From 3 to 5: pragmatic functions of child code-switching

The paper focuses on the pragmatic peculiarities of Russian-English code-switching in the speech of the children who simultaneously acquire Russian and English according to “one person – one language” strategy within a Russian family in Russia. The research data are pragmatically marked utterances of the two boys made when each of them was at the age of three to five. Their bilingualism developed as a monoethnic one since they acquire one of the languages (Russian) from a native Russian speaker and the other (English) from a nonnative speaker who belongs to Russian ethnos and culture. The authors argue that pragmatic functions of codeswitching reflect the children’s attitude to each language and bilingual communication. Child bilingual pragmemes are studied longitudinally, which helps the researchers to reveal the dynamics of code-switching intentions within three years of children’s bilingual communication. The results of the study demonstrate the prevalence of addresseeoriented and inducing pragmatic functions of code-switches during the whole period under study. The explanation for this fact lies in the specific strategy of bilingual development and the understanding of the importance of each language in children’s bilingual communication. By the age of five, the children gradually develop their bilingual self-reflection, which results in more frequent metalinguistic pragmemes in their mixed utterances.