Thesis (M.ED.) --University of Limpopo, 2008 / The Department of Education language policy states that all official languages may be used in the teaching and learning at South African schools. The department of Education has adopted an Additive Multilingualism as an approach to teaching. English is however, still being used as the language of learning and teaching, even to the learners who are not mother-tongue speakers of the language. This study explores the question of whether code-switching aids or impedes teaching and learning in Mathematics. The problem arises when learners encounter concepts in Mathematics which are written in English and need to be explained in English. Learners often struggled to understand these concepts with the results that educators resort to using their home language to try to explain what these concepts mean. To understand the nature of this problem and how it affects teaching and learning, a qualitative research was undertaken. Two secondary schools in the Sekgosese East Circuit were purposefully sampled for this study. The purpose of the study was to explore the role of code-switching in the teaching and learning of concepts in Mathematics and its effects on the acquisition of Mathematics. The findings revealed that the school were code-switching was applied performed better in Mathematics than the school where code-switching was not employed. The study recommended that educators should use the learners’ home language in instances where their knowledge of English impedes them to convey the meaning clearly.

This study analyses the code-switching variety Taglish (Tagalog-English) in personal weblogs written by Filipino bloggers.The main research questions are set forth in chapter one: why do writers of weblogs code-switch in contexts where there is no specific addressee and hence no turn taking, and why is 'this' particular language chosen at 'this' juncture in the weblog narrative?Chapter two gives an overview of relevant code-switching theory and research, and focuses especially on the sociolinguistic dimensions. In particular, the markedness model of Myers-Scotton is reviewed with respect to the notion of code-switching itself as an unmarked choice. This sets the stage for introducing Taglish as a normal and unmarked phenomenon for many Filipinos.Chapter three presents the socio-political and linguistic background in the Philippines. This give a backdrop for a focus on the evolution and status of Taglish.The problems associated with the presentation of self in Computer Mediated Communication (CMC) are examined in Chapter four and then the unique characteristics of weblogs are explored with respect to their purpose and genre.Chapter five looks at the design and methodology employed and emphasises the qualitative nature of the research and the sampling method as purposive. The main corpus of 25 extracts were analysed using frameworks which bring important perspectives to bear on the use of code-switching in the construction and negotiation of identity. These frameworks are: the referee design dimension of Bell's audience design model with its emphasis on initiative style shifts to project different identities; discursive psychology which highlights the use of language to position self and others; and narrative psychology with its stress on people's use of narrative to seek coherence of self and life-experience. These frameworks are combined with Bakhtinian notions of polyphony, dialogism and heteroglossia.Chapter six gives the detailed results of the analysis of seven weblogs which typify the findings of the corpus. Code-switching on these weblogs highlights the creative end of language use. However, it is a creativity tempered by the realities of Bakhtinian heteroglossia. The heteroglossic nature of the code-switching, in seemingly monological texts, is implicated in how the bloggers negotiate and construct social identities by positioning themselves and others in the ongoing narrative flow. In that the code-switching is extremely plentiful in this non-oral environment, it poses a serious challenge to the attempts by some conversational analysts (e.g., Li, 2005) to claim that code-switching can only really be explicated in terms of the systematics of an interaction taking place. The research seeks to stay within the spirit of CA by suggesting that even in a seemingly monologic form, interaction may be reconceived as heteroglossia covertly present in all language and overtly manifest in switching. Thus switching is not merely a product of how speakers attend to the orderly production of conversation, but also a product of how they attend to the inherent heteroglossic nature of language and exploit their linguistic repertoire maximally to make their communication as effective as possible, and to construct and negotiate multiple identities.

published_or_final_version / Linguistics / Master / Master of Philosophy

Not available / text

published_or_final_version / abstract / toc / Psychology / Master / Master of Philosophy

Code-mixing, defined as intra-sentential language alternation, is known to demonstrate structurally determined patterns of restriction. Universal constraints have been proposed to account for these structural restrictions (Poplack (1980), Woolford (1983), Di Sciullo, Muysken and Singh (1986)) but have had limited success in accounting for code-mixing between typologically diverse languages. This thesis examines the structural principles that apply universally to the interaction of languages in code-mixed sentences. We argue that systematic cross-linguistic restrictions on code-mixing can be accounted for by a syntactic constraint that is sensitive to the distinction between functional and lexical categories. / We propose the constraint of Language Indexation, according to which (structurally) adjacent categories of like functional/lexical category status must be realised in the same language. We show how this proposal accounts for code-mixed data from a range of language pairs, including Tagalog/English, Moroccan Arabic/French, Swahili/English, Irish/English, Hindi/English, Spanish/English and French/English. A difference in the application of Language Indexation in nominal versus verbal projections is discussed with reference to Tagalog/English and Moroccan Arabic/French code-mixing. Finally, we briefly examine the implications of Language Indexation with respect to the code-mixing of aphasic bilinguals.

