conversation. Naturalistic data collection was conducted in three distinct com-
munities: the Welsh-English community in Wales (UK), the English-Spanish
community in Miami (US) and the Spanish-Welsh community in Patagonia
(Argentina). This careful selection of communities allowed for the exploration
of the effects of various language pairings on code-switching practices, both in
terms of their linguistic similarities/differences and in terms of varying social
contexts. The chapter goes on to discuss, briefly, some of the current studies
that have already made use of these corpora, for example for the purpose of
exploring potential linguistic convergence and to compare theoretical accounts.
Similarly to Chapters 1, 3 and 4, Chapter 6 goes beyond language- internal
analyses of the data and explores whether variation in code-switching can
be linked to extra-linguistic factors, this time in relation to issues of identity
and the nature of individuals’ social networks. By conducting analysis of two
of the data sets described in Chapter 5, Chapter 6 identifies differences in
code-switching patterns across Wales and Miami. These differences are
related to variation in speakers’ self-proclaimed identities and in the linguis-
tic nature of speakers’ social networks, and influence the degree of switching
between languages in production. This part provides a unique window into
the interaction between the two languages in terms of their use within a
bilingual conversation.
In part four, we expand beyond looking at the relationship between two
languages within a bilingual speaker to address those issues relating to the
interaction of the two languages on a more socio-interactional level. In par-
ticular, we turn our discussions onto issues relating to the arrangement and
interaction of languages in a bilingual language curriculum – Bilingualism
in Education. It is widely known that bilingual classrooms are home to a
variety of speakers who differ in terms of exposure patterns to each lan-
guage, in their attitudes towards learning, speaking, or knowing one or both
languages, and in their own, active use of those languages. Consequently,
bilinguals can vary dramatically in their abilities in each language, which
poses a challenge to teachers and requires flexible approaches to teaching.
This necessity for flexibility leads to varied definitions and implementations
of ‘bilingual practice’. Chapter 7 highlights the ambiguity of terms used to
describe the linguistic practices underway in bilingual schools by the exam-
ple of Welsh-medium and bilingual Welsh-English schools in Wales, and pres-
ent an overview of language arrangements observed in 10 secondary schools
and 20 primary schools that use both languages in their curriculum. In doing
so, the authors focus on the implementation of one specific bilingual peda-
gogical tool – translanguaging – whereby the input language (i.e. the class-
room/lesson resources – worksheets, book references, internet sources, etc.)
is different from the output language (i.e. the end-product of the activity –
written prose, oral presentation, class discussion, etc.), which encourages an
active interaction of the two languages, across speakers and across modali-
ties, within the same activity. The authors argue that translanguaging not
Introduction xxi