Transfer and code-switching

To avoid terminology confusion, it is essential to reiterate that the term transfer used in this study should not be confused with transfer in Auer’s (1998) sense, as his definition of transfer corresponds to what I call insertional CS: the insertion of lexical items from Language A into streams of Language B speech, without changing the agreed language of interaction between speakers. All of the CS in Pattern B and its sub-patterns presented in Chapter Four are

examples of transfer in Auer’s (1998) sense.

Transfer studies originated in SLA and language learning/teaching research, most notably in Lado’s (1957) contrastive analysis that asserts that speakers’ knowledge of L1 may affect their L2 learning. During its early phase, transfer is often viewed negatively as an influence from L1 that impedes L2 learning/acquisition (Jarvis and Pavlenko, 2008).

However, researchers soon realised that transfer does not necessarily lead to L2 errors. A number of studies began to show that transfer may in fact be a resource on the basis of which speakers formulate new communicative and language learning strategies (Kleinmann, 1977;

Krashen, 1977; Cohen and Aphek, 1978; Meisel, 1983; Wode, 1986; Ringbom, 1987; Odlin, 1989; Ard and Homberg, 1992; Corder, 1992; Schachter, 1992; Dörnyei, 1995). Regarding syntactic transfer, Verschik (2005) and Marian and Kaushanskaya (2007) have demonstrated that bilingual speakers’ knowledge of L1 syntactic structures may be part of how L2

expressions are prepared and produced. While contrastive analysis slowly lost its impact, the phenomenon of transfer continues to thrive and was established as a research topic by the 1990s (Jarvis and Pavlenko, 2008), which is around the same time that CS studies flourished.

Despite transfer and CS both being language contact phenomena (Sankoff, 2001;

Muysken, 2013), there is still little empirical research on how CS can be made relevant to transfer, and vice versa. To date, the majority of transfer studies have been conducted from the SLA perspective, while CS studies have been carried out largely within the ambit of theoretical linguistics (Sakel, 2011). As a result, transfer and CS studies are developing in different directions, as if they are two unrelated linguistic phenomena, when in fact they have

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always been looking at the same outcome of language contact, that is, how elements of one language occur in streams of utterances in another language (Paradis, 1998; Treffers-Daller, 2009; Sakel, 2011). It has been suggested that CS and transfer can be explored simultaneously (Wode, 1986; Moore, 2002; Clyne, 1987, 2003; Bolonyai, 2009; Bullock, 2009; Müller and Cantone, 2009) and that both can benefit from the other’s findings: CS studies could

contribute to transfer studies with knowledge about how lexical items are integrated into another language and what L1 syntactic structure is required for such integration, while transfer studies could contribute to CS studies with knowledge about how speakers’ lexical choices are influenced by certain underlying systems of other languages (e.g. syntactic, semantic, conceptual frames) (Meisel, 1983; Sakel, 2011). This has been demonstrated the most clearly in Clyne (1987, 2003) and his notion of convergence.

In the context of CS, convergence refers to the process in which speakers transfer certain underlying structures (in the case of this study, syntactic structures) of one language to another language that they are switching into (Clyne, 1987, 2003). By doing so, they make both languages more similar and compatible, thus enabling them to perform CS without violating the grammatical structures of both languages. In other words, convergence facilitates syntactic congruence between the two languages and “ease [CS]” (Clyne, 1987, p. 753). For example, consider the following example from Clyne (1987, p. 753, adjusted for

exemplification purpose). As explained by Clyne (1987), the speaker applies English

progressive verb structure to Dutch as he/she performs CS, as Standard Dutch does not permit progressive verb form in this context. By doing so, he/she manages to code-switch without being ungrammatical.

Example 5.1

Want wij war [waren]… coming to Australia.

For we were coming to Australia.

Standard Dutch: Want wij kwamen naar Australïe

because we came to Australia

For we came to Australia.

