INTRODUCTION

Code switching is a common phenomenon in bilingual society. Crystal (1987)

says that code switching occurs when a speaker who is a bilingual alternates his or her

speech between two languages. People who code switching swapping their language to

another language that they know while they are speaking or writing

Myers-Scotton (1993) defines code switching as the selection by bilinguals of

forms from an embedded language (or languages) in utterances of a matrix language

during the same conversation. People who code switch have a matrix language in their

utterances. Usually, if the people have more knowledge on one code, the code will be the

matrix language and other code will be embedded into the matrix language.

Matrix language does not necessary be speakers own mother tongue. It can be any

language that speakers master. For example, Puan Halimahton is a migrant from

Malaysia to United Kingdom. Even though her first mother tongue is Malay language but

as she worked at United Kingdom for many years, her competency on English language

has increased. Therefore when she speaks, the matrix language would be English

language and sometimes she embeds Malay word.

The knowledge of utilizing two or more languages of bilingual society gives an

advantage to them to swap the language intra-sententially or inter-sententially on

different purposes. Bilingual people ought posses the knowledge of both languages

morpheme and syntax. This enables them to utilize the knowledge to achieve different

purposes such as to emphasize and to get conformation.

Code switching may be done consciously or unconsciously depending on context

and function. While chatting with friends, speakers may unconsciously code switching.

When an English teacher of standard 1 asks her students whether they understand the

lesson or not, she might be using inter-sentential code switching.

“Do you understand me? Faham tak?”

She consciously code switching so that the students would understand what she is

saying.

In our research, we focus on code-switching of Malay and English language. We

have narrowed down our research focus on these two languages only. Either Malay or

English language will become the matrix language and the other language will be

embedded into the matrix language. We predict that most of our participants which are

Universiti Utara Malaysia (UUM) students will code switch more as they are using

English in learning session and reading reference materials mostly in English. Our

participants are enrolling courses like Development Management, Hospitality and

Tourism, Accountancy, Economy and Teaching English for Young Learners (TEYL).

We are curious to investigate who code-switch more between male and female

and which word classes do code-switch occur more often. We also like to know in what

context and function do the participant code-switch. From these questions, we have

developed three research questions which are:

a) Is there a difference in the frequency in which men and women code-switch

during a conversation?

b) In what context ad function do they code-switch?

c) Which word classes do code switch occur most often?

Our data analysis and findings are based on these questions.

LITERATURE REVIEW

As a start, it is essential to define the notion of bilingualism and concentrate on

the primary feature of bilingual speech production, in which the research is concerned.

Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics (1999, p.36) terms

bilingualism as “the use of at least two languages either by an individual or by a group

of speakers, such as the inhabitants of a particular region or a nation.” Bilingual

speakers have more linguistic resources at their disposal than do monolingual speakers.

Therefore, bilinguals often employ strategies for maximising the potential expressiveness

of their linguistic inventory.

When bilingual speakers communicate, they frequently integrate linguistic

material from both of their languages within the same discourse segment (Bonvillain,

2003). This linguistic process is widely known as ‘code switching’. From the

sociolinguists’ point of view, code switching (CS) is studied to understand why people

who are competent in two languages alternate languages in a particular conversation or

situation. Therefore, the concept of CS, as defined by Gumperz, 1973(cited in Dewaele

et. al, 2003), refers to the alternate use of two or more languages in the same utterance or

conversation. Another definition of code switching is the act of changing from one

language to another takes many forms associated with a certain mood of the speaker,

circumstances of speech production or the interlocutors being present (Richards and Platt,

1999).

Early research in this area has identified the types of CS and the factors affecting

it. More specifically, CS varies according to the situation (situational code switching) and

within a conversation (metaphorical code switching). Under the metaphorical category,

CS differs according to discourse function. For example, to include or exclude someone

from a conversation, to convey intimacy, or to emphasize a message.

“Gumperz’ (1982) seminal work lists six functions of code-switching: quotation (a

quote is code-switched), addressee specification (a code-switched message aims

at a particular/different addressee), interjection (an interjection is code-

switched), repetition (a code-switched message repeats what has just been said),

message qualification (i.e. a code-switched message elaborates what has been

said), personification or objectification (a code-switched message implies a

“personal’ or “objective” tone).”

