influential factors in code-switching: insights from a longitudinal case study

Investigations into speech samples of bilinguals can provide valuable insights into how languages are acquired, processed and produced. in the present longitudinal case study, the speech samples of a four years old persian-english bilingual child were collected over a period of six months. the data corpus included a total of 180 hours of interactions in natural settings about daily routines of playing games, reading storybooks, watching and talking about animated cartoons, etc. complementary data included diary notes taken by the researchers on a weekly basis. the data was transcribed verbatim in chat (codes for human analysis of transcripts) format and then analyzed by the clan (computerized language analysis) software program. in the analysis of the data, attempts were made to investigate the influential factors in determining cases of code-switching. the findings showed that regardless of the dominant language context, such factors as frequency of input, the language of the interlocutors, the lexical knowledge of the participant, and the primary source of input are highly influential in language switching. in addition, as a secondary concern, the study revealed that cases of code-switching can be both automatic and selective on account of being highly context-bound and action-based. the implications of the study are discussed in light of language processing. the findings are consistent with the presence of an interactive internal mechanism in code-switching.