What is it about?
Immigrants develop identities that combine the culture of their homeland and the culture of their receiving communities. This shows in their bilingual conversations, when they combine languages. The alternation of two languages in bilingual conversation, however, is a regular process. It takes place under certain grammatical constraints and it serves specific communicative purposes.
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Why is it important?
We show that the specific ways in which political immigrants hold conversations amongst themselves helps them build a new identity and a new community that singles them out from both their original and their receiving speech groups.
Perspectives
Writing this article gave us great insights into a community that emerged quickly, sustained itself through social and linguistic practices, but was shortly lived as a cohesive group, given the pressure to integrate to their new host country.
Carmen Curcó
Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Code switching and identity in the discourse of Catalan immigrants in Mexico, AILA Review, December 2005, John Benjamins,
DOI: 10.1075/aila.18.04cur.
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