This thesis studies the impact of the age on arrival in their host country on the structural and functional patterns of code-switching in the speech of Iraqi Arabic immigrants living in Greater Manchester. Research by Wei (1994), Backus (1996), Alfonzetti (2014) and Promprakai (2018) highlight the importance of studying code-switching across different generations in the immigrant context. Based on this research perspective, the present study investigates the significance of studying code-switching in the speech of different members of the first generation of Iraqi male immigrants in Greater Manchester, who have already acquired Arabic before emigrating, in respect to their age on arrival in the UK.
For this purpose, the production of Arabic-English code-switching in the speech of male adults from two different first-generation immigrant groups was compared: Group 1 (Older on Arrival – age range 25-40 on arrival in the UK) vs. Group 2 (Younger on Arrival – age range 13-16 on arrival in the UK). Two sets of conversations were recorded for each group of participants: participant-to-participant naturalistic conversations and participant-to-researcher narratives, reporting on a situation in the past. Furthermore, a sociolinguistic profile was created for each participant, based on the differences in life experiences of the two groups due to whether they arrived in the UK as children or as adults. Three sociolinguistic factors about the participants were used which differed between the older-on-arrival profile and the younger-on-arrival profile: the participant’s bilingual proficiency, attitude towards code-switching and the social network in the UK. Any one, or combination, of those three factors could affect the type and degree of code-switching and in this thesis the term 'age on arrival' should
be interpreted as a shorthand or proxy standing for that group of three factors.
From a structural perspective, the present study focuses on studying the two main types of structural code-switching in conversations of the two groups of participants:
insertional and alternational code-switching. The switches that were found in the
participants’ conversations were categorized under the taxonomy of these two main types and according to their length in the conversation, whether within an utterance/turn or at the utterance or turn level. The findings show that the immigrants who were older on arrival (henceforth, OA group) produced more insertional code-switching than the 16immigrants who were younger on arrival (henceforth, YA group). However, the YA group produce more alternational code-switching than insertional code-switching.
In applying a sequential analysis to the instances of code-switching that were found in
conversations of the participants, it was found that these instances are meaningful in their local contexts (the preceding and following utterance in the conversation), which served different discourse functions in the conversations. In quantitative terms, the OA group deployed Arabic-English code-switching in more varied ways to achieve different functions quantitively than the YA group.
To explore the difference in producing code-switching between the two groups
structurally and functionally, some elements of the macro-context were investigated in relation to the sociolinguistic profile for each participant. Insertional code-switching was found to vary significantly according to the participant’s age group on arrival.
Furthermore, it has a significant interactional relationship with the size of the
participant’s extent social network in the UK and in relation to his age on arrival. In other words, the older participant on arrival with a bilingual proficiency can make a big social network; which in turn, this big size of social network is significantly increased the rate of insertional CS production in the bilingual speech. These findings indicate that future research needs to take the significance of the age of arrival in the host country into account when analysing code-switching within the first generation in immigrant communities