[An analysis of code-switching phenomenon in bimodal bilinguals (Libras and Portuguese).]

Abstract

An interesting linguistic phenomenon that happens in the interaction among bilingual people is code-switching. In this paper, we are investigating code-switching among oral Brazilian Portuguese and Brazilian Sign Language - Libras, in a same enunciative chain, with the goal of identifying and analyzing the use of code-switching in the speech of a child and an adult (both hearing from deaf parents), interacting in an intermodal bilingual context, with deaf and hearing interlocutors. Code-switching in languages, in this case, occurs when a person stops to speak in Portuguese and he/she alternates to sign. This present research is a starting study, with qualitative analysis of data. Our corpus is composed of nine sections of interactions in Libras and oral Portuguese, recorded in video, part of the Bimodal Bilingual Development Project from UFSC. The data shows that adult and child's characteristics of code-switching seem to have similarities and differences. The adult seems to switch more worried about the course of the interaction. On the other hand, the child did not seem to use code-switching for specific pragmatic reasons. In regard to the switching extension, it is noted that both the child and the adult used more than one word sentences. The role of the interlocutors seems to be decisive in the interactions investigated here - especially for the adult, since the child is still acquiring awareness about the role of the interlocutor in an interaction.