Spanish-English Codeswitching in the Caribbean and the US: (11 Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics)

This volume provides a sample of the most recent studies on Spanish-English codeswitching both in the Caribbean and among bilinguals in the United States. In thirteen chapters, it brings together the work of leading scholars representing diverse disciplinary perspectives within linguistics, including psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, theoretical linguistics, and applied linguistics, as well as various methodological approaches, such as the collection of naturalistic oral and written data, the use of reading comprehension tasks, the elicitation of acceptability judgments, and computational methods. The volume surpasses the limits of different fields in order to enable a rich characterization of the cognitive, linguistic, and socio-pragmatic factors that affect codeswitching, therefore, leading interested students, professors, and researchers to a better understanding of the regularities governing Spanish-English codeswitches, the representation and processing of codeswitches in the bilingual brain, the interaction between bilinguals’ languages and their mutual influence during linguistic expression.

Table of Contents:
1. Acknowledgements; 2. Introduction: Multiple influencing factors, diverse participants, varied techniques: Interdisciplinary approaches to the study of Spanish-English codeswitching (by Guzzardo Tamargo, Rosa E.); 3. I. Codeswitching, identity, attitudes, and language politics; 4. Spanglish: Language politics vs el habla del pueblo (by Zentella, Ana Celia); 5. Codeswitching and identity among Island Puerto Rican bilinguals (by Perez Casas, Marisol); 6. Codeswitching among African-American English, Spanish and Standard English in computer-mediated discourse: The negotiation of identities by Puerto Rican students (by Clachar, Arlene); 7. II. Links between codeswitching and language proficiency and fluency; 8. Hablamos los dos in the Windy City: Codeswitching among Puerto Ricans, Mexicans and MexiRicans in Chicago (by Torres, Lourdes); 9. Language dominance and language nativeness: The view from English-Spanish codeswitching (by Liceras, Juana M.); 10. The role of unintentional/involuntary codeswitching: Did I really say that? (by Lipski, John M.); 11. III. Codeswitching in written corpora; 12. The stratification of English-language lone-word and multi-word material in Puerto Rican Spanish-language press outlets: A computational approach (by Bullock, Barbara E.); 13. Socio-pragmatic functions of codeswitching in Nuyorican & Cuban American literature (by Montes-Alcala, Cecilia); 14. "Show what you know": Translanguaging in dynamic assessment in a bilingual university classroom (by Mazak, Catherine M.); 15. IV. Bilingual structure in codeswitching; 16. Tu y yo can codeswitch, nosotros cannot: Pronouns in Spanish-English codeswitching (by Gonzalez-Vilbazo, Kay); 17. On the productive use of 'hacer + V' in Northern Belize bilingual/trilingual codeswitching (by Balam, Osmer); 18. Mixed NPs in Spanish-English bilingual speech: Using a corpus-based approach to inform models of sentence processing (by Valdes Kroff, Jorge R.); 19. Comprehension patterns of two groups of Spanish-English bilingual codeswitchers (by Guzzardo Tamargo, Rosa E.); 20. Index

Review :
This volume is a comprehensive and interdisciplinary update on research involving the language pair which has given rise to some of the most influential and ground-breaking research on codeswitching. Just as work on Spanish-English codeswitching has in the past provided the model for research on most other language pairs, this state of the art collection will no doubt have an important impact on future developments in codeswitching research in general. Bringing together the work of leading scholars adopting diverse perspectives and drawing on a wide range of data from different geographical areas, it will thus be essential reading for codeswitching researchers and students from all disciplinary backgrounds. This attractive volume brings together many of the key researchers in this important domain. It reflects the wide multidisciplinary scope of this research topic, and extends into written sources, a welcome addition. This book might well be unique in its explicit agenda of studying codeswitching from a cross-disciplinary and cross-methodological perspective. Every major topic is represented in this volume and discussed by a major specialist. Taking as a starting point the construct of codeswitching, this brilliant roster of scholars provides great insights into the language of speakers of many ethnicities and nationalities who regularly use Spanish and English. The scope of the investigation includes speech and writing, as well as subjects of different ethnolinguistic affiliations. The book will be a most useful tool for both scholarship and teaching for anyone interested in bilingualism. This is an impressive collection of first-rate articles focusing on the now-problematized notion of codeswitching. It is a must-read for researchers interested in Spanish-English bilingualism in the United States and the Caribbean and for those engaged in the debates on translanguaging, codeswitching, and codemixing. The editors are to be congratulated for bringing together an outstanding volume.