Charles Explorer logo
🇬🇧

Codeswitching Versus Codemixing

Publication at Faculty of Humanities |
2019

Abstract

In my paper I argue that there is a significant difference in bilinguals uttering a word or phrase in a different language that they speak at the moment - code mixing and when bilingual people switch between their two (or more) languages for whole sentence or whole thought. I have conducted six months research on bilingual children, doing participating observation, speech analyze of preschool and early school children speeches among themselves.

The research showed a few interesting findings in the way bilingual children use their languages; certain patterns can be found in their speech. In my research of the bilingual children I have found out that code mixing (mixing in one language one word or phrase in other language) and code switching (switching into different language for whole sentence) is used in different situations and for different reasons in bilingual children.

Although there cannot always be strong distinction between the two types of mixing two languages together, the line is not always clear and the two types of switching cannot be always parted, there is a significant pattern which can tell us about the bilingual peoples use of their languages.