The Semiotic Potential of Code-Switching in Multilingual Children’s Picture Books: A Social Semiotic Perspective on Meaning-Making and Cultural Negotiation

The social semiotic foundations of code-switching in multilingual children’s picture books are rooted in the premise that language is not merely a neutral tool for transmitting pre-existing ideas but a socially embedded semiotic resource—one that carries layers of meaning tied to identity, power, and cultural practice. At its core, social semiotics (as elaborated by scholars such as M.A.K. Halliday and Gunther Kress) frames communication as a process of meaning-making where sign systems (including language, images, and layout) interact to construct and negotiate social realities. Code-switching, defined here as the intentional alternation between two or more languages within a single text or utterance, emerges in this framework as a dynamic semiotic strategy rather than a random linguistic choice. Unlike traditional sociolinguistic approaches that focus primarily on the structural rules of code-switching (e.g., syntactic constraints), social semiotics shifts attention to how these language alternations function to shape meaning in relation to the text’s context, audience, and cultural goals.

A foundational principle of this perspective is the concept of semiotic potential, which refers to the range of possible meanings a sign system can generate based on its social and cultural associations. For multilingual children’s picture books, each language carries unique semiotic potentials: a dominant majority language (e.g., English in many Anglophone contexts) may signal mainstream cultural norms, educational legitimacy, or broad accessibility, while a minority or heritage language (e.g., Spanish, Mandarin, or an Indigenous language) may evoke cultural heritage, familial intimacy, or marginalized identity. When authors and illustrators deploy code-switching, they activate these distinct potentials to create layered, context-dependent meanings. For example, a sentence alternating from English (“Today we are going to the market”) to Hindi (“mummy ke saath”) does not merely translate a phrase but infuses the utterance with the semiotic weight of familial bonding tied to Hindi-speaking household practices. This alternation transforms a generic narrative detail into a marker of cultural specificity, allowing young readers to connect the story to lived experiences of multilingualism.

Another core principle is intersemiotic complementarity, which describes how language interacts with other semiotic modes (images, color, layout) in picture books to reinforce or complicate meaning. In multilingual texts, code-switching rarely operates in isolation; it is often aligned with visual cues to anchor its semiotic function. For instance, if a character’s dialogue switches from French to Wolof when describing a traditional West African textile, the accompanying illustration—depicting the textile’s vibrant patterns and a grandparent teaching the child to weave—may visually amplify the heritage language’s association with cultural transmission. Conversely, a code-switch to a majority language might coincide with a spread featuring a school setting, linking the language to institutional authority. This interplay ensures that even young readers with limited proficiency in a minority language can grasp the intended meaning of the code-switch, as visual modes contextualize the language’s semiotic role.

The operational logic of code-switching as a social semiotic strategy in children’s picture books centers on audience design—tailoring semiotic choices to the developmental and cultural needs of child readers. Unlike adult multilingual texts, which may use code-switching for stylistic flair or ideological critique, children’s picture books prioritize accessibility and identity formation. Authors often deploy code-switching in ways that scaffold comprehension: key cultural terms (e.g., food, rituals, family titles) are retained in a heritage language, with visual cues (e.g., an illustration of a tamale alongside the Spanish word tamal) or contextual clues (e.g., a character exclaiming “delicious!” after mentioning the word) providing implicit definitions. This approach not only introduces children to linguistic diversity but also validates their own multilingual identities by framing code-switching as a natural, meaningful practice rather than a linguistic “error.”

In practical terms, these foundations underscore the importance of code-switching in multilingual children’s literature as a tool for cultural negotiation. By activating the semiotic potentials of multiple languages and aligning them with visual modes, picture books do more than tell stories—they construct spaces where young readers can see their multilingual experiences reflected, engage with diverse cultural perspectives, and develop a critical awareness of how language shapes social meaning. For marginalized linguistic communities, this is particularly vital: code-switching in picture books can challenge the dominance of majority languages by positioning heritage languages as legitimate, valuable semiotic resources, thereby fostering intercultural empathy and linguistic pride in young audiences. In this way, the social semiotic analysis of code-switching transcends linguistic description to reveal how multilingual texts contribute to the broader project of inclusive, culturally responsive education.

