switching
Forum!

Best,
-celso
--
Celso Alvarez Cáccamo              Tel. +34 981 167000 ext. 1888
Linguística Geral, Faculdade de Filologia     FAX +34 981 167151
Universidade da Corunha                          lxalvarz@...
15071 A Corunha, Galiza (Espanha)  http://www.udc.es/dep/lx/cac/
code-switching-owner@egroups.com

Hello / Olá / Hola / etc.,

Welcome / Bem-vind@ / Bienvenid@ / etc. to The Code-Switching
Forum. This is the first, organizational message, just to
confirm that the list exists ;-).

I am glad to inform you that less than 24 hours after my
announcement, there are already 30 signers in the list.

I will post a Call for Self-Presentations ;-) in a couple
of days, when more people join in.

In the meantime, please remember a few things:

1) Replies to messages are distributed directly
to the whole list.

2) You have four subscription options, which you can choose
among in The Code-Switching Forum web page,
http://www.egroups.com/list/code-switching :
-One e-mail per message sent to the list
-One daily e-mail with all messages sent to the list that day
-One daily e-mail with a summary of messages sent that
day (only Sender and Subject)
-No e-mails: Read the messages on the web only

3) The server, eGroups, is a commercial site. Messages
include discrete adds at the end (I don't even know what
they are about). The option exists of eliminating the adds
for a monthly fee of US$ 4.95, but I ain't gonna pay ;-).

4) Please try to use only plain text, not HTML, in your
messages.

5) My role is merely technical -- I am what is called
the list "owner", but the list is unmoderated.
eGroups has a protection system against spam messages.

6) The list is open to anyone. Please feel free to
invite people, either directly or from The Code-Switching
Forum web page. To subscribe, send a blank message to:
code-switching-subscribe@egroups.com .

7) Distribution lists are not perfect. Messages may be
lost occasionally. It is always a good idea to review past
exchanges periodically in the Forum web page.

Thank you, and keep tuned,

-celso
--
Celso Alvarez Cáccamo              Tel. +34 981 167000 ext. 1888
Linguística Geral, Faculdade de Filologia     FAX +34 981 167151
Universidade da Corunha                          lxalvarz@...
15071 A Corunha, Galiza (Espanha)  http://www.udc.es/dep/lx/cac/

Hello,

The Code-Switching Forum is an unmoderated list for the discussion of
alternation of linguistic varieties (commonly called "code-switching"),
bilingual conversation and related phenomena. Topics of interest
include (but are not restricted to):
-the definition of "code" itself
-the definition and characterization of "code-switching" itself
-"code" and linguistic variety; "code-switching" and
language alternation
-the relations between language alternation and other interlingual phenomena
-bilingual conversation in general
-new trends in the study of language alternation
-codes, varieties and contextualization
-codes, indexicality and identity
-language alternation and conversational organization
-language alternation in literature and song
-code-switching and macro-sociolinguistic processes
-data gathering, transcription and interpretation
-universality and particularities of language
alternation

The Code-Switching Forum welcomes discussion,
queries, information, and materials. Materials
and documents can be uploaded to The
Code-Switching Forum "vault", at
http://www.egroups.com/docvault/code-switching .
The "vault" has a 20MB capacity. Please use HTML
or PDF formats when possible.

The Code-Switching Forum has no official or
preferred language for messages.

Upon subscription, please wait for a few days
until lots of people jump on to the wagon, and
then please introduce yourself to the list.

Thank you,

The Forum manager,
Celso Alvarez-Cáccamo
code-switching-owner@eGroups.com
lxalvarz@...