Oral discourse analysis of students' and professors' code-switching in content-based subjects in a licenciatura program

Abstract

The current research project had as main objectives the identification of code-switching functions and the impact it had within the conversation of bilingual students and teachers in content-based subjects of a Licenciatura Program. Taking into consideration all the theories related to code-switching and discourse analysis stated by many theoreticians, some information about code-switching functions and discourse analysis elements and aspects were collected in the literature review. This theoretical framework helped researchers to do the analysis of the whole data collected during the project execution. During the data collection, through classroom observations and their respective audio-recordings, it was found that the use of code-switching by bilingual participants was done with some specific purposes and moreover, the switches showed that they do not affect negatively the discourse of teachers and students during the class sessions. On the contrary, it was shown that the use of code-switching helped the discourse production and comprehension to accomplish some functions such as clarifying, exemplifying, continuing with the flow of the conversation, keeping coherence among speech acts and macro-propositions, among others. In conclusion, this research project helped to the educational field of teaching- learning foreign languages to understand the positive side of the use of code-switching in bilingual interaction between bilingual people who share the same cultural knowledge