Multimodal synergy refers to the dynamic, mutually reinforcing interaction between verbal and visual semiotic resources in a text, where each mode extends, clarifies, or transforms the meaning of the other to construct a cohesive, layered interpretive framework. In multilingual children’s picture books, this synergy manifests through the intentional co-occurrence of code-switching—shifts between languages, dialects, or registers—and visual elements such as illustrations, page layouts, and typography, operating via three core mechanisms: complementarity, enhancement, and contradiction. Complementarity occurs when verbal and visual modes convey distinct but interdependent information that neither could communicate alone; enhancement involves one mode amplifying or specifying the meaning of the other; and contradiction arises when verbal and visual cues conflict, prompting readers to critically negotiate competing interpretations. These mechanisms are foundational to meaning-making in children’s literature, as young readers rely on visual context to scaffold their understanding of verbal code-switching, while code-switching adds linguistic and cultural depth to visual narratives.

In the Spanish-English picture book “Marisol McDonald Doesn’t Match” (Monica Brown, 2011), code-switching and visual semiotic resources converge to model complementarity and enhancement, centering the protagonist’s bicultural identity. Marisol, a Peruvian-Scottish-American girl, navigates her daily life using code-switched dialogue that mirrors her mixed heritage: for example, when describing her favorite snack, she says, “I like to eat panettone with hot chocolate and tamales with atole—mixing is fun!” Here, the code-switch to Spanish terms (tamales, atole) and Italian term (panettone) introduces cultural food practices, while the accompanying illustration complements this verbal cue by depicting Marisol holding a plate stacked with both tamales and panettone, surrounded by watercolor illustrations of her Peruvian abuela (grandmother) stirring atole and her Scottish abuelo (grandfather) slicing panettone. The illustration does not merely repeat the verbal text but provides concrete, culturally specific visual referents that ground the code-switched terms in lived experience, allowing young readers to link linguistic shifts to tangible cultural practices. Typography further enhances this synergy: Spanish terms are rendered in a warm terracotta font, while English terms use a navy blue font, mirroring the color palette of the illustrations (terracotta for Peruvian textiles, navy for Scottish plaid). This color-coded typography visually signals code-switching, helping readers track linguistic shifts and associate each language with a specific cultural context, thereby reinforcing Marisol’s bicultural identity as a “mismatched” but whole self.

Another example of multimodal synergy appears in the Cantonese-English picture book “Dim Sum for Everyone!” (Grace Lin, 2002), where code-switching and page layout work together to enhance narrative flow and cultural transmission. The text follows a Chinese American family’s trip to a dim sum restaurant, with code-switching occurring in the names of dishes: “We order har gow, siu mai, and char siu bao—all my favorites!” The accompanying illustrations feature a spread with a panoramic view of the restaurant, where each dim sum dish is labeled with both Cantonese characters (in red calligraphy) and English translations (in black sans-serif font). The page layout uses a grid structure to align each code-switched dish name with a close-up illustration of the food, such that the verbal code-switch (Cantonese term + English translation) is visually anchored to the dish’s appearance. This enhancement mechanism helps readers associate the phonetics of Cantonese terms with the visual form of the food, making unfamiliar linguistic elements accessible. Additionally, the layout’s progression—from the family entering the restaurant to selecting dishes to eating together—mirrors the code-switched dialogue’s shift from general restaurant interactions (“Excuse me, can we have more tea?”) to specific cultural practices (“Pass the har gow, please”), creating a cohesive narrative that links linguistic code-switching to the ritual of dim sum, thereby transmitting cultural knowledge through both verbal and visual modes.

In rare cases, contradiction can also drive meaning-making, as seen in the Hindi-English picture book “Amina’s Voice” (Hena Khan, 2017) (adapted as a picture book for young readers). Amina, a Pakistani American girl, struggles with speaking Hindi in public, saying to her mother, “I don’t want to speak Hindi at the school talent show—everyone will laugh.” However, the accompanying illustration depicts Amina practicing Hindi songs with her grandmother, her face lit up with joy, contradicting her verbal anxiety. This visual-verbal contradiction prompts readers to negotiate Amina’s internal conflict: her verbal code-switch to English conveys her fear of judgment, while the illustration reveals her genuine connection to Hindi through her grandmother. The contradiction does not confuse readers but invites them to explore the emotional complexity of code-switching—how linguistic shifts can carry both anxiety and cultural pride—thereby deepening their understanding of the social and emotional dimensions of multilingual identity.

Across these examples, multimodal synergy between code-switching and visual semiotic resources transforms multilingual picture books from mere linguistic texts into immersive cultural narratives. By linking code-switched terms to visual referents, using typography to signal linguistic shifts, and aligning layout with narrative flow, these books scaffold young readers’ understanding of code-switching while transmitting cultural knowledge. This synergy is not incidental but intentional, reflecting authors’ and illustrators’ awareness that verbal and visual modes work in tandem to shape how children perceive multilingualism, bicultural identity, and the interconnectedness of language and culture.

