Code-switching and emotions display in Spanish/Galician bilingual conversation

3.1 Theoretical and methodological framework

According to Pavlenko (2005), studies on language and emotions can be divided into two key paradigms. In the first paradigm, which she calls the communication of emotions, emotions are considered as inner states and thus as a phenomenon largely separated from language. By contrast, in the second paradigm, emotions are not analyzed as inner states, but as a conventionalized display or performance, which is oriented to achieve some rhetorical goal. The present paper is based on this latter perspective, which looks at the discursive construction of emotions (Pavlenko 2005: 114). Accordingly, my analysis is focused on the “performance of affect” rather than on the “communication of emotions”. The terms “affect” and “emotions” are used interchangeably, as well as the terms “performing”, “displaying”, “signalling”, “indexing” or “expressing” (Pavlenko 2005: 115; see also Arndt and Janney 1991; Caffi and Janney 1994; Günthner 1997; Ochs and Schieffelin 1989; Selting 1994, 2012; Acuña Ferreira 2004, 2009, 2011). Drawing on this discursive approach, Pavlenko (2005) explains that speakers can employ a wide range of rhetorical devices to index affective meanings across languages. These devices can operate on the level of prosody and kinesics, on the level of lexicon (emotion words and emotion-laden words like invasion or molestation, forms of address like mommy and daddy, curses and taboo words, and so on), on the level of morphosyntax (pronominal choice, emphatic particles and expressive derivation, etc.) and on the level of speech acts (congratulations, complaints, apologies, insults).

On the other hand, my data analysis is grounded in the concept of contextualization cues, deriving from Interactional Sociolinguistics (Gumperz 1982a, 1982b). Contextualization cues are verbal or paralinguistic signs that establish the interpretative framework of an utterance and thus contribute to illuminate how the message must be understood. Language alternation can function as a contextualization cue, in a similar way to a particular intonation, although not always necessarily. Through an analysis of Spanish/Galician bilingual spoken data, Álvarez-Cáccamo (2000) demonstrates that the use of two languages in a single communicative event can be meaningless from a communication perspective, hence the importance of distinguishing, in his view, between linguistic alternation as a structural phenomenon, and CS as a communicative process that may or may not include linguistic alternation. Methodologically, the present paper is based on Conversation Analysis (CA) (Garafanga 2009).

3.2 The sociocultural context: Galicia

Before focusing on the data analysis, I will provide an overview of the linguistic history of Galicia and its sociolinguistic configuration at present, as this information is relevant in the interpretation of results. Galicia is one of the seventeen autonomous communities that currently constitute the Spanish state. Galician is a language that evolved from Latin and was the main medium of oral and written expression in the Middle Ages. However, at this time there was also a progressive increase in the use of Castilian/Spanish, because the Galician nobility and clergy started to be replaced by outsiders who spoke this language. This process resulted in a situation of diglossic interchange, in which the majority of the population continued to speak Galician, while the upper classes of society employed the Spanish language. Thus began what is known as the process of devaluation of Galician, because of its increasing association with poverty and ignorance (Del Valle 2000).

The diglossic situation remained unchanged for centuries, but started to evolve dramatically from the nineteenth century with the introduction of industrialization, the enforcement of the administrative system of the state and the establishment of universal and compulsory education. In the twentieth century, Spanish became the preferred language spoken by parents to children because of the strong association that the Galician language had with the rural world and the lower classes. This process of linguistic substitution was intensified during the dictatorship of Franco in Spain (1939–1975), as Galician was banned during this period (Lorenzo Suárez 2009). After Franco’s death, the passing of the democratic Constitution in 1978 allowed the implementation of a new legislation concerning languages in which Galician and Spanish were both established as co-official languages in the community, and the use of the Galician language would be promoted in all domains of public and cultural life.

Nationalist sociolinguists have been very critical about this official policy, which has prevailed until today. In their view, this policy perpetuates the association of Galician and Spanish with different socio-economic levels and the decline of the former (Fernández Velho and Henríquez Salido 1991). Other sociolinguists have been critical about the nationalist discourse, arguing that it misrepresents the linguistic reality of Galicia as being divided between two linguistic norms, Spanish versus Galician, ignoring or stigmatizing bilingual use, and therefore actually promoting monolingualism (Rodríguez Yáñez 1993; Del Valle 2000). In contrast to the diglossic situation attributed to Galicia by the nationalist positioning, researchers working from the perspective of Interactional Sociolinguistics (Gumperz 1982a, 1982b) put emphasis on the variable linguistic behaviour of Galicians and the wide range of hybrid linguistic varieties that are constituted in real communicative situations, as a result of the contact between two languages with very similar structures. This approach was first applied to the case of Galicia by Álvarez-Cáccamo (1990) and then further developed by other discourse analysts. Contrary to the widespread negative view that bilingual talk is due to a lack of language competence, Rodríguez Yáñez (1995) highlights CS as a conversational style in Galicia; other studies have similarly focused on the forms and functions of this phenomenon in the natural interaction of Galician people (e. g. Domínguez Seco 1997; Prego Vázquez 2000; Acuña Ferreira 2013).

