ABSTRACT

INTRODUCTION This paper examines how the difference in sociopragmatic orientation of young Arab-American adults (hereafter Generation Two) as opposed to their parents (Generation One) affects the structure of their codeswitching (CS). Both groups are fluent speakers of both languages; yet, the two groups show different patterns in codeswitching. Any differences are not attributable to major differences in proficiency in either Arabic or English. However, the two groups do show differences in terms of their preferred patterns of language use for in-group conversation. Recognizing that English is more dominant for Generation Two explains many of these differences. The differences are of two types. From a quantitative point of view, the relative frequency of English monolingual clauses in the Generation Two corpus is striking. In addition, a more detailed structural analysis shows that the Generation Two corpus has many more bilingual constituents with abstract grammatical structures from both languages. Such structures are projected by what is referred to as a Composite Matrix Language (Myers-Scotton 1998). Such findings would suggest that, as many second generation immigrant groups, the young Arab Americans are "turning over" to English. However, careful analysis of these data show the pattern is more subtle. Arabic remains robust, even to the extent of influencing otherwise monolingual English utterances.