Language Crossing by B. Rampton Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Language Crossing by B. Rampton - Assignment Example According to the research findings, Rampton found that the speakers moved outside the language varieties they normally used and they briefly adapted codes which they didn’t have full and easy access to and that these appropriations of someone else’s language occurred in moments and activities when the world of daily life known in common with others and with others taken for granted. These findings have important implications for the ethnic process and the way social identities are negotiated in interactional code-switching. According to Cutler, Rampton’s book describes how groups of multiracial adolescents in a British working-class community mix their use of Creole, Panjabi, and Asian English. Rampton found that language crossing, in many instances, constitutes an anti-racist practice and is emblematic of young people striving to redefine their identities. The young people he studied used this mixed code to contest racial boundaries and assert a new â€Å"derac inated† ethnicity. Rampton also cited in his book the two types of code-switching namely situational and figurative. Situational code-switching is a standard speech that indicates a shift in a certain situation while figurative code-switching or double-voicing describes the way that utterances can be affected by a plurality of competing languages, discourse, and voices. Under figurative code-switching are metaphorical code-switching (uni-directional) and ironic code-switching (Vari-directional). Rampton defines metaphorical code-switching as a switching that introduces varieties of speech that is harder for the recipients to understand. It is uni-directional because speakers go along with the momentum of the second voice, though it generally retains an element of otherness which makes the appropriation conditional and introduces some reservation into the speakers’ use of it. On the other hand, ironic code-switching (Vari-directional) is a speech in which the speaker spe aks in someone else’s discourse, but introduce into that discourse a semantic intention directly opposed to the original one.