Interactional otherness: Towards a redefinition of codeswitching

TLDR

The concept of codeswitching has traditionally been understood, from an external observer's perspective, to mean any occurrence of two languages within the same conversation. The authors propose to retain the term “codeswitching” to encompass both medium‑switching and medium suspension as instances of interactional otherness. They identify several types of language alternation—language alternation itself as the medium, medium repair, and functional deviance from the medium—highlighting medium‑switching and medium suspension as specific instances. The authors argue that codeswitching should be defined as any deviance from the current medium that participants do not perceive as needing repair, rather than simply any co‑occurrence of two languages.

Abstract

The concept of c odeswitching has traditionally been understood, from an external observer's perspective, to mean any occurrence of two languages within the same conversation. Our position is that language alternation should be observed from participants' own perspective. From this perspective, many distinct types of language alternation can be identified, namely “language alternation itself as the medium,” “medium repair” (Gafaranga, 1999,2000) and functional deviance from the medium. In turn, in this last possibility, two situations can be found: "medium-switching" and “medium suspension.” However, for practical reasons of research continuity, we suggest to keep the term “codeswitching” to refer to both cases for both are instances of i nteractional otherness. Thus, our “respecification” is that c odeswitching is, not any occurrence of two languages within the same conversation, but rather any instance of deviance from current medium which is not oriented to(by participants themselves) as requiring any repair .