3.3 Data analysis

In this section I will focus on the analysis of extracts taken from spontaneous talk between two Galician women, a mother and a daughter, who have always lived in Galicia and accepted to collaborate with my research project on the characteristics of everyday conversation. They agreed to be recorded while chatting at home and then submitted to a brief interview, in which they were asked about their habitual use of Spanish and Galician. ^[1] The mother, Isa, is about sixty years old, and her daughter, Ana, is in her twenties (I employ pseudonyms for both subjects, who also gave informed consent for the use of these recordings in academic publications). Isa did not learn Galician at school as their childhood passed during the period of the dictatorship of Franco in Spain. In the interview, Isa explained that her parents often used Galician to speak to each other, but displayed different strategies in talk with their children: while her father always used Spanish, her mother employed both Galician and Spanish. She indicated that Spanish was her usual language and the one in which she feels more competent, but also that she employed Galician at times. Her daughter, Ana, did receive formal instruction in Galician as her childhood passed during the democratic period, but she noted that her parents used to speak in Spanish. Similarly to her mother, Ana pointed out that Spanish was her usual and dominant language, and also commented on her punctual uses of Galician.

The conversation between these women was conducted mostly in Spanish, but included some cases of alternation into Galician, which tended to coincide with remarkably emotive moments. The recording is about 40 minutes long, during which talk is focused on complaints (Günthner 1997; Acuña Ferreira 2004, 2008, 2011) and gossip (Bergmann 1993) about a woman who, for some time, has been Isa’s friend, and about her family. For this paper, I have selected those sequences in which the participants criticize these third parties, the “antagonists” of the complaints (Günthner 1997), display emotive involvement in a variable degree and produce Spanish/Galician alternation. The aim of the analysis is to examine how affective stances are contextualized and which is the role that language alternation could play in this process.

The critical moment in these sequences is specially focused on the extremely arrogant attitude of the antagonists. The participants often refer to the woman who was a friend of Isa using her real name, so in these cases I employ the pseudonym Lola. The other antagonists are referred to by their relationship to Lola (e. g. “her daughters”). In Extract 1, Isa and Ana are expressing indignation about the arrogant attitude of Lola and her sister, who was referred to as such in prior turns. In this case, the antagonists are therefore these two women ^[2]:

In this extract, the participants draw several times on Spanish idiomatic expressions like tenerse pergaminos ‘to think of yourself as a blue-blooded person’, tenerse aires ‘to put on airs’, tenerse por una gran cosa ‘to think of yourself as a big deal’, to summarize the kind of attitude they are complaining about (Drew and Holt 1988). In line 296, Isa uses one of these idioms to attribute an arrogant attitude to the antagonists, {[ac] es que se ti´enen ´unos ´perga´minos → (‘they think they’re such a blue-blooded family’, line 296), accelerating tempo and putting emphatic accents on several syllables in such a way that a rhythmic pattern is constructed. This rhythmic markedness and the elliptical structure of the utterance from a syntactic viewpoint (the second term of the consecutive structure is suppressed, see Herrero [1997: 121]), serve to contextualize this negative description of the antagonists as an extreme case formulation (Pomerantz 1986) and to indirectly express indignation (Günthner 1997; Selting 2012).

Ana’s response in line 298 mirrors this affectively loaded contribution from Isa displaying co-indignation (Günthner 1997); she uses a similar idiomatic expression, tenerse aires ‘to put on airs’, that is also suspended from the syntactic viewpoint and includes rhythmic markedness, combined in this case with a rise in intonation: [se ti´E:nen se ti´E:nen] unos aires ↑ ↑ (‘they put on they put on airs in such a way’, line 298). Simultaneously, Isa introduces reported speech (line 297) to reinforce her previous assessment in line 296 (Hutchby and Wooffitt 1998), and then she employs a higher pitch to signify the voice of an acquaintance (line 299) who describes Lola and her sister as arrogant people by means of the same idiomatic expression previously used by Ana (in line 298). This utterance is again accompanied by parameters of marked prosody (Günthner 1997; Selting 1994) ^[3] like accelerated tempo, rhythmic patterning and a higher pitch, which reinforces the display of an affective stance of indignation, {[ac] [a] ´esas se ti´enen ´unos ´aires} → (‘those women put on airs in such a way’, line 299).

