Aseel Nassar

Response 2
Code Mixing
Reading English-Cairene Arabic Classroom Code Switching: An
Interactional-Sociolinguistic Approach and Code- Mixing in Arabic-English
Bilingual by Atawneh was so beneficial and exciting. Both studies talk about
code mixing or we can call it code switching. of course , Not any one can
code switch. Mainly Bilinguals switch between languages in the same
utterance. Code-switching is the practice of moving between variations of
languages in different contexts. Everyone who speaks two languages has
learned to code-switch depending on the situation and setting. In an
educational context, code-switching is defined as the practice of switching
between a primary and a secondary language or discourse. Code switching
frequently happen unconsciously, but still it is rule governed as it is not
allowed from one language to another at every place. To clarify, there are
some constraints that considered universal. Atawnehs study studies the
syntactic categorization of the mixes between Arabic and English besides the
validity of the universal constraints in relation to Arabic and English code
mixing. The findings of Atawnehs study show that the most common mix
among single words is the noun category , whereas among the phrasal types
is the noun phrase. Articles and conjunctions did not appear at all. One
possible explanation for low frequency for articles and conjunction is that
they constitute a closed class in any language.

In Youssefs paper he mentions the major syntactic categories of CS,

referring to Poplacks classification (1978/1981) . First, tag switching , which
is related to the inclusion of a tag (e.g. you know, I mean, right, etc). The
second type of code-switching is the intersentential switching, which is at the
phrase or sentence level, between sentences. In inter-sentential switching a
speaker switches from one language to another between different sentences.
This implies that when the speech of an individual is divided into sentences,
one sentence will be in one language while the other sentence will be in a
totally different language. The third type is Intra sentential switching In this
type of switching, speakers switch from one language to another within the
same sentence. Thus a sentence will be made up of two or more languages.
This type is the most complex one because of the probability of violating
syntactic or grammar rules.
Both papers show that people who are fluent in two or more languages are
most likely to be able to switch between languages. It is considered a verbal
skill requiring a high degree of linguistic competence rather than a defect of
having insufficient knowledge of or the other language. However, in my
opinion I see it as a bad phenomenon and defect which should be minimized
and controlled. Nowadays, most of people are bilinguals in the Arab world
who speak English along with Arabic. Seriously, the code switch may cause
a shift or loss of Arabic. Because many Arabs use code switch for prestigious
reasons not because they are unconscious . So, As a teacher I think we
should control this phenomenon.

MY QUESTIONS:
1) How come code switching between two languages means high
proficiency in both?
2) Why do people switch? And is that has a relation with identities?
3) Is code switching a behavior that should be corrected?