Bilingual Speakers of English and Korean and Code Switching Practice

Abstract

The focus of this paper is to further understand the sociological tradition of language through
the analysis of language alternation behaviors among bilingual speakers, namely Korean-Eng
lish conversational code-switching. The paper investigates how and in what ways the code-s
witches are used as a linguistic resource to accomplish particular social and communicative f
unctions as well as how and in what ways cultural-social meanings, such as social hierarchy,
are both conditions for and reproduced in code-switches. The goal of this study is to look bey
ond the boundaries of a particular communicative event and study the affordances that bring t
he particular code-choices to the present moment. The paper also explores, through the analys
is of particular micro-events, that within the constraints and prefabrications in which each par
ticipant operate, the possibility that people have of re-fabricating and re-synthesizing the preconditions
that they are socialized into as they engage in an active and creative process of lan
guage practices production.