The Role of participant and content of discourse in bilingualism

This study is about people who interact with two or more languages in their everyday life. It deals with how they use their two languages in specific situations and the factors which determine their choice of languages. The samples of the study are six Australian-born bilingual students at the English Language Teaching Department of the Faculty of Education at Çukurova University in Adana, Turkey. They are the children of Turkish-born Australian immigrants who have made a permanent return from Australia to their homeland during the past few years. The aim of the study is to present an introduction to bilingualism - the state of passing by with two or more languages - and to deepen the understanding of areas such as language choice and code-switching in bilingualism. Chapter I provides information on the background of the issue and Chapter II gives a review of the relevant literature. Chapter m contains the nature of the research, the subjects and how the data are collected and analyzed. In Chapter IV, the data is analyzed and categorized and examples are given. In the Fifth Chapter, conclusions are drawn, and limitations and suggestions for further research are stated. Key words: Bilingualism, language choice, code-switching, participant and content of discourse