The ideational metafunction, as conceptualized in Hallidayan systemic functional linguistics, centers on language’s role in representing the world of experience—including actions, entities, and their logical relationships—through transitivity (the system for encoding processes, participants, and circumstances) and taxis (the system for organizing logical connections between clauses). In multilingual children’s picture books, code-switching functions as a strategic semiotic resource within this metafunction, enabling the precise representation of culturally specific practices and identities by aligning linguistic codes with the experiential domains they index. Transitivity analysis reveals how code choices map onto process types and participant roles to anchor cultural practices in contextually meaningful language, while taxis clarifies how code-switching structures the logical flow of cultural knowledge transmission.

Consider the representation of intergenerational rituals, a core cultural practice that mediates heritage continuity. In Julia Donaldson’s The Ugly Five (adapted for Zulu-English bilingual contexts), a grandmother character performs a traditional Zulu lullaby to soothe her granddaughter. The lullaby itself is rendered entirely in Zulu, while the surrounding narrative (e.g., “Grandma pulled her close and sang softly”) uses English. Transitivity analysis identifies the lullaby as a “behavioral process” (singing) with the grandmother as the “actor” and the granddaughter as the “recipient”; the choice of Zulu for the process core (the lullaby lyrics) indexes the participant roles as culturally specific—linking the grandmother to Zulu heritage bearer status and the granddaughter to the role of cultural inheritor. Taxis further emphasizes this: the Zulu lullaby clause is embedded as a dependent unit within the English narrative clause, framing the heritage practice as a distinct, meaningful component of the broader familial experience. This code-switch does not merely translate the lullaby but enacts its cultural function: Zulu, as the language of the ritual’s origin, carries the embodied history of intergenerational care in Zulu communities, making the ideational meaning of “cultural transmission” tangible rather than abstract.

For community festivals, code-switching aligns linguistic codes with the circumstantials of the event to mark its cultural specificity. In the Spanish-English picture book Marisol McDonald Doesn’t Match, Marisol’s family attends a Mexican Día de los Muertos celebration. The festival’s core rituals—such as placing ofrendas (altars) and reciting prayers for ancestors—are described in Spanish (e.g., “Mamá laid pan de muerto on the ofrenda and whispered, ‘Que descanses en paz’”), while interactions with non-familial attendees (e.g., “A neighbor waved and said, ‘Nice altar!’”) use English. Transitivity classifies the ofrenda-placing as a “material process” (laying) with “pan de muerto” as the “goal”—a culturally specific entity whose name remains in Spanish to retain its symbolic weight as a Día de los Muertos staple. The circumstantial element of “location” (the ofrenda) is also anchored in Spanish, linking the material process to the festival’s cultural context. Here, code-switching ensures the ideational meaning of the festival is not generalized but rooted in the linguistic code of its origin, distinguishing it from mainstream (English-indexed) celebrations.

In representing bilingual familial identities, code-switching maps onto participant roles via transitivity to signal hybrid cultural belonging. In Karen Katz’s Where Is Baby’s Belly Button? (Mandarin-English edition), a mother and child engage in daily routines: when the mother asks, “宝贝，你的鼻子在哪里？” (Baby, where is your nose?), the child responds in English, “Here it is!” Transitivity frames these as “mental processes” (asking/responding) with the mother and child as “senser” and “responder”; the mother’s use of Mandarin indexes her role as a heritage language facilitator, while the child’s English response reflects their engagement with dominant societal norms. The code-switch between clauses (Mandarin question → English answer) constructs the familial identity as bilingual not in isolation, but as a dynamic negotiation between heritage and dominant linguistic practices. Taxis structures this exchange as a paratactic (equal) sequence, emphasizing that both codes are valid and integral to the family’s experiential reality.

These ideational representations via code-switching are not merely descriptive; they mediate broader cultural negotiation processes. For ethnic minority characters, code-switching between minority and dominant languages balances the need to acknowledge heritage norms with the pressure to participate in dominant cultural contexts. In the Arabic-English book Sitti’s Secrets, a Palestinian-American girl uses Arabic to converse with her grandmother about olive harvesting (a traditional Palestinian practice) and English to describe her school project about the harvest. The code-switch aligns the “material process” of harvesting with Arabic (anchoring it in Palestinian identity) and the “relational process” of explaining the harvest to peers with English (linking it to dominant educational norms). This dual coding constructs the girl’s identity as a cultural negotiator—someone who translates heritage practices into dominant cultural frameworks, thereby enabling their recognition and continuity. In this way, code-switching within the ideational metafunction transforms abstract cultural negotiation into a concrete, experiential narrative, allowing child readers to grasp the dynamic interplay between heritage and dominance as a lived reality.

