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Abstract
This article describes the code-switching (CS) patterns of 31 native Gibraltarians (16F/15M) spread over four generations, aged: (A) 14-25 (B) 26-39 (C) 40-59 and (D) 60+, as revealed in a series of structured interviews. It shows that while monolingual or near-monolingual Spanish usage dominates for all participants in their 60s and above, the younger generations demonstrate a progressively greater breadth of language choice and code-switching patterns. In the case of the youngest generation, which comprises teenagers and people in their early 20s, monolingual Spanish, monolingual English and a range of code-switching phenomena are all attested. This increased variation in code-switching and language choice is shown to be related both to key events in Gibraltar's sociolinguistic history, and to a constellation of individuating factors such as social network construction, residency patterns, and attitudinal orientations towards Spain and the UK. This breadth of variation also tests the view (in, for example, Muysken 2000: 221) that CS is a phenomenon that can be classified at the community level. It proposes instead that the most convincing account of code-switching variation must also acknowledge the individual's relationship with sociolinguistic trends within a given speech community.
Keywords
code-switching, English, Gibraltar, language choice, Spanish, variation
1 Introduction
The complexities of the term "code-switching" (CS) are well known, and documented in, amongst others, Clyne (2003) and Gardner-Chloros (2009). In this article, "code-switching" is used to describe the phenomenon in which speakers move from one language to another either within an utterance or between utterances. This stands in contrast to "language choice" where a language is selected based on an assessment of the situation, or sociolinguisic context. Over the past 30 years, the literature on CS has grown exponentially. As Gardner-Chloros (2009, p. 10) notes, the three main pillars of this research are: (1) sociolinguistic/ethnographic studies of bilingual speech communities where CS is in evidence; (2) pragmatic or conversation-analytic approaches where the production of meaning is often tied to the sequencing of language choice preference; and (3) grammatical analyses of bilingual data which focus on (and thus presuppose) underlying rules and constraints on how languages are combined. Recent work on CS has, however, opened up other avenues of investigation, including: how CS is acquired and deployed by children and L2 adult learners;...