Principles for Code-Switching between Standard and Egyptian Arabic.

Abstract

One characteristic of diglossie speech communities is the existence side by side of more than one variety of the same language. A study of radio and television interviews and panel discussions in one such community (Egypt) has shown that speakers alternate in their use of the two varieties (Egyptian and Standard Arabic), switching from one to the other across sentence boundaries and within the same sentence as well. This paper examines syntactic aspects of this code-switching mode of communication. It shows that this process does not proceed randomly but is, rather, governed by principles dependent on switch position, type of category involved at the switch position, and language variety. Two principles are discussed and proposed as explanations for the presence and absence of certain switches from the data studied.