Article published in:
Belgian Journal of Linguistics, Volume 35 (2021): Current Perspectives on Codeswitching
Edited by Emma Vanden Wyngaerd, Renata Enghels, Mena B. Lafkioui and Marie Steffens
[Belgian Journal of Linguistics 35] 2021
► pp. 76–103

Beyond differences and similarities in codeswitching and translanguaging research

| The College of Wooster | Leiden University

In previous research, there has been an emphasis on differentiating and distancing translanguaging from codeswitching, partly on the basis that the latter refers to the combination of two discrete systems that correspond to named languages. While this is the mainstream view, there are codeswitching scholars who have proposed alternative views that align with some of the same observations and criticisms that have been raised by proponents of translanguaging. In this conceptual paper, I provide an overview of translanguaging alongside opposing views of codeswitching, and I underscore important similarities that have thus far been absent from present discussions regarding translanguaging versus codeswitching. Drawing on data from the understudied Spanish/English codeswitching variety spoken in Northern Belize, I discuss how bilingual compound verbs lend support to alternative views of codeswitching. Despite clear differences in their empirical goals, research conducted by both codeswitching and translanguaging scholars compels us to reexamine fundamental notions about language and linguistic competence. This reevaluation will not only contribute to theoretical advancement, but it will further elucidate our understanding of the complexity and dynamicity that characterizes bi/multilingual speech production and processing.

Keywords: codeswitching, translanguaging, bi/multilingualism, linguistic theory, bilingual education, sociolinguistics
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Translanguaging as an evolving concept and theory
    • 2.1What is translanguaging?
    • 2.2Translanguaging and CS: Differences and disagreements
  • 3.Codeswitching from different perspectives
    • 3.1What is codeswitching?
    • 3.2Mainstream view of codeswitching
    • 3.3Alternative views of codeswitching
  • 4.Bilingual compound verbs in Spanish/English CS
  • 5.Discussion and conclusion
  • Acknowledgments
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 15 February 2022
https://doi.org/10.1075/bjl.00065.bal
References
Alvarez-Cáccamo, Celso
1998 “From ‘Switching Code’ to ‘Code-Switching’: Towards a Reconceptualization of Communicative Codes.” In Codeswitching in Conversation: Language, Interaction and Identity, ed. by Peter Auer. 29–50. New York, NY: Routledge.Google Scholar
Backus, Ad
2015 “A Usage-Based Approach to Code-Switching: The Need for Reconciling Structure and Function.” In Code-switching between Structural and Sociolinguistic Perspectives, ed. by Gerald Stell, and Kofi Yapko. 19–37. Boston, MA: De Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Baker, Colin
2001 Foundations of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.Google Scholar
Balam, Osmer
2014 “Notes on the History and Morphosyntactic Characteristics of Spanish in Northern Belize.” Kansas Working Papers in Linguistics 351: 79–94. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2015 “Code-switching and Linguistic Evolution: The Case of ‘Hacer + V’ in Orange Walk, Northern Belize.” Lengua y Migración 7 (1): 83–109Google Scholar
2016a “Language Use, Language Change and Innovation in Northern Belize Contact Spanish.” PhD dissertation, University of Florida, USA.
