code-switching – Educational Sociolinguistics

The Bonjour-Hi controversy

Catherine Shieh

As a language teacher, I like the idea of hearing more languages being spoken everywhere. It translates to a persons’ full linguistic repertoire being used and honoured. However, in Quebec, the act of greeting people in more than one language has become a controversy. It is so well known that Saturday Night Live even made a skit about it.

According to Van Herk (2018), code switching is a common phenomenon. It is a linguistic resource many communities use to signal a bi-cultural identity. Montreal being in a French province within an English dominant country, complicates the situation. As stipulated by the Charter of the French Language, all workers must carry their activities in French. However, many retail and business workers use the expression Bonjour-Hi, to indicate their fluency in both languages and to provide courteous customer service.

In October 2019, the Quebec government expressed his will to eliminate the bilingual expression Bonjour-Hi in businesses and government services. This statement came after the Office Québécois de la langue française (OQLF), who oversees the preservation of French, revealed that greetings in French dropped from 84 to 75% between 2010 and 2017. Thus, Simon Jolin-Barette, the minister responsible for the French language, sees this as evidence that the official language of the province is under threat.

Following Jolin-Barette’s announcement, the Bloc Québécois posted an advertisement on Twitter promoting the alternative expression “Bonjour-HO”. This holiday campaign aims at stamping out the bilingual greeting Bonjour-Hi. However, many people on social media pointed out the that the phrase might not be appropriate because the word “ho” carries a markedly different meaning than Santa Claus’s ho-ho-ho.

Avec la campagne «2021 : On touche du bois!», on vous offre nos meilleurs voeux à notre manière afin que l’année qui vient soit meilleure que 2020. Montréal bénéficiera également de la campagne «Bonjour–HO !» qui met de l’avant l’usage du français. Joyeuses Fêtes! @yfblanchet pic.twitter.com/Z7GkakMncm
— Bloc Québécois (@BlocQuebecois) December 13, 2020

In my opinion, the expression Bonjour-Hi is what makes the city of Montreal unique. This greeting should be kept in the same way because it promotes inclusivity and respect for both languages. Our province’s financial resource should not be allocated to separate the anglophones and the francophones any further. Policies should also focus on expanding and not reducing people’s linguistic repertoire. That said, what are your thoughts on the proposed banning of Bonjour-Hi?

References

Gouvernement du Québec. (n.d.). Office québécois de la Langue Française. Accueil – Office québécois de la langue française. Retrieved October 27, 2022, from https://www.oqlf.gouv.qc.ca/accueil.aspx

Québécois, B. (2020, December 13). Avec la campagne “2021. Twitter. Retrieved October 27, 2022, from https://twitter.com/BlocQuebecois/status/1337915163090030596?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1337915163090030596%7Ctwgr%5Ecdecb1b29c9448fb27db955ae6e0d4e1f375c097%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.timeout.com%2Fmontreal%2Fnews%2Fheres-how-montrealers-are-reacting-to-replacing-bonjour-hi-with-bonjour-ho-121420

Sandler, G. (2022, January 12). SNL did a skit about Montreal last night & it was brutal. MTL Blog. Retrieved October 27, 2022, from https://www.mtlblog.com/montreal/snl-did-a-skit-about-montreal-it-was-brutal

Van Herk, Gerard. (2018). What is sociolinguistics? 2e Chichester, West Sussex, UK: Wiley- Blackwell.

Does Bilingual Music Threaten the Future Of The French Language & Culture?

Catherine Shieh

The French language Hip-Hop genre has undergone one of the most interesting and complex transformations amongst other genres of music in the past few decades. In Montreal, the rap scene reflects the city’s location within North America (predominantly English) and inside the province of Quebec (dominated by French), as well as other diverse immigrant communities. Sarkar and Allen studied the multilingual code-switching in Quebec rap and cited in an interview:

“Montreal style… is the only place where you have a cultural mix like that, whether it’s English, [Haitian] Creole, then French, but all the same as Quebec French” (2007).