The notion of convergence certainly offers insights into the interrelation between CS and syntactic transfer, as shown in Savić (1995), Verschik (2005) and Dimitrijević-Savić (2008). However, it tends to focus only on syntactic characteristics of syntactic transfer to CS, and much less on the discourse-pragmatic facet associated with such syntactic transfer. As pointed out in Toribio (2004), it is important that this aspect of transfer in CS context is not

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ignored, for narrative and/or discourse functions may also affect how transfer is utilised in CS. The analysis in this present chapter is motivated by this point.

In Chapter 4, I have shown that first-generation Thai immigrants’ CS in intragroup talk is highly purposeful. In this current chapter, I intend to show that the purposefulness of their CS did not arise solely from social or discourse motivations, but also from the transfer of certain Thai syntactic structures to CS which allowed the informants to maximise the

usefulness of CS. Integration of CS with transfer studies in this manner helps raise new questions that may lead to new understandings of both phenomena and encourage

simultaneous study on CS and transfer that is currently being demanded (Isurin et al., 2009;

Treffers-Daller, 2009; Sakel, 2011; Treffers-Daller and Sakel, 2012).

5.3.1 Transfer and code-switching in Thai-English contact literature

In Thai-English contact literature, studies of transfer in Thai-English CS are scarce. So far, transfer studies in Thailand have tended to focus on Thai transfer to monolingual English production of native speakers of Thai – for example, Watkhaolarm’s (2005) and Bennui and Hashim’s (2014) analysis of novels written in English by Thai authors, and Richards and Sukwiwat’s (1983) and Wannurak’s (2008) study of Thai students’ transfer of the Thai politeness system to English. Some of the very few existing studies of transfer in Thai-English CS are Kannaovakun’s (2000) and Kannaovakun and Gunther’s (2003) analysis of Thai-English CS in Thai television programmes, in which they identify and explain a variety of Thai features in English switches, although they do so largely in terms of nativisation. The Thai-English CS data from online chatrooms in Tagg and Seargeant (2012) also exhibited some Thai transfers to English, although the authors did not elaborate much on them. Thai transfers to English (or Thai-styled English in Kannaovakun and Gunther, 2003) that have been identified in previous studies are summarised in Table 5.1. Note that types of transfer that are similar are collapsed under one category. For example, Trakelkasemsuk’s (2012) category of style shift, i.e. the import of Thai proverbs and cultural notions into English, and translation, i.e. the direct translation of Thai expressions and concepts into English) are collapsed into one category of direct translation.

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Table 5.1: Summary of the existing types of Thai transfer in English

Type Definition Example

Transfer of Thai politeness system to English, resulting in overproduction of

from the Thai phrase dòk thong (English: golden flower = a loose woman)

yom ráp khwam pen ching optimum optimum

kan balance (Thai: doing + English:

balance = balance)

(Kannaovakun and Gunther, 2003, p.

73) Conversion Use of English items

for grammatical functions that differ from the original.

rao action di (English: we action well) The English noun action is used as a verb.

(Kannaovakun and Gunther, 2003, p.

74)

The existing categories of Thai transfers to English listed above are problematic in several respects. First, previous researchers did not specify clearly how they arrived at a conclusion that what they identified was indeed transfer and not interference. For example, let us consider the example of conversion presented in Table 5.1. I do not deny that the noun-to-verb conversion of the English word action in the sentence rao action di (English: we action well) may be the result of conversion, as is the case in established world English varieties (Baumgardner, 1990; Biermeier, 2009). However, without clear criteria of identification, there is also a possibility that the use of action as a verb is the result of the speaker’s lack of

English proficiency. Although some studies do perform frequency counts to show regularity

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of occurrence of certain Thai features in English, the lack of clear criteria of Thai transfer identification inevitably affects the credibility of the existing categories of Thai transfers.

Second, the identification of the Thai transfers focuses mainly on discourse and sociocultural aspects, leaving open the question regarding the interplay at the syntactic level between Thai and English, which to my knowledge has rarely been explored. Based on these problems, I would argue that the study of Thai transfer to English needs be refined in terms of method of identification and scope of analysis. This is what I intend to achieve in this chapter through the application of Jarvis and Pavlenko’s (2008) transfer identification criteria to my first-generation Thai immigrants’ CS data.