Conflicts and tensions in classroom codeswitching: an introduction

摘要

Codeswitching is, perhaps, the most common, unremarkable and distinctive feature of bilingual behaviour. In most multilingual contexts it largely goes unnoticed and unmentioned. It would probably go unmentioned and unnoticed in classroom contexts, too, were it not for the fact that language policies imposed from above are imbued with and influenced by pervasive and persistent monolingual ideologies (cf. Lin and Martin 2005; Phillipson 1992). The clash between what happens in practice, at the classroom level, and the policies imposed from above, has led to many conflicts and tensions in the way codeswitching in the classroom is perceived. A cursory glance at the ever increasing literature on codeswitching in classrooms provides clear evidence of the conflicts and tensions which exist in such educational contexts (Canagarajah 2005; Lin and Martin 2005). Whereas codeswitching in community contexts is regarded as acceptable bilingual talk, in many classroom contexts codeswitching is deemed inappropriate or unacceptable, and as a deficit or dysfunctional mode of interaction. So much so that codeswitching is often 'prohibited' (Moodley 2007). The literature on classroom codeswitching is littered with metaphors which underpin such conflicts and tensions. For example, teachers who switch to the mother tongue in the classroom have been accused of being 'guilty of sabotaging the (language) policy' in the Malaysian context (Martin 2005, 76). Other studies make reference to 'collusion' (Arthur 1996), 'safe talk' (Chick 1996), the 'struggle to learn' (Probyn 2005), 'smuggling the vernacular into the classroom' (Probyn, this volume) and 'incomplete journeys' and the 'intentional but dilemma-filled' use of codeswitching (Setati et al. 2002).