Developing a theory to account for symbolism in code switching

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to examine the importance of symbolism in one face of language: code switching. While some attention will be given to bi-registral and bi-dialectal code switching, the chief focus will be bilingual code switching. This does not imply that the former are any less important: switching among bi- and multilinguals is simply the most easily recognized since it represents the most extreme and clear-cut form of language switching. The findings concerning bilinguals would apply to all areas of switching.