Dr. Luke Plonsky (Northern Arizona University)
Title of Presentation: Quality vs. quantity: A methods-as-ethics approach to research in bilingualism
Website: https://lukeplonsky.wordpress.com/
Dr. Jorge Valdés-Kroff (University of Florida)
Title of presentation: More than switch costs: Examining the downstream effects of code-switching reveals its cognitive benefits
Abstract: Code-switching is the fluid alternation between languages during bilingual speech or text. Commonly observed among bilinguals, its use is systematic and rule governed, yet more than two decades of psycholinguistic research robustly observes that bilingual language processing is slower when encountering code-switches as compared to single-language continuations—a phenomenon known as “switch costs.” While these switch costs can be attenuated under appropriate contexts (e.g., interlocutor identity, discourse and sociolinguistic cues, and frequency in syntactic constructions), they seemingly contradict the ubiquity with which bilinguals engage in code-switching. I argue that bilinguals adapt to the pragmatic and social functions of code-switching, guiding them to be sensitive to when code-switches are likely to occur. However, we miss these adaptations when we focus exclusively on the site of a code-switch encounter. We should additionally examine bilingual sentence processing after the code-switch has been integrated. To illustrate these adaptive effects, I will discuss three recent studies demonstrating beneficial downstream effects on prediction, memory, and attention. These adaptive effects lead to measurable “switch benefits” as compared to single-language use. By shifting focus to the tight link between the pragmatic intent of code-switching, we begin to open an exciting new line of questions and hypotheses on the creative resources additionally available to comprehension during bilingual language processing.