Code-switching patterns in the speech of Romanian-English bilinguals

This paper is an attempt to explore the code-switching patterns in the speech of two Romanian English bilingual males, M and V, currently living in Melbourne. The informants have a friendly relationship and visit each other regularly - however their socio-economic background is different: V is a well educated urban professional, whereas M is a driver/tour operator, and comes from a remote village in Northern Romania. The paper examines the types of psycholinguistically-conditioned and discourse-related switches that are used by the two informants, and attempts to provide two different profiles of switchers. It is found that M code-switches freely, without self-censorship, displaying his successful adjustment to Australian life. By contrast, V consistently attempts to excuse or to correct his code-switching, displaying a pre-disposition to avoid mixing languages. However, V appears to relinquish his self-censorship mechanism when code-switching for discourse-related reasons.