Caint na ndaoine in action in Gaeltacht na nDéise: Code-mixing, code-switching or translanguaging?

Code-mixing, code-switching and latterly translanguaging are concepts that are well-researched in the concept of bilingual communities, especially from a sociolinguistics perspective. This paper explores a corpus of interviews from speakers living in Gaeltacht na nDéise, in the South-East of Ireland. The data, in both Irish and English, was originally part of a mixed methods study that included a largescale community study of 497 households. Using a corpus linguistics methodology, we coded all instances of language change and analysed them systematically. Using a bottom-up approach, we explore whether current concepts of code-mixing, code-switching or translanguaging can help explain the data. Our results show, across the data, instances of code-mixing, code-switching and translanguaging occurring across both parts-of-speech, discourse items and within utterances. We note a prevalence of nouns in the English interviews and pragmatic markers in the Irish interviews, and to a lesser degree, adjectives and quotatives, as sites where language pivots appear to be more likely. In this study code-mixing, switching and translanguaging are brought together to illuminate our data and each offers a perspective that helps is better conceptualise how language is being used. © 2025 The Irish Association for Applied Linguistics. All rights reserved.