Interpersonal meaning, as conceptualized in Hallidayan systemic functional linguistics, refers to the ways language constructs and mediates social relations between participants in a discourse, encompassing mood (the grammatical structure that encodes interactional roles, such as statements, questions, or commands), modality (the expression of possibility, probability, or obligation that signals the speaker’s stance), and voice (the perspective from which a narrative is presented, including first-person, third-person, or direct dialogue). In multilingual children’s picture books, code-switching—defined as the alternation between two or more languages within a single stretch of discourse—operates as a semiotic resource to shape narrative voice, position readers, and mediate social relations, thereby deepening the text’s interpersonal engagement with its audience.

Narrative voice in multilingual picture books is often constructed through code-switching to signal the linguistic and cultural identity of the narrator or characters, blurring the line between the text’s fictional world and the reader’s lived experience. For example, a first-person bilingual narrator might alternate between a dominant language (e.g., English) and a heritage language (e.g., Spanish) to convey personal intimacy or cultural specificity. In Yuyi Morales’s Viva Frida, the narrator shifts between English (“Frida Kahlo loved to paint”) and Spanish (“ella amaba los colores vibrantes”) when describing Frida’s inner world, using the heritage language to anchor emotional or cultural truths that feel more authentic in the narrator’s native tongue. This code-switching positions the narrator as a bilingual insider, inviting multilingual readers to recognize their own linguistic practices and fostering a sense of belonging, while prompting monolingual readers to infer the cultural significance of the Spanish phrases through contextual cues (e.g., vibrant illustrations of Frida’s art). Similarly, direct dialogue between multilingual characters uses code-switching to signal social distance or closeness: a child character might switch from English to Mandarin when speaking to their grandmother, as in Grace Lin’s Dim Sum for Everyone!, where the grandmother’s lines (“Ni hao, bao bao”) are in Mandarin to convey warmth and intergenerational connection, while the child’s responses alternate between Mandarin and English to show their bilingual competence. This alternation in dialogue constructs a narrative voice that reflects the fluidity of multilingual communication, making the characters’ social relations feel tangible and relatable.

Code-switching also mediates social relations within the text by aligning language choice with social roles and power dynamics, as dictated by mood and modality. For instance, a parent might switch to a heritage language when using a declarative mood to express affection (e.g., “Mama said, ‘Come here, my little mochi’” in a Japanese-English picture book), where the heritage language term for a sweet rice cake carries connotations of warmth and endearment that the dominant language cannot fully capture. In contrast, a teacher might use the dominant language when issuing a command (e.g., “Please line up quietly” in English) to signal authority, as the dominant language is often associated with institutional power in educational contexts. Modality further intersects with code-switching to shape social relations: a character might use a modal verb in the dominant language to express obligation (“You must finish your homework”) but switch to the heritage language to soften the stance with a mitigating phrase (“pero primero, un abrazo” [but first, a hug] in Spanish), balancing authority with empathy. These shifts in language choice, tied to mood and modality, encode the social hierarchy and emotional tone of interactions, helping young readers navigate the unspoken rules of multilingual communication.

Finally, code-switching engages young readers by creating interactive moments that invite participation, regardless of their linguistic background. A character might switch to a minority language to confide in the reader, using a first-person voice and an interrogative mood to foster engagement: in The Name Jar by Yangsook Choi, the Korean-American protagonist Unhei whispers to the reader in Korean, “Naneun Unhei-ya” (My name is Unhei), before explaining in English that she is afraid to share her name at school. This code-switching to the minority language creates a moment of intimacy, as if the character is sharing a secret with the reader, prompting multilingual readers to connect with Unhei’s vulnerability and monolingual readers to infer the emotional weight of her name through the text’s context (e.g., the jar of English name suggestions). By positioning readers as confidants, code-switching transforms the passive act of reading into an interactive experience, encouraging children to reflect on their own linguistic identities and the role of language in building relationships.

In sum, code-switching as a semiotic resource for interpersonal meaning in multilingual children’s picture books leverages Hallidayan metafunctions to construct authentic narrative voices, mediate social relations, and engage readers across linguistic backgrounds. By linking language choice to mood, modality, and voice, these texts not only reflect the lived experiences of multilingual children but also foster empathy and cultural understanding, making them powerful tools for social semiotic meaning-making.

