Entertainment / Literature / Code-Switching: In bilingual or multilingual speech, rapidly changing from the vocabulary, grammar, and patterns of one language to another--often in mid-sentence. An example sentence to illustrate this process using Latin, Spanish, German, and French might read as follows: Imprimus, el commander qui runs his troops y sus attendants to death in a blitzkrieg isn't tres sapiens, n'est-pas? [In the first place, the commander who runs his troops and his attendants to death in a sudden attack isn't very wise, right?] Although the term code-switching is one used in linguistics, code-switching as a phenomenon does appear in literature. The character of Salvatori the monk in Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose engages continuously in code-switching among Latin, Spanish, French, Italian, and German tongues, for instance. Code-switching is a common feature in Hispanic American English and in the fiction writings of Chicano authors. Cf. Dog-latin and macaronic texts.
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