Early Cases of Code-Switching in Mexican-Heritage Children: Linguistic and Sociopragmatic Considerations

Abstract

Reasons for code-switching in young children range from the linguistic (single-word borrowings that appear to be translation equivalents or to fill gaps in lexical knowledge) to more complex sociolinguistic and sociocognitive factors, such as desiring affiliative interactions. We looked at patterns of code-switching in narratives derived from prompted story stems from 97 Mexican-heritage children between 54–67 months. Code-switches were categorized into two broad categories: code-mixings, or single-word borrowings, and code-changes that appeared to have a sociopragmatic purpose. Most code-switches took the form of single-word borrowings. Some, however, were sociopragmatic in nature, such as the child code-switching to try to gain the interviewer's attention or to change speaking roles, suggesting these young children have the facility to use their two languages strategically for both linguistic and nonlinguistic purposes from a very early age.