ABSTRACT
The literature on bilingualism has shown that theoretical models often emerged the directions from which linguists approached code-switching. With regard to models for code-switching, this is an indicator of broadening applicability: code-switching would be better accounted for through an interdisciplinary perspective. In Australia, while English remains unchallenged as the dominant language of the country, the Vietnamese language, as one of the minority languages, is not free of English influence. And yet, as suggested by Suzanne Romaine, the study of bilingualism, which has resulted in code-switching as one of many and varied linguistic phenomena, has taken monolingualism as the underlying construct on which the analysis of code-switching is based. To put it differently, the study of code-switching requires the description and analysis of pairs of languages in contact: in the case of this study Vietnamese and English. This study has attempted to present the phenomenon of code-switching in the speech of Vietnamese-English bilinguals in Melbourne.
