Since the Nachbarsprache & buurcultuur project (2017 – 2021, Interreg), several researchers from CLS and the German universities Duisburg-Essen, Bielefeld and Paderborn all involved in SLA and didactics, have compiled corpus samples of RL and online discussions in which language switches have taken place. The common guideline for these corpora was that small groups of adolescents were invited to work together in an educational context, and that in these groups, at least two native speakers of Dutch and two native speakers of German were present. They worked to solve a task and were free to choose whatever language mode that suited them.
No less than four multilingual corpus samples have been composed in this project (or on occasion of this project). However, none of the corpora have been prepared for publication in DANS (nor have they been checked for analytical mistakes).
On the basis of these multilingual corpora, an analytical tool will be developed and tested, in which mode switch (as opposed to code switch) is operationalised. An example of a mode switch is when participants opt for lingua receptiva, in case they feel insecure in their partners’ mother tongue. Another mode switch would be the switch to English as a lingua franca, when participants do not feel comfortable in either language. The most common mode is probably L1-L2, but this is still to be investigated.
The idea is to compile at least four sub samples and to prepare them for publication on the Internet (in DANS or otherwise), and make them available and searchable, so that other researchers may benefit from the data.
1. 7 discussions of 30 Dutch and German pupils in total, 130 pages (in Word) of transcript, 5 hours of discussion
2. 23 discussions of 37 Dutch and 42 German pupils, 235 pages of transcript, in which English is also used [idem]
3. Online corpus (chat-communication, eMMA-project) of 7 groups (80 Dutch, German and international pupils), circa 1000 pages (Chat)
4. 5-6 discussions of 22 Dutch and German pupils [the collection will take place in January, approx. 100 pages of transcript are expected]
These corpora constitute the basis for several research projects within the field first and second language acquisition practice and variation in second language use.