English-French Language Contacts in Canada: Code Switching and Code Mixing

Abstract

The paper describes English-French language contacts in Canada and discusses the main strategies of the modern language policy in relation to the French language in Canada. The approaches to the definition of language interference, code mixing and code switching were studied. The research aims to identify the characteristics of code mixing and code switching in the English-French language pair in written and oral sources in terms of their grammatical expression and functional content. Scientific novelty of the research lies in investigating the reasons for code switching/mixing in the English-French language pair in the situation of state bilingualism in Canada and determining the grammatical and lexical features of code switching/mixing for languages belonging to different language groups, which contributes to the development of language contact theory. The research findings have shown that despite the fact that oral speech is characterised by lack of motivation, spontaneity, emotivity in code mixing and written speech is characterised by motivation and functionality, the grammatical expression of lexical units from the embedded language in the matrix language occurs according to similar principles for oral and written speech.

References

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About this article

Publication history

• Received: October 14, 2022.
• Published: November 30, 2022.

Keywords

• языковые контакты
• смешения кодов
• французский
• английский
• Канада
• language contacts
• code mixing
• French language
• English language
• Canada

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Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)