The discursive construction of code-switching in Yanito among the young population of Gibraltar

Gibraltar is a small British enclave located in the south of the Iberian Peninsula. Despite its size, Gibraltar presents a historically, culturally, and linguistically rich landscape. Linguistically speaking, this speech community is characterised by a process of language shift in which Andalusian Spanish, the language of thousands of Gibraltarians before the 1970s, has slowly been replaced by the official language of the territory, British English. In this process, Yanito – a code-switching variety with lexicon from other Mediterranean languages – emerged as the vernacular language of the population. Despite the interest and complexity of this linguistic community, little is known about language variation or the use and evolution of this local dialect in younger speakers.