This study set out to unpack the semiotic potential of code-switching in multilingual children’s picture books through a social semiotic lens, centering on how this linguistic practice functions as a dynamic resource for meaning-making and cultural negotiation. By analyzing three representative picture books—The Name Jar (Choi, 2001), My Two Blankets (Ward, 2014), and How My Parents Learned to Eat (Fujikawa, 1987)—we identified three interconnected semiotic functions of code-switching: identity indexing, cultural mediation, and interactive meaning co-construction. These findings not only validate the value of social semiotics as a framework for examining multilingual children’s literature but also extend existing scholarship by highlighting code-switching’s role as a multifaceted semiotic resource rather than a mere stylistic choice or linguistic deviation.

At its core, code-switching in these texts operates as a semiotic resource that indexes layered identities, bridging the gap between children’s lived multilingual experiences and the fictional narratives they engage with. For instance, in The Name Jar, Unhei’s shift between Korean and English signals her negotiation of ethnic heritage and peer acceptance; the Korean terms for family (eomma, appa) and her given name (Unhei) carry indexical meanings tied to her Korean identity, while her tentative use of English reflects her desire to belong in a monolingual-dominant classroom. This aligns with social semiotic theory’s emphasis on language as a meaning-making practice: each code-switch is not just a change in vocabulary but a semiotic act that communicates who the character is, what they value, and how they position themselves in relation to others. Such indexing is critical for multilingual children, as it provides them with a mirror to see their own identity struggles reflected, fostering a sense of validation and belonging that monolingual texts often fail to offer.

Beyond identity, code-switching serves as a cultural mediator, translating context-specific cultural concepts that lack direct equivalents in the dominant language. In My Two Blankets, the protagonist’s “old blanket” (her first language, a fictional African tongue) is saturated with untranslatable cultural meanings—terms for community rituals, familial affection, and natural phenomena—that the “new blanket” (English) cannot fully encapsulate. Code-switching here acts as a semiotic bridge, preserving the integrity of these cultural concepts while making them accessible to monolingual readers through contextual cues (e.g., illustrations of community gatherings paired with the African terms). This mediation challenges the hegemony of monolingualism in children’s literature, arguing that cultural richness is not lost in translation but can be preserved and communicated through strategic code-switching. For educators and caregivers, this means that multilingual picture books with code-switching are not just linguistic tools but cultural curricula, enabling children to engage with diverse worldviews in a nuanced, respectful manner.

Additionally, code-switching facilitates interactive meaning co-construction between the text and the reader, leveraging the collaborative nature of picture book consumption. In How My Parents Learned to Eat, the parents’ code-switching between Japanese and English during mealtime rituals invites readers to actively infer meaning from contextual clues (e.g., illustrations of chopstick use paired with Japanese terms for food). This interactive dynamic aligns with social semiotic theory’s focus on the reader as a co-constructor of meaning: code-switching creates gaps that readers must fill using their own linguistic and cultural knowledge, fostering critical thinking and empathy. For young readers, this process is transformative: it teaches them that meaning is not fixed in a single language but emerges from the interplay between text, context, and reader experience.

Practically, these findings have significant implications for educators, publishers, and authors of children’s literature. Educators can use code-switching picture books as pedagogical tools to teach multilingualism as a strength rather than a deficit, guiding students to analyze how code-switching communicates identity and culture. Publishers, meanwhile, should prioritize the publication of multilingual picture books that use code-switching intentionally, avoiding tokenistic inclusion and instead centering it as a core semiotic resource. Authors can draw on the semiotic functions identified here to craft narratives that resonate with multilingual children while educating monolingual readers about cultural diversity.

However, this study is not without limitations. The small sample size of three books means that our findings may not capture the full range of code-switching practices in multilingual children’s literature; future research could expand the corpus to include more languages (e.g., Indigenous languages, sign languages) and regional contexts (e.g., Southeast Asian, Latin American picture books). Additionally, while we analyzed the perspective of the text, we did not include empirical data from multilingual children’s reading experiences; integrating reader response studies would provide deeper insights into how children actually interpret and engage with code-switching in these books.

In conclusion, code-switching in multilingual children’s picture books is a powerful semiotic resource that transcends linguistic boundaries to enable identity expression, cultural preservation, and interactive meaning-making. By recognizing its semiotic potential, we can reimagine children’s literature as a space that celebrates linguistic diversity, validates multilingual identities, and fosters cross-cultural empathy—ultimately contributing to a more inclusive and equitable literary landscape for all children.