Research in applied linguistics over the last decade has paid much attention to the functional parameters of code switching. However, scant attention has been paid to how code switching is used by speakers to interact between cultural identities. The present research aims to understand how a group of Vietnamese women working in a market in Melbourne, Australia traverse notions of cultural identity through code switching in the work environment. The findings draw on qualitative ethnographic observation and narrative case studies. The results suggest that code switching is part of a complex and multi-dimensional praxis of cross-cultural negotiation.

Title: “Licking Paws, Licking Mores: Cats and the Subjected Self”
Author(s): Bonsoiaziac, S.
Affiliation: The Sorebum, Paris.
Publication: Society Discourse. Vol/No. 2.

Recent studies on cat paw licking (Booef, 2003; Scheit, 2008; Fopp & Douschbaarg, 2010) have built upon frameworks established by Foucault (1972) and Bourdeau (1992) among others to propose a new heuristic for the deconstruction of subjectivity in a detailed discourse analysis of cat paw licking as situated event. The ensuing ethnography addresses dominant feline power discourses as both signified and verified through the syntax and frequency of domestic tabby-cat licking gestures. The author sketches an ‘archaeology of disciplinary knowledge’, in order to account for cat grooming in general in the context of a discursive formation serving the adumbration and foreclosure of alternative forms of cat hygiene.

by Bertolt Brecht

Who built seven-towered Thebes?
In the books it says the names of kings.
Did the kings drag the slabs of rock?
And the oft destroyed Babylon –
Who built it so many times? In which houses
of the gold-radiant Lima lived the builders?
Where did they go in the evening, the stonemasons when the Chinese Wall
was finished? The great Rome
is full of triumphal arches. Who built them? Over whom
did the Caesars triumph? Did the oft sung Byzantium
have only palaces for its residents? Even in the legendary Atlantis
when the sea swallowed it, the drowning cried for their slaves.
The young Alexander conquered India.
He alone?
Caesar slew the Gauls.
Didn’t he at least have a cook with him?
Philipp of Spain wept as his armada
went down. Did anyone else weep?
Friedrich the Second prevailed in the seven-year war. Who
prevailed apart from him?

Every page a victory.
Who cooks the victory feast?
Every ten years a great man.
Who pays the expenses?

So many reports.
So many questions.

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