(cited in Journal of Conversational code switching and Relevance Theory)

According to Nancy Bonvillain (2003), code switching has a variety of linguistic

and interactional functions, such as emphasizing, marking discourse boundaries,

expressing emotions or opinions, and signaling in-group/out-group membership that can

have simple uses in expanding vocabulary. As a sentence produced by a bilingual may

begin in one language and finish in another, phrases from both tongues often succeed in

an apparently random order. The use of more accessible word may depend on speakers’

linguistic abilities in their two languages or momentary lapses of memory.

METHODOLOGY

The data for the research were collected from UUM students. A total of 15

respondents comprise of students from different courses such as Hospitality and Tourism,

Development Management, Accountancy, Economy and TEYL participated in the

research.

In approaching the participant to get the data during informal situation, we initiate

a conversation by greeting them and start talking about any matters. We do not utter any

English word at first as this will influence the participant utterance. We secretly record

the conversation by putting the recorder nearby us so that the record would be clear.

Sometimes when people ask are we recording their conversation, we have to pretend that

we are not recording and giving other excuses.

However in formal situation like meeting, discussion and meeting, we record the

conversation from far as not to interrupt the flow of the discussion. Recording formal

situation is easier than informal situation as we do not have to initiate the conversation.

This is because when we try to converse, there is a tendency to speak English to

encourage them to code-switch.

After that, we jot down the details of time, situation, styles, principal speaker and

language in a language diary. Usually we fill in the language diary after we get back to

our room as we do not usually carry around language diary with us.

After we have collected all the recordings, we transcribed the recordings using

Sony Fesorge and Express Scribe. Later we printed the transcription and start analyzing

the data. First we analyzed how much male and female code switch, we bracketed the

code switch that appear and count them. Second, we figured out what is the function of

code switching that appears in female and male transcription. Third we highlighted

English word that falls under the word classes of adjectives, nouns, adverb, verb and

pronoun and we counted the frequency.

.

FINDINGS

We have collected eight samples of recorded conversation among UUM students.

We divided the data into two general aspects which according to gender (male and

female) and to two different contexts (formal and informal situation). These aspects are

later analysed in order to obtain the frequency of both men and women code-switch

during a conversation and to know in what context and function do they code-switched.

The data consists of four formal conversations and another half is in informal

context. Within these contexts, we separated both formal and informal conversation into

two different genders. i.e. two of formal and informal male speakers and same goes to the

female speakers. All recordings took approximately 20 minutes of conversation. These

divisions of data collection are made particularly to avoid gender biasness and imbalance

of data.

Based on analysis of the data collections, we discovered that there is a big

difference in the frequency of male and female speakers code-switching during the

discourse. The results in Table 1 show that 77.5 percents of female speakers have a

tendency to code-switch during the conversation. Since their matrix language is a Malay

language, they switched to English mostly at the word level. It is probably because lacks

of equivalent word in Malay language. The words such as ‘empowerment’, ‘restrictive’

and ‘privileged card’ can be good examples of this probable reason. However, only 22.5

percents of male speakers tend to switch the language. In contrast to female speakers,

men used more tag switching in both contexts; otherwise, they inclined to use full Malay

or English language during their speech.

FREQUENCY OF MEN AND WOMEN CODE SWITCH

Table 1

Next, we examined the data based on our second research question which is to

identify whether formal or informal context encountered most frequent language

switching and the functions underlying this code-switch. Surprisingly, the results in the

following Table 2 show that most of UUM students used code-switching regularly in

formal context such as discussion and meeting compared to informal context. This is

probably because the teaching materials that have been provided in the formal discussion

77.5%

22.5%

are taken from English references. Therefore, the students may be employing a word

from one language in sequences spoken in another because the latter lacks a comparable

word expressing the desired meaning. As a result, they decided on using simple lexical

existence in their linguistic abilities.

CONTEXT OF CODE-SWITCHING

Table 2

In sequence to the previous analysis, there are various functions of code-switching

among UUM students. From our data analysis, we managed to discover three common

functions which are to emphasize, to get confirmation, and to express affective feelings.

The following excerpts are examples of each functions identified among UUM students.

To emphasize:

1. Speaker A : Kalau takde driver, aku jadi driver, I CAN BE THE DRIVER.

(Speaker A indicates that she can be a bus driver if there is no bus driver for a

trip)

2. Speaker B : Sebab kita memang TOTALLY penat

(Speaker B wants to emphasize the trip is going to be tiring. Instead of using the

word ‘memang’, she stressed the tone by adding English word ‘totally’)

76.3%

23.7%%

To get confirmation:

Speaker 3: Eh, Fitness Club tak leh ke?Speaker 2: Ada ke Fitness Club?Speaker 3: Ade!

