Greek-English code-switching

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to investigate and discuss the social significance of codes witching with a concentration on Greek-English bilingual codeswitchers. Codeswitching is defined as the use of two or more linguistic varieties in the same conversation. Usually in a codeswitching environment there are no more than two types of language varieties. These consist of the dominant variety (used in the conversation), referred to in the literature as the matrix language and the other variety, which is called the embedded language.