[The Study on Code Switching between Arabic and English Among Young Saudi Students in Colchester]

By

Acknowledgement

At the point of submitting the dissertaion for my degree, I would like to express my gratitude towards my supervisor, friends and family for their continous support and supervision without which I would never been able to complete this dissertation.

Declaration

By signing this decleration form, I hereby claim that the following thesis/dissertation is completely orginal written by [Full name of the writer]. I claim that neither the whole dissertation nor parts of its has been submitted to any instution for any purpose and represent my own thoughts and shall not be precieved as University's opinion.

Signed __________________ Date _________________

Abstract

The research aims to explore the code switching between Arabic and English in the speech of young Saudi students study in Colchester. This research has analysed the reasons and motivations of code switching on the basis of Hoffmann's (1991) theory, analysing why young Saudi student code switch in various social contexts. The research method designed for the approach and analysis in this study includes quantitative and descriptive qualitative method. The first one is used due to the results of the data analysis presents some statistics and numbers of the switches in the data presented in two categories, single word switches and phrasal switches. The study has identified several reasons why Saudi young people code switch during conversation. The study also provides a direction on which scholars should research to explore different dynamics of the subject under study. It has been recommended that further researches should be carried on the linguistic and social constraints involving more speakers with different ages, gender and level of education.

Table of Content

Acknowledgementii

Declarationiii

Abstractiv

CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION1

1.1Background1

2.1Focus of the study3

3.1Purpose of the study4

4.1Underlying theory4

5.1Methodology5

CHAPTER II: LITERATURE REVIEW6

2.1Definitions of code switching6

2.2Terminology8

2.3Sociolinguistic studies of code switching11

2.4Reasons for code switching16

2.5Universal constraints of code switching19

CHAPTER III: METHODOLOGY23

3.1Research approach23

3.2Population of the study24

3.3Method of collecting the data25

3.4Underlying theory for analyzing the data25

CHAPTER IV: DATA ANALYSIS26

4.1Syntactic Categorization26

4.2Results of the Categorizations28

4.3Discussion of the Categorization30

4.4Constraints33

4.4.1The Adjectival Phrase Constraint33

4.4.2The Free Morpheme Constraint34

4.4.3The Conjunction Constraint36

4.4.4The Clitic Pronoun Object Constraint37

4.4.5The Equivalence Constraint39

4.5Social factors of code switching40

CHAPTER V: CONCLUSION46

CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION

Background

Speakers who speak two or more languages are known as bilinguals and multi-lingual. Such speakers are known for their capacity to code switch or mix different languages during conversation. The phenomenon of code switching takes place when a bilingual or multi-lingual speaker inserts or substitutes a single word, sentence, phrase or sentences intentionally or unintentionally from L1 to L2 or vice versa. Often, when a bilingual is speaking in L2, the chances of obtaining supplements from his\her L1 is more likely, which is mainly to compensate or cover weak part of L2 in which the performance of code switching appears. Researchers have considered the phenomenon of code switching as support or compensation of the deficiency of one language in order to make the communication more easy and understandable. Sociolinguists have set up theories to study this phenomenon among bilinguals and the central question was why bilinguals switch codes between languages? Results ...