Bilingual Speakers of English and Korean and Code Switching Practice

Abstract

The focus of this paper is to further understand the sociological tradition of language through the analysis of language alternation behaviors among bilingual speakers, namely Korean-English conversational code-switching. The paper investigates how and in what ways the code-switches are used as a linguistic resource to accomplish particular social and communicative functions as well as how and in what ways cultural-social meanings, such as social hierarchy, are both conditions for and reproduced in code-switches. The goal of this study is to look beyond the boundaries of a particular communicative event and study the affordances that bring the particular code-choices to the present moment. The paper also explores, through the analysis of particular micro-events, that within the constraints and prefabrications in which each participant operate, the possibility that people have of re-fabricating and re-synthesizing the preconditions that they are socialized into as they engage in an active and creative process of language practices production.