ABSTRACT

This chapter summarizes some main findings of an analysis of code-switching and transfer (in the following, the term language alternation is used to cover both) carried out in Constance, West Germany,1 among the children of Italian migrant workers with a Southern Italian background. (A more detailed analysis grounded in the transcripts is given in Auer, 1981; 1983; 1984a.) The investigation was part of a larger study on the native language of Italian migrant children (Muttersprache italienischer Gastarbeiterkinder im Kontakt mit Deutsch)2 and is based on an extensive corpus of spontaneous and nonspontaneous speech used by these children interacting with each other, the fieldworkers, or their parents. Nineteen children between the ages of six and 16 formed the core group of this study. These children were observed to use (various varieties of) Italian and German alternately, in a number of situations. Four hundred instances of such alternations were submitted to conversation analysis; another 1,400 instances were used for quantitative-differential analysis.