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When researching the topic of Children Code Switching for the first blog post there was a lot of information in the popular media about bilingual children and code switching. While reading through those popular sources about code switching being a natural part of being bilingual there were main academic sources about wheter children are aware when they code switch. One of those academic sources found was from Ana Zentella and her research.
While
researching Spanish-English code switching in a Puerto Rican neighborhood in
New York, Ana Zentella found that her participants would code switch to make up
for a lack of proficiency in their languages. They would use code switching as
a crutch and only would remember, “because of the effort and embarrassment
involved in code switching”. She also argues that that effortless code
switching, in which proficient bilinguals engage in, is likely to be
unconscious by the speaker. Code switching in bilingual speakers also functions
below the level of their awareness.
There are many different forms of code switching that a
bilingual speaker can engage in from one word borrowing to translation
equivalents. Code switching is governed both by marked and unmarked choices in switches
as well as by the importance of social norms that act in accordance with
constraints in linguistic structures. People may use code switching to express
group identity, status and cross social boundaries. With children they have may
different levels in which they use language due to the age when they were
introduced to the language, their familiarity with the language, their social
networks. All of these factors lead to different rates of lexical development
for each language they speak.
While there is not a lot of information in popular media
to the effects of whether children are aware or unaware when they code switch,
there is a lot of information in the academic sources. I feel that the reason
why there is not a lot of information about whether children are aware when they
code switch in the popular media is because when a child code switches, parents
and teachers are more focused with trying to stop them from code switching.
Parents and teachers feel that when a child code switches it is because of
their lack of knowledge in both languages. I feel that if the general audience was
aware of the fact that is it is normal to code switch than more information and
research would be conducted on whether child are aware when they code switch.