After a micropause (line 300), Isa uses her “normal” voice to comment, parenthetically, that these women have lost much social status because many people had ignored them (lines 301–304). After another micropause (line 305), she once more employs the idiom tenerse aires ‘to put on airs’ in an elliptical way, with accelerated tempo and rhythmic markedness, {[ac] pero las ´tías se ti´enen ´un::} (‘but these women put on … ’, line 306), to remark upon the persistent attitude of arrogance of the antagonists despite the loss of social status in the town. Ana signals total agreement by asserting positively and completing Isa’s previous utterance (line 307); the loudness in her utterance and the final intonation curve function as powerful prosodic cues for indexing co-indignation: SÍ SÍ se tienen por una [gran ↓ co::sa] ↑ (‘yes yes they act as if they were a big deal’, line 307). Simultaneously, Isa exhibits astonishment in a rhetorical way, to once again emphasize the arrogance of the antagonists, using the colloquial expression de miedo ‘it’s unbelievable’ (line 308) as a lexical device to assert “the strongest case” (Günthner 1997: 187). Following a micropause (line 309), she repeats this expression (line 310).

Up to this point, the participants have displayed co-alignment in a strongly negative evaluation of the antagonists as arrogant people who behave as if they were of high social standing, expressing an affective stance of indignation by combining verbal and prosodic techniques. Spanish was the language employed in this cooperative performance of indignation, but the following turns show a final switch into Galician in Isa’s discourse; this is captured in Extract 2:

In line 311, it seems that Isa is going to say something else about the antagonists (line 311), but this is a false start in Spanish, as in the next moment she reformulates her discourse by switching into Galician, to make a highly pejorative categorization of the antagonists by means of the noun merdas ‘shit’ (line 312). This derogatory description is introduced by the discursive marker e ‘and’, e son unhas merdas → (‘and they are shit’, line 312), which in this context has a meaning similar to ‘but’ or ‘however’, to highlight the contrast between the arrogant attitude of the antagonists (which was the focus of the previous discourse, see Extract 1), and the social status they actually have, in co-occurrence with the switch into Galician. Through this highly pejorative categorization, which is repeated twice (lines 314, 317), also in Galician, Isa undermines the attitude of the antagonists and lowers their social condition in a contemptuous way. Thus, Galician is selected as a device for remarking this affective meaning, contempt, in contrast to the previous use of Spanish in displaying indignation. Ana responds in Spanish, making comments with a sarcastic intonation (lines 315–316, 318–319), which again signals indignation and thus co-affectivity or emotional reciprocity (Günthner 1997).

Extract 3 captures a later stage of the conversation in which the talk is centred on the arrogant attitude of Lola’s two daughters:

In this extract, Ana again uses the Spanish idiomatic expression tenerse aires ‘to put on airs’, [tienen unos] a:ires tambié:n ↑ (‘they too put on airs in such a way’, line 1115) to emphasize that Lola’s daughters are also extremely arrogant. Isa responds ironically, making reference to the father of these women (lines 1116–1118), to suggest that they should not be so arrogant, and then she describes this man in a highly pejorative way (lines 1119, 1121, 1123–1125). Note that there is an intrasentential linguistic alternation in line 1118, in which the speaker starts her argument in Spanish, and switches into Galician as she introduces the noun fillas ‘daughters’: pues debe ser por las fillas de quen son (‘well this must be because they are their father’s daughters’, line 1118), maintaining the ironic overtone that is found in previous turns (lines 1116–1117). Because of the maintenance of this ironic communicative intention, I consider that this intrasentential linguistic alternation does not carry CS, and so it would be an example of language alternation without CS (Álvarez Cáccamo 2000).

