ABSTRACT

Many situations of language contact involve languages that are written with different writing systems. Bilinguals in such contact communities may thus use not only two languages but also two writing systems, and when they produce mixed-language written discourse, they may alternate not only between languages, but also between writing systems. Alternatively, they may use transliteration to represent both languages in a single writing system. These script choices add a dimension to the sociolinguistic analysis of bilingual writing that is absent in bilingual speech, but which can shed light on processes of bilingual language use more generally, as bilingual writers may use script choice to visually emphasize or blur the boundaries between the languages. As this chapter will demonstrate, the presence of two writing systems in a bilingual community thus provides bilingualism researchers with new opportunities for the investigation of language boundaries in bilingual language use.