Key Debates in Code-Switching Research: Methodological and Theoretical Considerations

Description and aim

This workshop will combine expertise in linguistic and psycholinguistic approaches and methods to generate fundamental new insights and a more complete understanding of code-switching. In order to tackle these issues, invited participants are empirically and theoretically complementary. The urgency of such a workshop stems from what seems to be a current impasse in code-switching research, with contradictory evidence for different theoretical positions with no overarching principle that can organize current empirical findings. Studying each language pair alone or using one particular paradigm will not tell us much: it is all the elements together that compose the picture of what code-switching is, like the tiles of a gigantic puzzle. Hence, an added value of this workshop is that it allows us to combine and contrast data from different communities, to join expertise in linguistics and psycholinguistics and to study both children and adults to characterize the typology, distribution and frequency of code-switched structures. The workshop will be a unique opportunity to start synchronizing methods between groups and approaches, in an integrative fashion, such that limitations identified in some subdomains (e.g., sociolinguistics) can shape the approach in others (e.g., psycholinguistics).