Multilingual Discourse in the Family

An analysis of conversations in a German-French-English-speaking family in Canada

Philipp Angermeyer

Arbeitspapier Nr.33 (Neue Folge) Institut für Sprachwissenschaft Universität zu Köln, 1999.

Focusing on the conversational structure of multilingual discourse, this case study examines the language use in a trilingual family in New Brunswick, Canada. As the parents are native speakers of different languages, language use is characterized by differences in their competence in the respective languages. The children, two teen-age daughters, grew up speaking English and German at home and, living in Montreal for most of their childhood years, speaking French in school. In the home, English is the dominant language when the father is present, and German when he is absent. For my data, I collected approximately 12 hours of conversation between the family members, primarily dinner table conversations.

Two different phenomena of language alternation are prominent in the data: (intersentential) code-switching and transfer (insertion). Following Auer (1984), I distinguish between participant-related and discourse-related code-switching. Preference-related code-switching occurs primarily to accommodate for the addressee's perceived preferred language. Based on Gumperz's (1982) notion of contextualization cues, I show how speakers use discourse-related code-switching to contextualize dissent or emotional distance, or to gain the floor in turn competition. This is illustrated in the following example (1), where the daughter M attempts in vain to gain the floor in order to tell an observation about her classmates (lines 1595, 1597, 1600, 1602, 1604, 1607, 1612) until she switches to German (line 1614), while the father switches to French (line 1609) to draw more attention to his offer of asparagus (line 1606).

(1)

1594 Mother:  Meat. .. 
1595 M:       Oh, Mami. .. 
1596 Mother:  (father's name).
1597 M:       Mami? .. Mami! Talking about inbreeding,
1598 Mother:  Ja?
              ('Yes?')
1599 Philipp: ((laughs))
1600 M:       ahm the people here--
1601 Mother:  (name) and?
1602 M:       I'm tell-- No, I'm telling--=
1603 Father:  =We go from (name) to inbreeding=
1604 M:       =No, I'm telling you about my classmates, okay?
1605 Mother:  Ja?
              ('Yes?')
1606 Father:  Who would like some more asparagus?
1607 M:       [You know how--   ]
1608 C:       [They all are ugly] [because they all are interbred.]
1609 Father:                       [Des asperges? Ici, toi?        ]
                                   ('Some asparagus? Here, you?')
1610 Mother:  Moi?
              ('Me?')
1611 Father:  Combien?
              ('How much?')
1612 M:       You know how on average--
1613 Mother:  Moi, je v(eux)--
              ('Me, I would like--')
1614 M:       Mami! Du weißt doch, wie normalerweise in der [Klasse] in Montreal&
              ('Mum! You know how normally in the class, in Montreal&')
1615 Mother:                                                [Danke]
              ('Thank you.')
1616 M:       &(daß-) nur drei Kinder oder zwei Kinder, die Brillen haben?
              ('&only two children or three children who have glasses?')
1617 Mother:  Ja?
              ('Yes?')
1618 M:       Hier sind acht Kinder in meine Kla- haben acht Kinder in meiner Klasse Brillen.
              ('Here are eight children in my cla- eight children in my class have glasses.')
1619 Mother:  Ich weiß das, ich weiß es.
              ('I know that. I know.')
Transfers (or insertions, in the terminology of Auer 1998) can also be either participant-related or discourse-related. Arguing for a broader notion of discourse-related transfers, I argue that they are by far more frequent than previously assumed (Auer 1984). Based on Hoey's (1991) work on lexical cohesion, I show how transfers can be used to establish cohesive ties by lexical repetition to previous utterances in which the language of the transferred lexeme was the language of interaction. This is illustrated by the following sequence (2), where the lexeme pork chop is used as a transfer in German (lines 1033, 1036, and 1037) only a few turns after it was used in an English utterance (the speakers use the German equivalent Kotelett elsewhere in the conversation.) I propose the term cohesive transfer to describe this phenomenon.

(2) 

1028 Philipp: (Could I have a pork chop.)
1029 Mother:  Ja, (xx)
1030 Father:  Would you like to have a big one?
1031 Mother:  Ja, give him a big one, we have so many.
1032 Philipp: Ehm, ja, maybe.
1033 Mother:  ((laughs)) M, du mußt noch was essen. Pork chop.
              ('M,  you have to eat some more. Pork chop.')
1034 M:       Ich hab' gegessen!
              ('I ate!')
1035 Philipp: ((to the father)) Thanks.
1036 Mother:  Noch'n pork chop.
              ('Another pork chop.')
1037 M:       Ich hatte einen großen pork chop.
              ('I had a big pork chop.')
Code-switching and transfer can thus both be related to conversational structure. As each utterance in a given conversation is either closely connected to its preceding context, or introduces a change in topic or speaker orientation, the speaker needs to contextualize continuity or discontinuity. In language choice, multilingual speakers have an additional contextualization cue at their disposition, as discontinuity can be signaled by code-switching, and continuity by a cohesive transfer. Language alternation therefore functions like a contrast medium emphasizing conversational structure that is less obvious (to the linguist), but nevertheless existent in monolingual discourse.

References:

Auer, Peter. 1984. Bilingual Conversation. Amsterdam: J.Benjamins.
Auer, Peter (ed). 1998. Code-switching in conversation: language, interaction and identity. London: Routledge.
Gumperz, John J. 1982. Discourse Strategies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hoey, Michael. 1991. Patterns of Lexis in Text. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

NYUNYU / GSASGSAS / Linguistics / Grad. students / Philipp Angermeyer

Last modified: 10/17/2000.