Reflections on Gafaranga

Joseph Gafaranga: Talk in two languages Ch. 5: Interactional Order in Talk in Two Languages: Identity-Related Accounts
Joseph Gafaranga is Senior Lecturer in Linguistics at the University of Edinburgh, UK. His research interests are in the areas of Bilingualism and Conversation Analysis and his book of 2007, Talk in Two Languages reflects upon these interests, focusing on one of the most common, yet distinct features in multilingual speakers’ communication, namely language alternation. The title of the book is telling, in the introduction chapter of the book Gafaranga describes his aims with the text at hand, stating that the commonly used terms such as “code-switching” or “borrowing” cannot cover the entire phenomenon he is interested in examining when it comes to multilingual speech. Therefore the somewhat dull, yet extensive title of the book.

Gafaranga’s starting point and a main claim is that from a theoretical perspective, language alternation in the same conversation is impossible in principle both grammatically and sociofunctionally – a statement that surely will surprise some readers as we all know that in real life, “talk in two languages” is commonly occurring. Thus, following this statement, the key question about language alternation in the book is how do multilinguals actually manage to use two or more languages in the same conversation despite the theoretical impossibilities.

The problem of theoretical impossibilities and practical actualities is in Gafaranga’s mind described more precisely as a problem of order in multilingual speech. With ethnometodology as its foundation and base, Talk in two languages presents a critical reading of current approaches to language alternation. While previous chapters focus on grammatical issues of language alternation, chapter 5 examines the problem of order in multilingual speech from a socio-functional point of view.

The sub-title of chapter 5 is Identity Related Accounts. Just as the heading suggests, Gafaranga examines here language alternation from an identity-related point of view. The chapter presents three different perspectives, of which the two latter ones have most bearing for Gafaranga’s argumentation. The perspectives are:


 * Diglossia and the Sociology of language
 * Interactional Sociolinguistics (Gumperz 1972, 1982)
 * Markedness Model (Myers-Scotton 1983)

The starting point of this presentation is The Sociology of Language, an approach first initiated by Joshua Fishman (1972). It is based on a structuralist/functionalist view of language in society, structuralism being about different components or units of language and the relationship among and between them, and functionalism being the view that the elements either have a distinct function in the system or do not exist as a part of that system. These views are in Gafaranga’s text combined with the model of diglossia (Ferguson 1959). A definition of diglossia is given (a language situation in which two different varieties/languages have different uses and functions in the society, the one often having a higher status than the other), and connected with the general ideas of functionalism and structuralism as in the Sociology of Language. Gafaranga then relates diglossia to the concept of bilingualism, presenting simultaneously the historical development and change in the use of the concept. At the beginning, diglossia was mainly intented to describe very special forms of monolingualism, because it was seen as a particular kind of standardization, but it attracted also researchers interested in bilingualism, such as Fishman. Building on Ferguson’s ideas and tradition, Fishman sees diglossia as a universal phenomenon that can – but does not need to be – connected with bilingualism, and that also has a wider usage, concerning not only languages but also functionally differentiated language varieties (e.g. dialects).

At the end of this section, Gafaranga makes two critical comments regarding Fishman’s model. These are that 1) the model confirms and reinforces the principle of One-Situation – One-Language and 2) the model also claims that stability obtains where there is both bilingualism and diglossia. His main criticism, it seems, is about the limitations Ferguson’s and Fishman’s ideas have concerning language alternation, because their models assume that the principle one-situation – one-language is valid.

The second model presented in the text, Interactional Sociolinguistics, was pioneered by Gumperz. Differing from others like Labov, Gumperz’s interest lies in examining actual face-to-face communication and has thus a deeply social focus. According to him, successful communication, as well as the lack of it, is a matter of “contextualization cues”, meaning features on the surface of the message form that are used to signal and interpret what the activity is about. These cues (e.g. intonation, tempo, stress, silence and so on) can vary from culture to culture, which also means that amongst the members of a specific culture they are taken for granted, but between members of different cultures they may lead to differentiated interpretations and misunderstandings. Gumperz concludes also that language alternation itself works as a contextualization cue and this is being exemplified with a description of a study by Blom and Gumperz from a bilingual Norwegian village with specific uses of two different varieties. The conclusion is that in many bilingual communities there are clear “we- and they-codes”, i.e. languages form specific structures and are functionally differentiated. In the extracts presented in the text, language alternation appears in the form of code-switching. Further on, the possibilities for code-switching are described as either situational or metaphorical and later connected with a third type of code-switching, namely conversational, that in turn has no situational nor metaphorical features.

The third model is the Markedness model of code-switching as developed by Myers-Scotton and her associates. The Markedness model is all about the rational choice and the motivation of the speaker, with the question “what motivates speakers to switch languages within a single conversation?” as its starting point. According to Myers-Scotton, code-switching is an intentional, but often unconscious social message in a bilingual community and as a phenomenon it is connected to calculations on what offers the speaker greatest utility, a thought that led at least my thoughts towards Bourdieu. Gafaranga describes the starting point of the Markedness model as a system of oppositions, having a structural view of language in society. If there is a marked choice of language use, there has to me an unmarked one as well. The unmarked choice, in this interpretation, is “the linguistic variety which is most expected” and the marked one “the most unusual choice”, “a break from the communicative norm”. Gafaranga discusses three different unmarked choices; 1) choosing to conduct the conversation monolingually, 2) starting in one language and switching to another in the course of the conversation and 3) codeswitching itself as the unmarked choice. He also presents and exemplifies two alternatives for marked choices. These are 1) switching from one language to another through a change in the speech situation and 2) momentarily using another language in a discourse conducted in one language, such switches being functional.

After reading the chapter, it seems obvious that Gafaranga is critical towards all three presented frameworks and their one-situation – one-language –principles. His suggestion is that the norm of one-situation – one-language should be adjusted and rephrased into one-situation – one-variety, where the variety does not need to be the same as language. Gafaranga also concludes that the models presented cannot account for additional two types of language alternation: momentary departures into another language and momentary language alternation.