L'Alternança de llengües i la commutació de codis en la Crònica de Jaume I

Abstract

Code-switching has been studied as a feature of oral, present-day language. That it should also be found in documents and even in literature from communities of the past is not surprising. Code-switching found in the Libre dels Feyts is investigated in this paper. The nature of the subject of study is set out, and the notions of code and code-switching are considered, along with the complexities they pose. Code-switching is dissociated from the linguistic means expressing it, which may or may not involve the switching over of languages. The switching between Catalan and liturgical/documentary languages differs from switching between Catalan and other Romance languages from a structural point of view, but also in the linguistic and socio-stylistic resources brought to bear, on account of their social, cultural and ideological significance, and their discourse function. The switching prompted by quotations and reported speech, though significant, is not the only kind. Switching stems from the speakers metacommunicative, metapragmatic and metalinguistic activity, in which the transcontextualisation and appropriation of the discourse of others serves to legitimate their own discourse.