Computational Linguistic Features of Code-switching ‎Amongst Native Fiji-Hindi Speakers on Facebook

Ravnil Narayan

Abstract


Decade or two ago, the propensity to study code-switching has only shed light on its spoken discourse, but very few on written. Linguistically, this paper sought to explore the code-switching features amongst native Fiji-Hindi speakers on social networking site, Facebook. It will be supplemented by the functions of code-switching performed by thirty-five native Fiji-Hindi and English (L2) bilingual speakers’ during online Facebook interactions. The data pertaining to study was collated from a period of within six months based on the status updates that were posted by native Fiji-Hindi speakers on their Facebook wall. Upon collection of the data, analysis, interpretation and categorisation was completed according to the rudiments of the research questions. More imperatively, the classified functions including code-switching types were based on Gumperz’s (1982) conversational strategy, which was further supplemented by Zentella (1998). The results indicate that code-switching amongst native Fiji-Hindi speakers during online Facebook interactions occurs due to the following reasons, addressee specification, message qualification, emotion indications, reiteration, clarification, emphasis and availability. Additionally, it is hoped that this study would provide an insight about the phenomenon of code-switching amongst native Fiji-Hindi speakers’ in an asynchronous computer mediated communication and that it will also provide an aid for future researches in the field of socio and computational linguistics.            


Keywords


code-switching, bilingualism, Facebook, computational linguistics, sociolinguistics, Fiji-Hindi

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References


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