The mixture of language in the music industry has contributed to the rise of a new unique subculture known as Franglais (French + English) and the French traditionalists of Montreal are afraid the bilingual nature of these songs and its ideologies could threaten the future of the French language and culture within the province.

Among the bilingual rappers of this generation are Loud, FouKi and the Dead Obies. They have received backlash from columnists such as Mathieu Bock-Coté from Le Journal de Montréal who says, “Franglais is a slippery slope toward Anglicization. These bourgeois-bohemian adolescents who think speaking English or Franglais will make Montreal into a New York are deluded because it is the French language that gives the city its cachet” (Soupcoff, 2020). Bilingual artists rapping in Franglais are known to face serious political and social challenges. Quebec’s music industry is heavily subsidized by the Provincial government, but only if artists and record companies are producing music in French. Some groups have lost subsidies from the Provincial government for Francophone artists because it did not reach at least 70% of its lyrics in French. Many rising artists severely depend on these types of grants and need to carefully ensure they meet the French word count requirements in their song. For the sake of language and cultural preservation, bilingual rappers are constantly rejected and are treated unfairly by Commercial French radio stations.

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For bilingual artists, rapping in multiple languages allows for more creativity. In terms of rhymes, it opens the world to more lyrical possibilities and a better rhythmic flow. In my opinion, Montreal being one of the biggest multicultural cities of our country, the music should reflect the state of our modern cultural evolution and space. Sadly, the music industry is still dominated by cultural elites, that are white Francophone artists, and they will continue to suppress the rise of this subculture. Music has long been used by many as a tool to expose social injustices. By restricting and limiting an artist’s freedom to express as they desire, are we preventing the evolution of sociocultural growth?

References

Hornberger, N. H., & McKay, S. (2010). Sociolinguistics and language education. Multilingual Matters.

Sarkar, M. and Allen, D. (2007) Hybrid identities in Quebec hip-hop: Language, territory, and ethnicity in the mix. Journal of Language, Identity, and Education 6 (2), 117–130.

Soupcoff, M. (2020). Marni Soupcoff: What’s worse – unilingual labelling or contracting … National Post. Retrieved September 22, 2022, from https://nationalpost.com/opinion/marni-soupcoff-whats-worse-unilingual-labelling-or-contracting-covid-19

Van Herk, G. (2018). What is sociolinguistics? 2e Chichester, West Sussex, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

To Switch or Not to Switch?

Shelly

我们今晚去吃pizza吧 ? (Shall we go out for pizza tonight?)

OK, 走吧 ! (ok. let’s go!)

你的pre在什么时候？（When will you do a presentation?）

下周。（Next week.）

This is the common and natural interaction when talking to my friends in my daily life after studying abroad: switching between the languages I can speak. This kind of language phenomenon is called “code-switching”.

According to Van Herk (2018), code-switching is a common phenomenon when “people who share more than one language get together and use two (or more!) languages (or “codes”) to communicate” (p. 136). Not surprisingly, bilinguals sometimes decide that only one of their languages is appropriate for a particular situation. But how do people in different contexts decide which language to use? Based on Van Herk, speakers switch language by considering “where they are, who they’re talking to, and what kind of speech activities are involved” (p. 149).

First, code-switching helps people to better express themselves. One example that came into my mind was that I switched from Mandarin to my local dialect instantly when my old friend called me in my local dialect. My roommate was quite surprised at that time because I switched so quickly and didn’t even notice. Sometimes I switch languages because the local dialect can express a sense of humor that can only be understood by the local community. Moreover, we felt closer when we interacted with each other in dialect. The other example is my students switched from English to their first language when they could not find a proper word in English. In this case, code-switching helped them to and we could work together to figure out the English expression.