By contrast, the following discourse, in which Isa turns to focus on a pejorative description of the father of Lola’s daughters, maintaining the use of Galician, does not register the ironic prosody of previous utterances. Isa makes explicit allusion to this man as the father of Lola’s daughters (line 1119) and then she describes him in a strongly contemptuous way (lines 1121, 1123–1125), using lexical repetition and prosodic devices which contextualize emotive involvement in crescendo: there is an initial “normal” volume, porque teñen [un pai] ↑ (‘because they have a father’, line 1119), then an increased volume, TEÑEN UN PAI ↑ (‘they have a father’, line 1121), TEÑEN UN PAI ↑ (‘they have a father’, line 1123), and finally an increased volume combined with an acceleration in tempo, {[ac] QUE É O MÁIS BAIXO ↑ (‘who is the lowest person’, line 1124), QUE HAI} → (‘you can find’, line 1125). In comparison to previous lines 1116–1117, there is a notable prosodic contrast in this discursive segment that carries a CS, as it contextualizes a shift in the communicative intention of the speaker, from a display of irony (lines 1116–1117) to a strongly derogatory discourse that signals contempt (lines 1119, 1121, 1123–1125). The maintenance of the Galician language in this discursive segment suggests that this linguistic variety is employed to reinforce such a derogatory discourse and thus the contextualization of contempt. The intrasentential linguistic alternation previously made in line 1118 could be interpreted as announcing this CS. Ana intersperses minor contributions in Spanish (lines 1120, 1122), expressing astonishment or a lack of understanding in relation to the attitude of these third parties.

It is significant that the cases of alternation into Galician examined so far coincide with the moments in which the speaker turns to focus on a discourse on the low social status of the third parties who are being spoken about, contextualizing the contempt, with variable levels of intensity or emotive involvement. At the same time, this kind of derogatory discourse serves to undermine the arrogance of the antagonists. Extract 4 captures the conversation that immediately follows the previous extract. Ana supports her mother’s discourse, again in Spanish, expressing affiliation and co-affectivity or emotional reciprocity in this language:

Ana’s discourse continues to stress a lack of understanding in relation to the arrogance of the antagonists. First, in lines 1126–1128, she expresses this lack of understanding in a neutral and emotively uninvolved manner, by noting ‘I don’t understand mommy’ with a piano volume (line 1128). However, when her mother takes the turn to offer an explanation of this matter (line 1129), Ana interrupts to produce a highly rhetorical discourse that emphasizes astonishment and signals heightened emotive involvement (Selting 1994). She combines the verb saber ‘to know’ and the Spanish idiomatic expression tener la cara ‘to have the cheek’ in a negative statement, yo ↑ (‘I’, line 1130), no sé → (‘don´t know’, line 1131), cómo tienen CARA ↑ ↑ (‘how they’ve got the cheek’, line 1132), and then she reiterates this statement in a similar intonation pattern, with an initial rising intonation, porque es que yo ↑ (‘because it’s that I’, line 1133), then a sustained one, no sé → (‘don´t know’, line 1134) and finally a rising intonation again, cómo tienen cara ↑ (‘how they’ve got the cheek’, line 1135). The structure is completed with a colloquial expression that makes reference to the attitude of the antagonists in a critical way, de ir así por la calle ↓ (‘to walk the street that way’, line 1136). After a micropause (line 1137), Ana adds the idiomatic expression tenerse por una gran cosa (‘to think of yourself as a big deal’), como:: si fueran gran cosa (‘acting as if they were a big deal’, line 1138), in order to be more explicit about such an attitude and thus to clarify her censorship of it. Overall, this discourse of astonishment constitutes an indirect rhetorical question that displays indignation by remarking on the “absurdity” (Günthner 1997: 191) of that pose. Prosodic parallelism and lexical repetition make an essential contribution to the contextualization of this emotive meaning, providing the discourse with an overtone of “solemnity” or “impressiveness”. In lines 1139–1140, a repetition of the negative construction with the verb saber ‘to know’, reinforced by a lexical intensifier, de verdad ‘really’ (line 1139), function as the concluding remarks, and then there is a five second silence (line 1141).

At a later stage in the conversation, the critical talk about Lola turns to focus on her customary gossiping behaviour instead of her arrogance. Isa comments, in Spanish, that this woman had a conflict episode with a female acquaintance, whom I will call Chus (a pseudonym), and then she switches into Galician to introduce the reconstruction of a dialogue that she herself held with Lola about this matter. Extract 5 captures the introduction of this dialogue reconstruction, switching into Galician:

In this extract, Isa introduces the reconstruction of a dialogue with Lola in Galician (lines 1470–1471), but in the next moment she reformulates her discourse by switching into Spanish (line 1472). The reconstruction of this dialogue is done in this latter language; Isa animates her own voice when asking Lola whether she was angry with Chus (lines 1472–1473), and then mimics Lola’s voice when she, Lola, describes Chus as a malicious gossiper (lines 1474–1476) by means of the idiom tener mucho pico ‘to blabber on’. Isa then constructs what she thought about what Lola said (lines 1477–1479). This reported thought (Haakana 2007) is explicitly contextualized (‘I said to myself’, line 1477), but it is also framed by switching into Galician and by prosodic cues, lines 1478–1479, which are spoken in a softer voice, {[p] pois mira que o pico que tes ti:: ↑ (‘and then all the things you blabber about’, line 1478), jo:lín} → (‘darn’, line 1479), capture the content of Isa’s thoughts, describing Lola pejoratively by employing the same idiomatic expression that Lola had used in reference to Chus, tener mucho pico ‘to blabber’.

