Doctoral Dissertation Research: Processing code-switching in bilinguals: effects of language use and semantic expectancy

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Most bilinguals code-switch to some extent, that is, they move from one language to the other within the same utterance. The United States has an increasingly heterogeneous population, which includes a growing number of bilingual immigrants who use both English and their other language when communicating among each other. Code switching is often stigmatized and sometimes perceived as a deficiency in learning languages. However, code switching often occurs among highly-proficient bilinguals who are perfectly able to speak each language separately. Instead of condemning code switching, code switching should be seen as a cognitive tour de force. Investigating how bilingual speakers organize and select among the languages they know, how they process mixed languages, and what factors determine this, will therefore provide insight in human cognitive and social functioning in general. Previous psycholinguistic research on language switching has reported that switching between languages is difficult or costly. These studies have mostly ignored the bilingual's daily switching habits. The current study challenges the view that code switching is always costly by testing language users who code-switch on a regular basis, using multilinguals in Algeria as a case study. This population switches frequently between Algerian-Arabic and French; however, switching between Standard-Arabic and French is not common. This makes this population ideal to investigate whether the habit of switching between a pair of languages rather than another pair affects the expectation of switching, thus potentially minimizing or even eliminating the costs. In particular, the proposed research will test to what extent the switch costs depend on (1) the semantic expectancy of a particular word in a sentence; and (2) the daily frequency of switching between certain language pairs compared to others. Importantly, the current study will use spoken language, which is more naturalistic than the reading-only paradigms used in previous studies. In addition, the outcomes of the listening study will be related to the results from a survey on the language habits of the bilinguals in the study and their perception of and attitudes towards code switching. Findings from this project will therefore provide insight into the linguistic and non-linguistic factors that drive code-switching.