Additionally, code-switching also carries affective functions that serve to express emotions. In China, people feel shy to express their love or gratitude to parents directly. My friend told me that her parents never say emotional and romantic words to each other. Moreover, it’s unheard of for me to say “I love you” in Chinese to my parents face to face. However, using English makes it easier and more natural to express this feeling, because it helps people get rid of awkward moments and feelings. Nevertheless, when they try to use Chinese to say those words, it sometimes sounds too serious and a little bit strange to do so. In this case, we select the ‘right’ language for each context or situation. The languages can have strong emotions when they are unavailable or only partly available at moments (Busch, 2017). English builds a bridge for people to express their feelings. In addition, when people want to express a feeling of sympathy to others, they are more likely to use English than Chinese, which has similar to acts expressing love.

However, sometimes, people will try to avoid code-switching because they do not want to make others feel excluded. It reminds me of the circumstance where we use English instead of Chinese to talk in a group discussion when most of the group members are Chinese. In this way, we try to avoid code-switching in this circumstance because we don’t want the other classmates who cannot understand Chinese to feel excluded from the conversation. As Busch stated, we don’t want people to feel the restrictive or exclusive power of linguistic categorization when language is not available to them (Busch, 2017).

All in all, there is no wall between languages (Rhymes, 2014). Individuals can use a collection of ways to participate in effective communication. Code-switching helps to build a bridge between different languages for better and effective communication and interaction.

Questions:

Have you ever code-switched in your study, work or daily life?

Can you share one or two examples with us and explain why do you code-switch?

References

Busch, B. (2015). Expanding the notion of the linguistic repertoire: On the concept of—The lived experience of language. Applied Linguistics, 38(3), 340-358.

Van Herk, G. (2018). What is sociolinguistics? 2e Chichester, West Sussex, UK: Wiley-Blackwell.

Rymes, B. (2014). Communicative repertoire. In B. Street and C. Leung (eds) Routledge Companion to English Language Studies. New York, NY: Routledge, pp. 287-301.

Code-switching: showing off?

Fangzhe

The discussion of code-switching in class was quite interesting and it triggers some further thoughts.

An interesting fact is the mention that adding English words in conversations in China is regarded as a kind of showing off. This may sound very weird to people who have long been living in a neighborhood where shifting between different languages is a common practice. The perception is probably derived from the distorted imagery of some TV shows that depict a figure who likes to combine some English words into every sentence he or she speaks, mostly in a funny way, to demonstrate that he or she can speak the language. Criticism also comes from teachers and parents, saying that if the students mix two languages together, they are not learning either language well. Currently in China, although some people still hold this kind of stereotype, more people are accepting this phenomenon as a common scene in the workplace or even daily life.

Translanguaging for linguistic equality

By Anonymous

For the week where we read about linguistic differences between age groups and generations, we did an activity in class where we talked to a partner about the way we used to speak when we were teenagers. In this activity I talked to my partner who happens to speak Spanish as a first language about how people in my age group used to use Spanish words and phrases, because we thought it made us look cool or funny. Sometimes the Spanish words and phrases were real and sometimes they were not. Then the more I thought about it the more I realized that many age groups in the United States do this, not just teenagers, and it is very common in the popular media. Towards the end of the semester when I was trying to figure out my topic for my final project I was talking to Professor Sarkar about this aforementioned linguistic phenomena, and she told me it’s called mock Spanish and referred me to a good article by Jane Hill (1998) that explains why this is linguistic racism.

This article was enlightening. I learned of a term I had never previously heard of before: linguistic appropriation. This happens when hispanophones who speak Spanglish in public are called impolite, harsh English-only policies are created to restrict their language use, and their accents are criticized whether they truly have a Spanish accent or not, while simultaneously anglophones borrow from Spanish, speak with heavy accents, and carelessly use the language incorrectly without reproach. It is clearly a case of linguistic inequality, in addition to making a mockery of the language and culture and trivializing hispanophones’ contributions to American culture (Hill, 1998).

Code-switching in the workplace

Cixiu Duan

Last week, three PhD candidates gave an impressive lecture about multilingualism. A part of their presentation was about code-switching, mainly situational code-switching and metaphorical code-switching. In this blog, I would like to explore more about code-switching in the workplace.

