Discourse analysis of code switching in the community of Chlef : what about the gender marking?

Abstract EN

As more studies on code-switching have been carried out, it becomes more blatant that it should not be considered as a random alternation of two languages but rather a patterned linguistic behaviour.

Adopting Auer's discourse analysis to code switching (CS), this paper is an attempt to scrutinize how women and men manage to employ different varieties within discourse to realize their communicative needs.

This phenomenon is considered as a communicative device to construct and define particular identities.

The findings highlight to what extent women and men engage differently in defining themselves and constructing certain social meaning through the frequent mixture of different varieties in the conversations that form the bulk of day-to-day interactions.

The findings reveal that gender division should not be taken for granted and that it is not fixed and olute because both women and men are in a constant process of negotiation of identities by manipulating different languages in a variety of contexts.

The gender parameter is inter alia a crucial point that should be taken into consideration as a determining factor of language choice, in general and code-switching in particular.