To express affective feelings:

Speaker 2: Saya tak campur. I don’t care what their problem because I don’t care. That’s not my problem, you know why?

(Speaker 2 annoyed with the problem that involving his friend)

Speaker 3: Woi, tengah watpe? Dengar cerita Lai accident eh?Speaker 1: Accident?! Are you serious? Betul ke ni?Speaker 2: Ha? Dia macam mana sekarang ni? Is he ok?(Speaker 2 expressed his concern towards his friend who is involved in the

accident)

Last but not least, we also analysed the occurrence of code-switching in word

classes. We focused on noun, pronoun, adjective, verb and adverb in order to know the

most significant word class in code-switching. The results indicate that 63.8 percents of

code-switching occurs in Noun, 19.4 percents in Verb, 9.3 percents in Adjective, while

less than 8 percents occur in Adverb and Pronoun. Therefore, the most common part of

speech that UUM students tend to code-switch is the Noun. It is probably because the

Noun covers a large proportion of English word classes so this is the reason why the

students used it during the conversation. The following example is extracted from

stretches of speech made by our respondents:

5.3%

Speaker 3: Kenapa amik Kelab DiRaja?

Speaker 2: Xde contoh je. Kalau Country Club biasanya Golf

Country..Kalau dekat Terengganukan ada ape...Terengganu

Country Club kot..Tu milik Sultan Mizan..Tu maybe kita leh

masukkan dalam Sports and Outdoor Club tapi tak ingatla dia

punya full name.. Country.. Ade tak Country Club kat mana-

mana your hometown ke?

Speaker 5: Kat Kedah memang ade….Emm Harvard..

THE OCCURRENCE OF CODE-SWITCHINGIN WORD CLASSES

Table 3

19.4%

9.3%

63.8%

63.8%

DISCUSSION

Even though our participants receive their tertiary education in English but still

they are not able to utilize it outside the class. The finding on what context and function

do code switch occur the most reveal that 76.3% of code switching happen in formal

situation like meeting, discussion and presentation whereas only 23.7% of code switching

occur in informal situation.

This is because maybe the participants are encouraged to use full English or code

switching more in formal situation as the classroom environment is conducive for the

participants to use English. A conducive environment here refers to no friends will laugh

or giving negative remarks as they code switch.

However, during informal situation, not many people code switch as speakers

may receive negative comments and remarks from other people. As Holmes states that

reactions to code-switching styles are negative in many communities, despite the fact that

proficiency in intra-sentential code-switching requires good control of both codes. Others

may see people who code switch are stuck up and damaging the language by mixing it

with other language.

CONCLUSION

Based on our research findings, we can conclude that women code-switch more

often than men because from our point of view, they probably have more linguistic

inventories of the two languages as they view both as an important language in tertiary

learning.

The most frequent part of speech that UUM students are likely to switch is the

Noun. As mentioned in the previous paragraph, Noun is one of the large proportions of

word classes used in daily conversation. Therefore, they are probably having a tendency

to use it in their speech if they cannot find the suitable word in Malay language.

UUM students have a propensity to use code-switching in two different contexts

such as discussions, meeting and informal conversations. The frequent use of code-

switching during formal situation might be the influences of the English references

provided by the lecturer or the existences of linguistics abilities within the speaker’s

itself. Since conversation constitutes a major part of human interaction, code switching

may serve a new dimension towards linguistics choices as it promotes different functions

for expressing affective purposes.

REFERENCES

Bonvillain, N. (2003). Language, Culture, and Communication: The Meaning of

Messages (4th Ed.). United States of America: Pearson Education, Inc.

Deweale, J.M., Housen, A. & Li Wei. (2003). Bilingualism: Beyond Basic Principles.

Great Britain: Multilingual Matters Ltd.

Holmes, J. (2001). An Introduction to Sociolinguistics (2nd Ed.). Malaysia: Pearson

Education Limited.

Milroy, L. (1987). Observing and Analysing Natural Language. Great Britain: Basil

Blackwell Inc.

Musyken, P. (2000). Bilingual Speech: A Typology of Code-Mixing. United Kingdom:

Cambridge University Press.

Myers-Scotton, C. (1993). Social Motivations for code-switching. Evidence from Africa.

Oxford: Oxford University Press.

JOURNAL:

Journal of Conversational code switching and Relevance Theory by Brian, Hok-Shing,

Chan (Refer Appendices)