2016b “Semantic Categories and Gender Assignment in Contact Spanish: Type of CS and its Relevance to Linguistic Outcomes.” Journal of Language Contact 9 (3): 405–435. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2016c “Mixed Verbs in Contact Spanish: Patterns of Use among Emergent and Dynamic Bi/multilinguals.” Languages 1(1): article no. 3. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Balam, Osmer, and Ana de Prada Pérez
2016 “On the Productive Use of ‘Hacer + V’ in Northern Belize Bilingual/Trilingual Codeswitching.” In Spanish-English Codeswitching in the Caribbean and the U.S., ed. by Rosa E. Guzzardo Tamargo, Catherine Mazak, and María del Carmen Parafita Couto. 261–279. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Balam, Osmer, María del Carmen Parafita Couto, and Hans Stadthagen-González
2020 “Bilingual Verbs in Three Spanish/English Code-Switching Communities.” International Journal of Bilingualism 24 (5–6): 952–967. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Beatty-Martínez, Anne. L., and Paola E. Dussias
2017 “Bilingual Experience Shapes Language Processing: Evidence from Codeswitching.” Journal of Memory and Language 951: 173–189. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bullock, Barbara E., and Jacqueline A. Toribio
2004 “Introduction: Convergence as an Emergent Property in Bilingual Speech.” Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 7 (2): 91–93. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2009 Cambridge Handbook of Linguistic Code-Switching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Chomsky, Noam
1986 Knowledge of Language: Its Nature, Origin, and Use. New York: Praeger.Google Scholar
1991 “Linguistics and Cognitive Science: Problems and Mysteries.” In The Chomskyan Turn, ed. by Asa Krashen. 26–54. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Clyne, Michael G.
1987 “Constraints on Code switching: How Universal Are They?” Linguistics 251: 739–764. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2003 Dynamics of Language Contact: English and Immigrant Languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Costa, Albert
2005 “Lexical Access in Bilingual Production.” In Handbook of Bilingualism: Psycholinguistic Approaches, ed. by Judith Kroll, and Annett M. B. de Groot. 308–325. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
DeGraff, Michel
2009 “Language Acquisition in Creolization, and thus, Language Change: Some Castesian-Uniformitarian Boundary Conditions”. Language and Linguistics Compass, 3 (4): 888–971. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Deuchar, Margaret
2020 “Code-switching in Linguistics: A Position Paper.” Languages 5 (2): article no. 22. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Edwards, Malcolm, and Penelope Gardner-Chloros
2007 “Compound Verbs in Codeswitching: Bilinguals Making Do?” International Journal of Bilingualism 11 (1): 73–91. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Embick, David
2015 The Morpheme. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fricke, Melinda, Judith F. Kroll, and Paola E. Dussias
2016 “Phonetic Variation in Bilingual Speech: A Lens for Studying the Production-Comprehension Link.” Journal of Memory and Language 891: 110–137. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gafaranga, Joseph, and María-Carme Torras
2002 “Interactional Otherness: Towards a Redefinition of Code-Switching.” International Journal of Bilingualism 6 (1): 1–22. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
García, Ofelia
2009 Bilingual Education in the 21st Century: A Global Perspective. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar
2011 “Educating New York’s Bilingual Children: Constructing a Future from the Past.” International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism 14 (2): 133–153. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2014 U.S. “Spanish and Education: Global and Local Intersections.” Review of Research in Education 38 (1): 58–80. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
García, Ofelia, Nelson Flores, and Haiwen Chu
2011 “Extending Bilingualism in US Secondary Education: New Variations.” International Multilingual Research Journal 5 (1): 1–18. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
García, Ofelia, and Jo Anne Kleifgen
2010 Educating Emergent Bilinguals. Policies, Programs and Practices for English Language Learners. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.Google Scholar
García, Ofelia, and Angel Lin
2016 “Translanguaging and Bilingual Education.” In Bilingual and Multingual Education, Encyclopedia of Language and Education, ed. by Ofelia García, Angel Lin, and Stephen May. 117–130. Switzerland: Springer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gardner-Chloros, Penelope
1995 “Codeswitching in Community, Regional and National Repertoires: The Myth of the Discreteness of Linguistic Systems.” In One Speaker Two Languages: Cross-disciplinary Perspectives on Codeswitching, ed. by Lesley Milroy, and Pieter Muysken. 68–89. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2009 Code-switching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2010 “Contact and Code-switching.” In The Handbook of Language Contact, ed. by Raymond Hickey. 188–208. Malden, MA: Blackwell Riley. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gardner-Chloros, Penelope, and Malcolm Edwards
2004 “Assumption behind Grammatical Approaches to Code-switching: When the Blueprint is a Red Herring.” Transactions of the Philological Society 102 (1): 103–129. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
González-Vilbazo, Kay, and Luis López
2011 “Some Properties of Light Verbs in Codeswitching.” Lingua 121 (5): 832–850. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Goodman, Bridget, and Serikbolsyn Tastanbek
2021 “Making the Shift from a Codeswitching to a Translanguaging Lens in English Language Teacher Education.” TESOL Quarterly 55 (1): 29–53. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Grimstad, Maren B.