Thus, Isa attributes the same pattern of behaviour to Lola and she even suggests that Lola is worse than Chus in this respect, cementing this thought with the use of the swear word jolín ‘darn’ (line 1479) as a booster. Ana is in total agreement and shows this by means of interjections and interjected expressions that also function as boosting devices (lines 1480–1481). In the following turns, Isa elaborates this negative discourse about Lola by maintaining the use of Galician; she again contextualizes her reported thought (lines 1482–1483) and then she repeats her description of Lola as a malicious slanderer, explicitly noting that she is not better than Chus in this respect (lines 1485, 1487).

Overall, note that Isa’s derogatory discourse about Lola is constructed in crescendo from a prosodic viewpoint, with an initial piano volume, {[p] pois mira que o pico que tes ti:: ↑ (‘and then all the things you blabber about’, line 1478), jo:lín} → (‘darn’, 1479), then a “normal” volume, [dixen eu] pa min → (‘I said to myself’, line 1482), dixen eu o pico ↑ (‘I said all the things you blabber about’, line 1483) and finally an increased volume that indicates heightened emotive involvement (Selting 1994): [O PICO QUE] TES TI:: → (‘all the things you blabber about’, line 1485), NON ERES MELLOR QUE ELA → (‘you’re not any better than her’, line 1487). Ana continues to emit agreement and sympathy by again using the interjective expression mi ma ‘good heavens’ with a lengthening of the vowel (line 1486) and buf ‘ugh’ (line 1488).

In Extract 6, which captures the conversation that immediately follows the previous extract, Isa partially repeats her reproaches to Lola (previously framed as reported thought) and Ana reinforces the expression of sympathy by switching into Galician:

In response to a doubtful comment that Isa makes in Galician (‘I don’t know’, line 1489), Ana employs the expression non ho ‘no for God’s sake’ (line 1490) to confirm her mother’s previous derogatory discourse about the antagonist and thus to signal agreement and sympathy. Isa then reiterates her stance, making another affective display in crescendo by heightening her volume: non (‘no’, line 1492), PEOR NON ERES → (‘you’re not worse’, line 1493), meLLOR ↑ (‘better’, line 1494), NON ERES → (‘you’re not’, line 1494), DESDE LOGHO ↓ (‘for sure’, line 1495). Once more, Ana displays agreement and sympathy, though now through multiple uses of the word no ‘no’ (line 1496). Isa’s reproachful discourse seems to be finished in line 1495 with the use of desde logho ‘for sure’ with falling intonation, but she still adds something in lines 1497–1498, remarking that Lola and the other woman are very much alike. In contrast with her previous affectively loaded discourse, Isa uses Spanish in this concluding remark. Ana expands support, repeating buf ‘ugh’ (line 1499) and employing the expression, mi madriña querida ‘good heavens’ (line 1500), in which features of Spanish and Galician are mixed, as the Spanish noun madre ‘mother’ is combined with the Galician suffix –iña, thus resulting in madriña. By adding this Galician suffix, which has an affective value, Ana is orienting again to the language choice of her mother to strengthen her own sympathetic stance. ^[4] Finally, in lines 1501–1502, Isa maintains the use of Spanish to continue with the reconstruction of the dialogue held with Lola, in a neutral and emotively uninvolved manner, now contextualizing the discourse as what she actually said to her, in contrast to reported thought in previous turns.

While the critical discourse about Lola in these latter extracts does not refer to the arrogance of this woman, Isa’s use of Galician seems to function here in a similar way as a device to reinforce a derogatory discourse and the contextualization of contempt for her. The language alternation also serves to highlight different discursive tasks performed by Isa, who employs Spanish in reconstructing the dialogue she herself held with Lola in a neutral way from the perspective of emotive involvement, and switches into Galician when producing reported thought as a silent criticism (Haakana 2007), which is marked by heightened emotive involvement and the display of an affective stance of contempt. Ana’s supportive discourse indexes co-affectivity in this case by signalling sympathy, including alternation into Galician to orient to the language choice of her mother as a strategy to reinforce this affective stance.