by Leah Waltrip (3rd Year Graduate Student)
Code-switching, or switching between two languages, is a common pattern of communication among bilingual and multilingual individuals. For a long time, researchers viewed code-switching as a sign of language challenges. However, recent research has shown that code-switching indicates stronger mastery of grammatical and vocabulary knowledge in multiple languages. Code-switching is a strategic linguistic choice, allowing bilinguals to draw from multiple languages to communicate concepts more effectively.
In 2024, I had the privilege of completing the PASEO Linguistic and Cultural Development Program in Huanchaco, Peru. There, I learned that some clinicians were trying to leverage code-switching to improve therapeutic communication. By utilizing a client’s bilingual and multilingual skills, these clinicians would cue clients to process life changes and traumatic events in whatever language came to mind. Occasionally, they also asked clients to describe content in a different language to create distance from emotionally overwhelming memories. Since language is distinctly related to the encoding and decoding of memories, it made sense to me that bilingual and multilingual individuals may need to utilize all languages available to them to fully process events, particularly traumatic ones.
I came back to DU invigorated by what I learned from the clinicians, excited to dig into the literature on linguistics and traumatic processing. I hoped to find research on how code-switching would influence someone’s ability to recall and recount memories. Instead, I was disappointed to discover little research on this topic.
More than a disappointment, though, I stumbled on an important gap in the literature. After all, many research-backed treatments for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) aim to integrate the recollection of contextual details (who, what, when) with emotional and internal thoughts that someone experiences during a traumatic event. Theories on PTSD have suggested that fragmentation of contextual details and emotional/internal cues can cause symptoms of PTSD. That means it’s potentially important to understand if code-switching might have an impact on both the narrative structure of a memory and emotional tone.
So I’ve been building plans for new research examining the impact of code-switching on both narrative coherence and emotional expression. Of course, I recognize that my experience, as someone who learned Spanish much later in life, is quite different from the experience of someone who grew up learning multiple languages simultaneously; with that difference in mind, I hypothesized that more code-switching during the recall of a traumatic narrative would increase both narrative coherence and emotional expression, but only for those who had learned to speak languages simultaneously.
Once we get the study underway, I look forward to sharing updates. I hope that results will ultimately inform clinical and community services for bilingual and multilingual survivors. Stay tuned!
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Trauma Research Notes 