2017 “The Code-switching/Borrowing Debate: Evidence from English-origin Verbs in American Norwegian.” Lingue e Linguaggio 16 (3): 3–34.Google Scholar
Grimstad, Maren B., Terje Lohndal, and Tor A. Åfarli
2014 “Language Mixing and Exoskeletal Theory: A Case Study of Word-Internal Mixing in American Norwegian.” Nordlyd 41 (2): 213–237. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Grimstad, Maren B., Brita R. Riksem, Terje Lohndal, and Tor A. Åfarli
2018 “Lexicalist vs Exoskeletal Approaches to Language Mixing.” The Linguistic Review 35 (2): 187–218. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Grosjean, Francois
1989 “Neurolinguists, Beware! The Bilingual is not Two Monolinguals in One Person.” Brain and Language, 36 (1): 3–15. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Halle, Morris, and Alec Marantz
1993 “Distributed Morphology and the Pieces of Inflection.” In The View from Building 20 1, ed. by Ken Hale, and S. Jay Keyser. 111–176. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Hebblethwaite, Benjamin
2007 “Intrasentential Code-switching among Miami Haitian Creole–English Bilinguals.” PhD dissertation, Indiana University, USA.
Jenkins, Devin
2003 “Bilingual Verb Constructions in Southwestern Spanish.” Bilingual Review 27 (3): 195–204.Google Scholar
Johns, Michael A., and Jonatahn Steucker
2021 “Is Codeswitching Easy or Difficult? Testing Processing Cost through the Prosodic Structure of Bilingual Speech.” Cognition 2111: 104634. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Le Page, Robert
1994 “The Notion of ‘Linguistic System’ Revisited”. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 1091: 109–120. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Leung, Constant, and Guadalupe Valdés
2019 “Translanguaging and the Transdisciplinary Framework for Language Teaching and Learning in a Multilingual World.” Modern Language Journal 103 (2): 348–370. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lewis, Gwyn, Bryn Jones, and Colin Baker
2012a “Translanguaging: Origins and Development from School to Street and Beyond.” Educational Research and Evaluation 18 (7): 641–654. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2012b “Translanguaging: Developing its Conceptualization and Contextualisation.” Educational Research and Evaluation 18 (7): 655–670. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
López, Luis
2020 Bilingual Grammar. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
MacSwan, Jeff
2005 “Codeswitching and Generative Grammar: A Critique of the MLF Model and Some remarks on Modified Minimalism.” Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 8 (1): 1–22. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2017 “A Multilingual Perspective on Translanguaging.” American Educational Research Journal 54 (1): 167–201. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2000 The architecture of the bilingual language faculty: Evidence from code-switching. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 3(1): 37–54.Google Scholar
Mazak, Catherine M., and Claudia Herbas-Donoso
2015 “Translanguaging Practices at a Bilingual University: A Case Study of a Science Classroom.” International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism 18 (6): 698–714. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mufwene, Salikoko
1999 “On the Language Bioprogram Hypothesis: Hints from Tazie”. In Language Creation and Language Change. Creolization, Diachrony and Development, ed. by Michel DeGraff. 95–127. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Muysken, Pieter
2000 Bilingual Speech: A Typology of Code-Mixing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
2015 “Deja VooDoo or New Trails Ahead? Re-evaluating the Mixing Typology Model.” In Linguistic Variation: Confronting Fact and Theory, ed. by Rena T. Cacoullos, Nathalie Dion, and André Lapierre. 242–261. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Myers-Scotton, Carol
1993 Duelling Languages: Grammatical Structure in Codeswitching. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
2002 Contact Linguistics: Bilingual Encounters and Grammatical Outcomes. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Otheguy, Ricardo, Ofelia García, and Wallis Reid
2015 “Clarifying Translanguaging and Deconstructing Named Languages: A Perspective from Linguistics.” Applied Linguistics Review 6 (3): 281–307. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2019 “A Translanguaging View of the Linguistic System of Bilinguals.” Applied Linguistics Review 10 (4): 625–651. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pfaff, Carol W.