When I was doing an internship in a foreign company in Shanghai, I noticed an interesting phenomenon. Although all of my colleagues are Chinese and Mandarin is our first language, we sometimes mix English words in the conversation. For example:

Boss: 慈修，你update一下这个report, 然后email给我，顺便cc一下John (Cixiu, please update the weekly report, email it to me and cc John in the email.）

Me: 没问题（No problem）.

Code-Switching and English-only language-in-education policy

Kensaku Ogata

I’m doing a research assistantship in a project designing and implementing pedagogical strategies for addressing Sexual and Gender-based Violence in Agricultural Colleges in Ethiopia. Since I have found some articles relevant to code-switching, I would like to share one of them and to receive your feedback:

Opoku-Amankwa, K. (2009). English-only language-in-education policy in multilingual classrooms in Ghana.

This article is about English-only language-in-education policy in multilingual classrooms in Ghana. Let me briefly explain the context and participants, methodology, research questions, and main findings.

Translating Journey Part 1 – Training your brain

Lucía Ringuelet

While lately I have been trying to be more flexible, I have always had a clear tendency towards a “monolithic” type of interaction, or “double monolingualism” (Rymes, 2014, p. 5). My family immigrated from Argentina to Canada when my brother was 15 years old and I 12. From the moment we arrived, both my brother and I refused to speak in a language other than Spanish in our home, with our parents and among ourselves. I believe this can sound odd, as it is usually the parents who adopt that stance, seeking to protect the development of the mother tongue. Instead, my mother wanted to practice French with us, but we refused. Code-switching was almost taboo a for us. We wanted to speak “proper” Spanish. To be honest, I am not sure where this strict distinction came from at such a young age. It was certainly more emotional than rational.

Today, as an adult and from a rational point of view, I can find good reasons for it. In fact, I am happy we did it that way. It allowed my brother and particularly I, being the youngest, to maintain a good mastery of our mother tongue. The avoidance of code-switching to mix French in our Spanish has lent us to practice a wider range of vocabulary in the latter language. When I go back to Argentina or I speak with other Hispanic individuals whose repertoire does not include French or English, I am much more confident in my abilities to express myself solely in Spanish.

Will someone please give this child water!!

By Andréanne Langevin

4:45 PM, rushing to pick up my 2-year-old from daycare. I am just in time again, phew! I walk in and my son immediately sees me among the parents crowded at the entrance. He runs and jumps straight into my arms. The best feeling. After a comforting hug, he says, almost in a frenzy: “mul, mul, mul! 물, 물, 물 ” (water, water, water). I then turn to Serge, his caretaker, and ask him to hand me a glass of water. Taeho grabs it from my hands as if he had been stranded in the desert for a week. This happens almost every week. My son had been thirsty and no one could answer his need, no one understood. My heart aches. How long had he been asking for water? One hour, two?

The issue is that my son is not able to decipher between languages yet. At home we speak three: French, Korean and English. When our son speaks at home, we get very creative simple sentences and find it perfectly adorable. However, when he is out and about and interacts with other adults, our baby is constantly frustrated. We tried explaining to him how Grand-Maman speaks French, Hal-mo-ni 할머니 speaks Korean, and his best friend the neighbour only understands English. We have not been very successful thus far. We are hoping it sorts itself out soon, at least for Taeho’s safety and to have his basic needs met.

Montreal code-switching

Natalie Lark

Like most other North American cities, if you wander down the streets of Montreal and through its neighborhoods, you will hear most of the languages of the world spoken and brought to the city by immigrants.

However, Montreal offers a particular twist to linguistic diversity in urban areas by the number of native-born speakers using two languages in their day-to-day lives (French and English), while the immigrants can use three or more languages. So, this final post is dedicated to my favorite topic called code-switching in Montreal, in which I am about to discuss the reasons of code-switching mentioned in the textbook and based on my own observations.

Continue reading “Montreal code-switching”