Une analyse sociolinguistique du code switching chez les adolescents mauriciens de niveau secondaire

Two sociolinguistic studies carried out in secondary schools in Mauritius in a decade have revealed a growing interest for the Asian ancestral languages. This article discusses fieldwork conducted in 2009 by means of quantitative and qualitative survey with the aim to discover language use, language choice and perceptions of Indian ancestral languages by young adolescents in secondary education. An analysis of the qualitative data on the perception of language importance shows that the adolescents ‘accommodate’ their language in order to communicate better and that they often switch between Creole, French and English depending on the communicative context and their interlocutor. The examples of code switching illustrate a type of urban switching (Kriegel et al. 2009) by these speakers who are trilingual and quadralingual for those who use an ancestral language