1979 “Constraints on Language Mixing: Intrasentential Code-switching and Borrowing in Spanish/English.” Language 55 (2): 296–316. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Poplack, Shana
1980 “Sometimes I’ll Start a Sentence in English y termino en Español: Toward a Typology of Code-Switching.” Linguistics 18 (7–8): 581–618. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2018 Borrowing: Loanwords in the Speech Community and in the Grammar. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Poplack, Shana, and Marjory Meechan
1998 “Introduction: How Languages Fit Together in Codemixing.” International Journal of Bilingualism 2 (2): 127–138. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Poza, Luis
2017 “Translanguaging: Definitions, Implications, and Further Needs in Burgeoning Inquiry.” Berkeley Review of Education 6 (2): 101–128. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rajendram, Shakina
2021 “Translanguaging as an Agentive Pedagogy for Multilingual Learners: Affordances and Constraints.” International Journal of Multilingualism. Early view, 1–28. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rodríguez-González, Eva, and María del Carmen Parafita-Couto
2012 “Calling for Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Study of Spanglish and its Linguistic Manifestations.” Hispania 95 (3): 461–480.Google Scholar
Sankoff, David, and Shana Poplack
1981 “A Formal Grammar for Code-Switching.” Papers in Linguistics 14 (1): 3–46. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sankoff, David, Shana Poplack, and Swathi Vanniarajan
1990 “The Case of the Nonce Loan in Tamil.” Language Variation and Change 2 (1): 71–101. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sebba, Mark
1998 “A Congruence Approach to the Syntax of Codeswitching.” International Journal of Bilingualism 2 (1): 1–19. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Siegel, Jeff
2005 “Creolization outside Creolistics”. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 20 (1): 141–167. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Thomason, Sarah
2001 Language Contact: An Introduction. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.Google Scholar
Toribio, Jacqueline A.
2004 “Convergence as an Optimization Strategy of Bilingual Speech: Evidence from Code-Switching.” Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 7 (2): 165–173. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Treffers-Daller, Jeanine
2021 “Living Apart Together. A Critical Review of the Ways in which Bilinguals Mix and Separate their Languages in Code-switching and Translanguaging.” Keynote paper presented at the Conference on Multilingualism , Konstanz, Germany, June 23–25.
Vogel, Sara, and Ofelia García
2017 “Translanguaging.” In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Education, ed. by George W. Noblit, and Luis Moll. 2–21. UK: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wei, Li
2011 “Moment Analysis and Translanguaging Space: Discursive Construction of Identities by Multilingual Chinese Youth in Britain.” Journal of Pragmatics 43 (5): 1222–1235. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2018 “Translanguaging as a Practical Theory of Language.” Applied Linguistics Review, 39 (2): 9–30. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wichmann, Søren, and Jan Wohlgemuth
2008 “Loan Verbs in a Typological Perspective.” In Aspects of Language Contact. New Theoretical, Methodological and Empirical Findings with Special Focus on Romancisation Processes, ed. by Thomas Stolz, Dik Bakker, and Rosa Salas Palomo. 89–121. New York: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Williams, Cen
1994 Arfarniad o Ddulliau Dysgu ac Addysgu yng Nghyd-destun Addysg Uwchradd Ddwyieithog, [An evaluation of teaching and learning methods in the context of bilingual secondary education]. PhD dissertation, University of Wales, Bangor.