Volume 20, Issue 1

Using evidence from the Hong Kong Chinese press, this paper shows that intra-sentential code-alternation may be due to linguistic, especially semantic, factors at work, which explain why the bilingual is reluctant to translate the English expressions into Chinese, resulting in code-alternation. This observation amounts to a challenge to a tacit assumption behind social or discourse-related explanations of code-alternation, that referential meaning may be kept constant and that code-alternated expressions in the guest language could always be ‘replaced’, paradigmatically or otherwise, by a semantically ‘equivalent’ expression in the host language. The basic premise of ‘translation equivalent’ is illusory. Given the strong social norms disapproving the use of English-only discourse for intra-ethnic communication in Hong Kong, it is argued that intra-sentential code-alternation typical of bilingual Chinese Hongkongers is more adequately explained by the bilingual's reluctance to translate the original English expressions into Cantonese or modern standard Chinese. In this light, Cantonese-English code-alternation in Hong Kong is most appropriately seen as the result of the Chinese bilingual's attempt to guard against unwanted semantic loss or gain.

This is a study of the usage and semantics of the focus particle pun in contemporary Malay (Bahasa Melayu), the national language of Malaysia. Drawing on a sizeable corpus of naturally occurring textual examples, I propose a small set of semantic explications for pun , within the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) framework (Wierzbicka 1992, 1996; Goddard 1998). The polyfunctionality of pun , and its diverse range of translation equivalents and effects, is shown to be attributable partly to polysemy and partly to the operation of contextual inference.

The aim of this paper is to come closer to an empirically grounded view of the functions served by shifting and mixing within an intrinsically mixed speaker's repertoire. We shall do this by means of a detailed narrative analysis of a fragment taken from an autobiographical narrative of a West African asylum seeker. In the data a large variety of ‘shifts’ can be detected at various levels: phonetic, grammatical and paralinguistic. Small linguistic details are iconic of general moves and switches in the narrative, the total shape of which is in turn indexical of speaker identity. This provides arguments in favor of an indexical view of code-switching and related phenomena. At the same time, the data invoke issues of the unequal value of linguistic-narrative resources. In the asylum procedure, different preconditions for narrating are brought into the encounters between asylum seekers and officials, different conditions on sayability and interpretability are present and some of the meanings produced or sought fall in the gap between what is recognized and what can be produced. We shall address these ‘pretextual gaps’ in terms of event perspective, resource control, deterritorialization, transidiomaticity.

This hermeneutic phenomenological study describes, analyzes, and interprets the lived experience of eight proficient bilingual individuals in the United States. Common themes of speaking one's native language and English as one's second or third language are described. The essences of participants' first-language communicative experiences ranged from feeling more at home and comfortable (‘Fish in the river’) to feeling challenged and uncomfortable (‘A test of skills’). Despite these individual differences, an awareness of the interplay of language, identity, communication, and culture emerged as the structural essence of this lived experience. All participants expressed how speaking one of the languages available to them reflects and creates culturally conditioned aspects of identity as well as aspects of identity related to psychological constructs such as self-esteem and confidence. The findings support basic assumptions of the Communication Theory of Identity and of Ethnolinguistic Identity Theory and point to the need to integrate these two theoretical perspectives.

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