Raids on the articulate: Code-switching, style-shifting and post-colonial writing

Journal of Commonwealth Literature

Volumn 33, Issue 2, 1998, Pages 75-96

  Gordon, Elizabeth ^a   Williams, Mark ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CANTERBURY   (New Zealand)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 36949025815     PISSN: 00219894     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/002198949803300206     Document Type: Review

References (37)

1. Bill Manhire, Dirty Silence: Impure Sounds in New Zealand Poetry Auckland: OUP, 1991, p. 151
2. K.M. McConnick, "Code-Switching and Mixing", in Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, ed. R.E. Asher, Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1994, p. 581
3. There are more inclusive definitions of the practice which would seem to allow Manhire's usage. Carol Myers-Scotton in her book Social Motivations for Code-Switching: Evidence from Africa, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995, p. 2, defines code-switching broadly: "The linguistic varieties participating in code-switching may be different languages, or dialects or styles of the same language". However, Myers-Scotton makes it clear that code-switching is practised by bilinguals or multilinguals not simply by monolinguals shifting from a high style to a more demotic register within the same language (p. 4)
4. This kind of code-switching is described in Bernice Rubens's The Elected Member (1970) which deals with a self-enclosed Jewish family in post-war Britain: "The shopkeeper's Yiddish was fluent, but it was punctuated by the occasional English word, which, by the gist of general meaning, Abraham Zweck was able to understand. In his first years in England, this was the way he was able to pick up the language, collecting all those odd English throw-outs, for which the speakers knew no Yiddish equivalent. Words like wardrobe, electric fire, conservative. Hundreds of single words that together gave Abraham Zweck a great vocabulary, but little language. His conversation became like his friends', only in reverse. He would use Yiddish throwouts in the brackets of his halting English. The people of the neighbourhood understood him as he did them, and they learned more Yiddish from his speech. It was a mutual linguaphone", Bernice Rubens, The Elected Member, London: Hamish Hamilton, 1983, p. 47
5. N. Denison, "Some Observations on Language Variety and Plurilingualism", in Sociolinguistics: Selected Readings, eds. J.B. Pride and Janet Holmes, Harmond-sworth: Penguin, 1972, pp. 65-77
6. R.A. Hudson, Sociolinguistics, Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996, p. 52
7. Denison, "Some Observations on Language Variety and Plurilingualism", pp. 70-72
8. Hudson, Sociolinguistics, p. 53
9. Gillian Sankoff, "Language Use in Multilingual Societies: Some Alternative Approaches", in Sociolinguistics, eds. Pride and Holmes, pp. 33-51
10. Myers-Scotton, Social Motivations for Code-Switching, p. 40
11. Viv Edwards, "Patois and the Politics of Protest: Black English in British Classrooms", in Sociolinguistics: A Reader, eds. Nikolas Coupland and Adam Jaworski, London: Macmillan, 1997, p. 415
12. Sydney Morning Herald, 1981, cited in George Saunders, Bilingual Children: Guidance for the Family, Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, 1982, p. 113
13. Monica Heller, "Code-Switching and the Politics of Language," One Speaker, Two Languages: Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives on Code-Switching, Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1995, p. 159
14. Heller, Code-Switching: Anthropological and Sociolinguistic Perspectives, Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 1988, p. 1
15. Heller, Code-Switching, p. 1
16. James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, New York: Signet, 1991, p. 97
17. Agatha Christie, Murder on the Links, London: Fontana, 1988, p. 13
18. Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart, Oxford: Heninemann, 1996, p. 10
19. Achebe, "The African Writer and the English Language", in Morning Yet on Creation Day: Essays, London: Heinemann, 1977, p. 58
20. S. Poplack, "Sometimes I'll start a sentence in English Y TERMINO EN ESPAÑOL: Toward a Typology of Code-Switching", Linguistics, 18 (1980), 581-618
21. Patricia Grace, The Dream Sleepers and Other Stories Auckland: Longman Paul, 1986, p. 79
22. Heller, "Code-Switching and the Politics of Language", p. 161
23. Grace, Potiki, Auckland: Penguin, 1986, pp. 125-6
24. On Maori borrowings in New Zealand English see Tony Deverson, "New Zealand English Lexis: The Maori Dimension," English Today 26 (1991), 18-25
25. Sia Figiel, Where We Once Belonged, Auckland: Pasifika Press, 1996, p. 19
26. Agnes-Mary Brooke, review of Short Stories from New Zealand, selected by Alistair Paterson, Christchurch Press, 25 February 1989, p. 27
27. See Michael Clyne, "Constraints in Code-Switching: How Universal Are They?", Linguistics, 25 (1987), 739-64
28. C.W. Pfaff, "Constraints on Language Mixing: Intrasentiential Code-Switching and Borrowing in Spanish/English", Language, 55 (1979), 291-318
29. Poplack, "Sometimes I'll start a Sentence in English Y TERMINO EN ESPAÑOL: Toward a Typology of Code-Switching", D. Sankoff and S. Poplack, "A Formal Grammar for Code-Switching", Papers in Linguistics, 14 (1981), 3-46
30. S. Romaine, Bilingualism, Oxford: Blackwell, 1989
31. Grace, Potiki, p. 104
32. Grace, Cousins, Auckland: Penguin, 1992, p. 215
33. The Maori Language Commissioner, Timoti Kāretu, recently expressed concern about the attempts by some to use the Maori language in all locations and for all purposes. While on the one hand this is seen as a good thing, on the other hand, it is sometimes a case of Pakeha ideas and culture being expressed in a stilted manner using Maori words and syntax, and it has led to a confusing proliferation of new vocabulary, such as scientific terms. He suggests that a separation of the functions or domains of the two languages would possibly be helpful until the Maori language has gained strength. ("He Muka", Putanga 8 [Takurua 1995], Te Taura Whin i te Reo Maori.)
34. Myers-Scotton, "Code-Switching as a 'Safe Choice' in Choosing a Lingua Franca", Language and Society: Anthropological Issues, eds. W. McCormack and S. Wurm, Mouton: The Hague, 1979, pp. 71-88
35. Noel Stock, Poet in Exile, Manchester: Manchester UP, 1964, p. 5
36. Joyce, Portrait, p. 193
37. See R.D. Grillo, Dominant Languages: Language and Hierarchy in Britain and France, Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1989, p. 150