| This project addresses the research of Spanish-English code-switching---the alternating use of two languages in the discourse of bilingual individuals. Such behavior (also ill-defined as "Spanglish" or "Tex-Mex") has been traditionally stigmatized by monolinguals and bilinguals alike. However, code-switching has been studied with increasing interest within the last three decades and it has proved to be neither meaningless nor an anarchic process. Instead, it fulfills several linguistic and socio-pragmatic functions in the discourse of bilinguals.; Code-switching is present both at the oral and written levels. Written code-switching can be found in bilingual literature as well as in magazines, songs, and other types of more personal testimonials. Written code-switching is also governed by social constraints and it displays similar types and functions to those of oral code-switching. However, research to date has primarily focused on code-switching in spoken language, whereas research on the written level still remains at an embryonic state. The few studies carried out on written code-switching primarily address bilingual literature.; Thus, with the underlying hypothesis that code-switching is more acceptable at the written level, this work seeks to explore this scarcely studied area and attempts to answer, among others, these questions: Where, why, and how do we find written code-switching? Which types of socio-pragmatic functions does written code-switching perform? How are those different or similar to the functions in natural discourse? How do those functions differ across genres?; The corpus of data consists of a wide variety of bilingual texts from different sources including literature (drama, poetry and prose), narratives, magazines, personal manuscripts such as journal entries or personal letters as well as electronic mail among bilingual speakers. This departs from previous studies that primarily focused on literary texts in as much as I consider other forms of writing which are closer to natural speech. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to analyze the sociopragmatic motivations and functions performed by written code-switching, and to determine to what extent those socio-pragmatic functions proposed in the literature for oral code-switching apply to the written modes and across the different genres. |
