Stable intuitions across presentation styles: Effects of modality, formality, and speaker type on code-switching judgments

Co-authored paper presented at the Bilingualism in the Hispanic and Lusophone World Conference, Reading, United Kingdom. [PDF]

This study examines whether presentation variables influence bilinguals’ acceptability judgments of intrasentential code-switching. Using a within-participant Acceptability Judgment Task (AJT), it tests the effects of modality (written vs. oral), writing style (formal vs. informal), and speaker type (heritage bilingual vs. late L2 speaker) on judgments of grammatical and ungrammatical code-switched sentences. The participants are early Spanish-English bilinguals from New York who evaluate the same structures across four presentation formats. Analyses show no reliable effects of modality, formality, or speaker background on acceptability ratings. The findings suggest that, within AJTs, code-switching grammatical intuitions can remain stable across varied presentation styles, supporting the robustness of this method while leaving open questions about ecological validity beyond the task context.