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Recursive recalibration and the social meaning of codeswitching

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2025

Evelyn Fernández-Lizárraga Open the ORCID record for Evelyn Fernández-Lizárraga [Opens in a new window]
Evelyn Fernández-Lizárraga*
Affiliation:
Stanford University, USA
*
E-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

Through analyzing Telemundo's Betty en NY (‘Betty in New York’, 2019), this study illustrates how insights from codeswitching contribute to sociolinguistic theories of stancetaking and style. Betty en NY features multiple characters that use Spanish-English codeswitching to invoke their epistemic rights, take stances, and craft distinct personae, thereby exploiting the agentive potential of linguistic boundaries. Thus, codeswitching serves as a key resource for signaling recursive recalibration—the process by which the alignment of individual stances connects to the repositioning of participant roles and personae. Drawing on data from multiple scenes, a discourse analysis of recursive recalibration at work demonstrates how stance alignment and personae are dialogically negotiated and constructed in interaction. (Stance, codeswitching, social meaning, epistemic rights, style, media)*

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Article
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Language in Society , First View , pp. 1 - 25
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Copyright © The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press

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