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Programme: accepted abstracts

Abstract ID: 297

Part of Session 134: Multilingual written internet data in language contact studies (Other abstracts in this session)

Ati! did I do THAAAAAAT??? Conscious vs Spontaneous Code-switching (CS) in Computer Mediated Communication(CMC)

Authors: Barasa, Sandra
Submitted by: Barasa, Sandra (Radboud University Nijmegen, Netherlands, The)

This paper examines the presentation of code-switching(CS) in Computer Mediated Communication (CMC). The research presented is based on the hypothesis that the motivation of CS determines whether the CS  occurrence is ‘natural’ or deliberately manipulated. The examined CMC data is derived from Kenyan University students and is in form of various CMC modes including Short Message Service (SMS), Email,  Instant Messages (IM) and Social Network Sites (SNS) e.g. Facebook. The languages in focus are Swahili- Sheng-English and vernacular languages which are spoken in Kenya, whereby Swahili and English are the official languages while Sheng is a youth code (slang) and the vernacular languages depend on the region where one is from. The approach and findings of this research are based on the motives of code-switching which is a profitable contribution to previous studies whose approach focuses on the different modes of CMC.