Code-switching occurs when bilingual or multilingual speakers combine and mix their different languages. The communication may seem unstructured and confusing for an outsider but the switching between languages has a purpose and a function. The aim of this thesis is to briefly exemplify three reasons for code-switching in conversations between bilingual parents and their children living in Sweden, but whose first language is Spanish. The three reasons that this thesis focuses on are when speakers use code-switching when they talk about subjects that are associated to the Swedish culture or don’t have equivalent translations in Spanish, when the speakers narrate something that happened in a context where that specific language was used and when the speakers talk about subjects associated to the school. The study also hypothesizes that there is a difference in how much the parents and the children code-switch. Two bilingual families were selected for this study based on their proficiency in both languages and the age of the children (7, 12 and 12). Both families were interviewed separately, and the conversations were recorded and transcribed. In accordance with previous studies, the results of this study show that all three reasons mentioned above, are used by both families and by both the parents and their children. However, there is no coherence between this study and the ones that claim that children code-switch more than adults.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:du-48865 |
| Date | January 2024 |
| Creators | Kjell, Anna |
| Publisher | Högskolan Dalarna, Institutionen för språk, litteratur och lärande |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Spanish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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