This thesis is based on the recorded speech and field notes of the author's three-year-old child who was acquiring three languages simultaneously (Chichewa, Chitumbuka and English). Chichewa is his mother's first language, Chitumbuka is his father's first language and English is both the language of the preschool that he was attending and the official language in Malawi. This study was unusual in that it involved African languages that are under-researched in the field of language acquisition and dealt with two cognate languages (Chichewa and Chitumbuka) and a non-cognate language, English. The fact that Chichewa and Chitumbuka strongly resemble each other may have made movement between the two easier for the child. The analysis of the child's recorded speech shows that he mixed more at the lexical level (64.2%) and less at the phonological level (6.3%). The findings demonstrate that what the child had learnt at school in English fulfilled a booster function when either Chichewa or Chitumbuka was used. The results also reveal that the child's language mixing was influenced by the topic of discussion, the context and the interlocutor's mixed input. The interlocutor's discourse strategies also had an impact on the child's use of mixing. The results therefore provide support for the bilingual bootstrapping hypothesis, the modeling hypothesis and the discourse hypothesis. The results also demonstrate that Chichewa was generally the matrix or host language when mixing occurred. At school, however, where only English was permitted, the question of a matrix language did not occur. Furthermore, the combination of lexical and grammatical morphemes demonstrates that Chichewa was dominant in the child's speech, in terms of the dominant-language hypothesis proposed by Petersen (1988). This study challenges the Free Morpheme Constraint and the Equivalence Constraint in that they do not appear to be universally applicable. Instead, the Matrix Language Frame Model is supported as it applies to code-mixing involving English and Bantu languages. This model was relevant, as the speech analyzed in this study involved code-mixing between English and the two Bantu languages, Chichewa and Chitumbuka. However, it was difficult to apply the Matrix Language Frame Model to some of the child's mixed utterances because the MLU was low. It is hoped therefore that researchers will create further models that will allow for an analysis of the mixed morphemes in single word utterances, especially for the Nguni African languages, which are agglutinative by nature. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, 2006.

This study analyses the code-switching variety Taglish (Tagalog-English) in personal weblogs written by Filipino bloggers.The main research questions are set forth in chapter one: why do writers of weblogs code-switch in contexts where there is no specific addressee and hence no turn taking, and why is 'this' particular language chosen at 'this' juncture in the weblog narrative?Chapter two gives an overview of relevant code-switching theory and research, and focuses especially on the sociolinguistic dimensions. In particular, the markedness model of Myers-Scotton is reviewed with respect to the notion of code-switching itself as an unmarked choice. This sets the stage for introducing Taglish as a normal and unmarked phenomenon for many Filipinos.Chapter three presents the socio-political and linguistic background in the Philippines. This give a backdrop for a focus on the evolution and status of Taglish.The problems associated with the presentation of self in Computer Mediated Communication (CMC) are examined in Chapter four and then the unique characteristics of weblogs are explored with respect to their purpose and genre.Chapter five looks at the design and methodology employed and emphasises the qualitative nature of the research and the sampling method as purposive. The main corpus of 25 extracts were analysed using frameworks which bring important perspectives to bear on the use of code-switching in the construction and negotiation of identity. These frameworks are: the referee design dimension of Bell's audience design model with its emphasis on initiative style shifts to project different identities; discursive psychology which highlights the use of language to position self and others; and narrative psychology with its stress on people's use of narrative to seek coherence of self and life-experience. These frameworks are combined with Bakhtinian notions of polyphony, dialogism and heteroglossia.Chapter six gives the detailed results of the analysis of seven weblogs which typify the findings of the corpus. Code-switching on these weblogs highlights the creative end of language use. However, it is a creativity tempered by the realities of Bakhtinian heteroglossia. The heteroglossic nature of the code-switching, in seemingly monological texts, is implicated in how the bloggers negotiate and construct social identities by positioning themselves and others in the ongoing narrative flow. In that the code-switching is extremely plentiful in this non-oral environment, it poses a serious challenge to the attempts by some conversational analysts (e.g., Li, 2005) to claim that code-switching can only really be explicated in terms of the systematics of an interaction taking place. The research seeks to stay within the spirit of CA by suggesting that even in a seemingly monologic form, interaction may be reconceived as heteroglossia covertly present in all language and overtly manifest in switching. Thus switching is not merely a product of how speakers attend to the orderly production of conversation, but also a product of how they attend to the inherent heteroglossic nature of language and exploit their linguistic repertoire maximally to make their communication as effective as possible, and to construct and negotiate multiple identities.

Thesis--Doctoral--University of Western Sydney, (Faculty of Education), 1996. / Includes bibliographical references (v. 1, p. 124-134).

Thesis (M.A.)--Indiana University, 2008. / Title from screen (viewed on August 28, 2009). Department of English, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI). Advisor(s): Steve Fox, Thom Upton, Susan Shepherd. Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 114-116).