Analyzing code-switching patterns and prosodic alignment in multilingual urban speech: A sociolinguistic and phonetic study

Project Abstract

This study investigates how code-switching patterns and prosodic alignment operate in multilingual urban speech, integrating sociolinguistic theory with phonetic measurement to illuminate how speakers navigate linguistic repertoires in real-time interaction. Using a mixed-methods design, we combine quantitative corpus analysis of spontaneous conversations from diverse urban communities with qualitative interviews to capture speakers’ language attitudes, social identities, and perceived constraints on language choice. The corpus comprises approximately 150 hours of high-fidelity audio collected from multilingual neighborhoods in three metropolitan areas, spanning Spanish-English, Mandarin-English, and Yoruba-English contact zones, with balanced representation across gender, age groups, and socio-economic backgrounds. Prosodic features such as syllable-timed versus stress-timed rhythm, intonational contours, boundary tones, pitch range, and speech rate are annotated automatically and validated through manual coding to ensure reliability. Code-switching is analyzed at multiple levels—lexical, phrasal, and clausal—incorporating turn-taking dynamics, lexicalized discipline of language mixing, and discourse functions such as emphasis, topic shift, and stance marking. The study tests the hypothesis that prosodic alignment to a dominant language within a discourse segment is modulated by social factors (speaker gender, age, nativity, and perceived language prestige) and communicative goals, resulting in patterned prosodic accommodation or contrast across switch points. It further investigates whether prosodic cues predict switch locations, and whether listeners’ perception of bilingual competence correlates with alignment granularity in perception experiments. Advanced acoustic-phonetic methods, including F0 contour analysis, spectral tilt, and duration-based metrics, are employed alongside Bayesian mixed-effects models to quantify the relationship between switch type, prosodic realization, and social variables. The research also explores the functional role of prosodic alignment in signaling affiliation, group identity, and stance, distinguishing between routine conversational code-switching and strategic, audience-driven shifts. Findings are expected to reveal robust associations between discourse structure and prosodic realization, such that matrix language selection influences prosodic patterning, while embedded languages exhibit localized prosodic adaptation to maintain intelligibility and social alignment. The study discusses implications for theories of bilingualism, such as the Adaptive Control Hypothesis and exemplar-based models of code-switching, and contributes methodological innovations for multimodal sociophonetic research, including a rigorous coding scheme for cross-language prosodic features and an open-access annotated corpus to enable replication and cross-study comparison. Practical implications extend to language education, speech technology, and clinical assessment by providing a nuanced understanding of how multilingual speakers negotiate prosody during multilingual communication, thereby informing tools for speech recognition, language learning curricula, and diagnostic criteria for speech and language disorders in bilingual populations.

Project Overview

What This Project Is About

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This project looks at how people switch between languages in urban settings and how their speech rhythm and intonation align across languages. It combines ideas from linguistics about language mixing (code-switching) and the sounds of speech (prosody) to understand patterns in multilingual cities.

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The Problem It Addresses

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Many urban speakers blend languages in everyday talk, but we don’t fully know when and why this happens or how the sound patterns line up across languages. This gap makes it hard to study communication in multilingual communities and to design better language education and technology.

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Objectives of the Project

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1. Describe common code-switching patterns in chosen urban speech samples.
2. Identify how prosody (rhythm, stress, intonation) shifts when switching languages.
3. Explore social factors (age, gender, neighborhood) linked to switching.
4. Explain how prosodic alignment varies with language pairs.

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What You Will Do Step by Step

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Step 1: Gather audio recordings from multilingual urban speakers. Step 2: Transcribe what is said in each language. Step 3: Mark where language switches occur. Step 4: Analyze rhythm and pitch patterns around switch points. Step 5: Compare patterns across speakers and social groups. Step 6: Interpret results in light of existing theories. Step 7: Present findings with clear examples.

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Expected Outcome

Expect a clear description of how code-switching relates to changes in speech prosody and social factors, with practical implications for language education, speech technology, and urban communication studies.