Children's code-switching in multilingual family settings: based on parents’ reports and testimonials

Abstract

The purpose of this bachelor’s thesis is to examine how code-switching occurs in children’s communication in multilingual family settings. This thesis aims to provide an overview about the types of code-switching that children use and about the distribution of the different varieties. Research material has been collected from various online platforms regarding multilingualism and multilingual families. I have categorized and further analyzed direct quotes from children’s communication as they have been reported by the parents. In addition to the quotes, the data set includes parents’ testimonials and experiences about their children’s code-switching. In the analysis of the data, I will use François Grosjean’s theory of language modes and his linguistic interferences to categorize the different instances of code-switching.

Out of 34 cases of the collected samples of children’s communications, 82% of the code-switching occurred mid-sentence, intra-sententially. 44% of the code-switches were lexical interferences and 11 out of 15 cases included switches in nouns or noun phrases. The second largest category was the combination of lexical and syntactic interferences that covered 29% of the cases. Other instances of code-switching included emphasis (6%), simplification (18%) and person-language bond (3%). Parents’ testimonials complemented these findings.