Cover not available
Part of
Points of Convergence in Romance Linguistics: Papers selected from the 48th Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages (LSRL 48), Toronto, 25-28 April 2018
Edited by Gabriela Alboiu and Ruth King
[Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 360] 2022
► pp. 243–256

Chapter 14
Code-mixing and semantico-pragmatic resources in francophone Maine

Meanings-in-use of yeah/yes and ouais/oui

| York University
This chapter reports some results of an exploratory corpus study (Vogh 2018) investigating whether bilingual speakers might use code-mixing to leverage the contextualized meanings (i.e., meanings-in-use) of specific lexical resources that happen to be ‘in the other code’. A total of 206 code-mixed tokens of yeah, yes, ouais, and oui from nine videotaped oral history interviews of Franco-Americans in Maine are considered. Drawing on sociolinguistic, qualitative semantic, and discourse-analytic approaches, I find that the speakers studied do prefer different meanings-in-use for resources from their different languages, suggesting that “what speakers wish to say” (Backus 2001: 150) is indeed a relevant factor in code-mixing and in how bilingual speakers experience their bilingualism.
Keywords: code-mixing (code-switching), contextualized lexical semantics, meanings-in-use, bilingual speech, Franco-Americans, French in Maine
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Approach and key terms
    • 2.1Code and code-mixing
    • 2.2Meaning-in-use
  • 3.Corpus and context
    • 3.1The corpus
    • 3.2The context: Franco-Americans of Maine
  • 4.Data and coding
    • 4.1Identifying and selecting occurrences of code-mixing
    • 4.2Coding of the selected occurrences: Categories of meaning-in-use for yeah and yes
  • 5.Results and interpretation
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 10 March 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/cilt.360.14vog
References (25)
References
Albert, Jacob, Tony Brinkley, Yvon Labbé & Christian Potholm. 2013. Contemporary attitudes of Maine’s Franco-Americans (Franco-American Centre Occasional Papers 1). Orono, ME: Franco-American Centre Publications.Google Scholar
Allen, James P. 1974. Franco-Americans in Maine: A geographical perspective. Acadiensis 4(1). 32–66.Google Scholar
Auer, Peter. 1995. The pragmatics of code-switching: A sequential approach. In Lesley Milroy & Pieter Muyksen (eds.), One speaker, two languages: Cross-disciplinary perspectives on code-switching, 115–135. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Backus, Ad. 2001. The role of semantic specificity in insertional codeswitching: Evidence from Dutch-Turkish. In Rodolfo Jacobson (ed.), Codeswitching worldwide, II (Trends in Linguistics: Studies and Monographs 126), 125–154. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Brody, Jill. 1995. Lending the ‘unborrowable’: Spanish discourse markers in indigenous American languages. In Carmen Silva-Corvalán (ed.), Spanish on four continents: Studies in language contact and bilingualism, 132–147. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press.Google Scholar
Courbon, Bruno. 2015. Pratiques sémantiques et différences interindividuelles à l’ère des corpus informatisés [Semantic practices and interindividual differences in the era of computerized corpora]. Les Cahiers de lexicologie 106(1). 91–126.Google Scholar
Dostie, Gaétane. 2004. Pragmaticalisation et marqueurs discursifs : Analyse sémantique et traitement lexicographique [Pragmaticalization and discourse markers: Semantic analysis and lexicographical treatment]. Brussels: De Boeck Duculot. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Drummond, Kent & Robert Hopper. 1993. Some uses of yeah. Research on Language and Social Interaction 26(2). 203–212. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fox, Cynthia A. 2007. Franco-American voices: French in the northeastern United States today. The French Review 80(6). 1278–1292.Google Scholar
Franceschini, Rita. 1998. Code-switching and the notion of code in linguistics: Proposals for a dual focus model. In Peter Auer (ed.), Code-switching in conversation: Language, interaction and identity, 51–72. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Fuller, Janet M. 2001. The principle of pragmatic detachability in borrowing: English-origin discourse markers in Pennsylvania German. Linguistics 39(2). 351–369. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gardner-Chloros, Penelope. 2009. Code-Switching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
House, Juliane. 2013. Developing pragmatic competence in English as a Lingua Franca: Using discourse markers to express (inter)subjectivity and connectivity. Journal of Pragmatics 59A. 57–67. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
King, Ruth. 2008. Chiac in context: Overview and evaluation of Acadie’s joual. In M. Meyerhoff & N. Nagy (Eds.), Social lives in language – Sociolinguistics and multilingual speech communities: Celebrating the work of Gillian Sankoff, 137–178. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
King, Ruth & Terry Nadasdi. 1999. The expression of evidentiality in French-English bilingual discourse. Language in Society 28. 355–365. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lüdi, Georges & Bernard Py. 2009. To be or not to be … a plurilingual speaker. International Journal of Multilingualism 6(2). 154–167. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Matras, Yaron. 1998. Utterance modifiers and universals of grammatical borrowing. Linguistics 36(2). 281–331. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Otheguy, Ricardo, Ofelia García & Wallis Reid. 2015. Clarifying translanguaging and deconstructing named languages: A perspective from linguistics. Applied Linguistics Review 6(3). 281–307. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pfaff, Carol W. 1979. Constraints on language mixing: Intrasentential code-switching and borrowing in Spanish/English. Language 55(2). 291–318. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Poplack, Shana, & Marjory Meechan. 1998. Introduction: How languages fit together in codemixing. International Journal of Bilingualism 2(2). 127–138. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Poplack, Shana, David Sankoff, & Christopher Miller. 1988. The social correlates and linguistic processes of lexical borrowing and assimilation. Linguistics 26. 47–104. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Richard, Mark Paul. 2009. “This is not a Catholic country”: The Ku Klux Klan confronts Franco-Americans in Maine. New England Quarterly 82(2). 285–303. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Vogh, Kendall. 2018. Ressources linguistiques et visée référentielle chez des individus bilingues français-anglais: L’alternance codique comme stratégie d’expression sur le plan lexical [Linguistic resources and referential intentions in French-English bilinguals: Code-switching as a strategy of lexical expression]. Québec, Canada: Université Laval MA thesis. [URL]
Walker, Douglas. 2005. Le français dans l’Ouest canadien [French in the Canadian West]. In Albert Valdman, Julie Auger & Deborah Piston-Hatlen (eds.), Le français en Amérique du Nord: État présent (Langue française en Amérique du Nord), 187–205. Quebec City, Canada: Presses de l’Université Laval.Google Scholar
Wei, Li. 2018. Translanguaging as a practical theory of language. Applied Linguistics 39(1). 9–30. DOI logoGoogle Scholar