Journal of Education, Society and Behavioural Science

Objectives: To examine bilingual code-switching across four languages in an experimental setting.  To determine if the nature of a language or the linguistic background of the speakers influence laboratory induced code-switching.

Study Design: Bilingual speakers of English and either Spanish, French, German or Arabic participated in an extensive interview in their heritage language and completed an online survey containing 87 questions about their linguistic background.  At a predetermined time during the interview, a monolingual English speaker interrupted the interview and remained in the room for the rest of the interview.  

Place and Duration of Study: Department of Psychology, Queens University of Charlotte, January 2015 to March 2018.

Methods: Each language group included 20 subjects for a total of 80 subjects (39 men, 41 women, age range 18-77 years).  The subjects included both college students and members of the community. The interviewer only spoke in one of the heritage languages and instructed the participants to only speak in that heritage language. The interview was videotaped and any occurrence of code-switchers after the interruption was recorded.

Results: Consistent with the initial prediction, several of the French, Spanish and Arabic subjects code-switched after the interruption. Those subjects who had learned their heritage language earlier in life or were more fluent in their heritage language were found to be less likely to code-switch in the presence of the interrupter (P = .02; P = .03).  Subjects with a strong family heritage linguistic background were also less likely to code-switch (P = .006).

Conclusion: Overall, laboratory induced code-switching was found in three out of four languages.  Furthermore, across the four heritage languages, the linguistic background and the level of fluency of bilinguals was predictive of code-switching behaviours.