Adult ESL ELL Advanced Quiz
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INTERPRETIVE COMMUNICATION (LISTENING & READING)
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The following is an excerpt from a recorded seminar discussion on language and identity:
"Research on code-switching — the practice of alternating between two or more languages or dialects within a single conversation — has shifted dramatically in recent decades. Earlier frameworks treated code-switching primarily as evidence of incomplete acquisition: the speaker couldn't sustain fluency in one language and fell back on the other. That deficit model has been largely abandoned. Contemporary sociolinguistics views code-switching as a sophisticated communicative strategy, one that signals group membership, negotiates social positioning, and conveys nuances that monolingual speech cannot. What's particularly interesting is the difference between situational and metaphorical code-switching. Situational switching happens when the context changes — you speak English at work and Spanish at home. Metaphorical switching happens within a single context and carries social meaning beyond mere topic shift. A speaker who switches into a heritage language mid-conversation to signal intimacy, irony, or in-group solidarity is using language as a social tool, not compensating for a gap."
A student then asks: "So does that mean bilingual speakers are just better communicators than monolingual speakers?"
The professor responds: "That's an appealing conclusion, but it conflates access to a communicative resource with skill in deploying it. A monolingual speaker can achieve many of the same social functions through other means — register shifts, intonation, lexical choice. The resource set differs; the communicative sophistication doesn't automatically."
The professor's response to the student's question reveals which of the following distinctions as central to understanding code-switching?
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