An Investigation of English-Mandarin-Malay Code Switching of a Singaporean Speaker

摘要

The use of code switching is enormously popular in the countries with more than one language speakers. However, it is commonly used only by bilingual speakers in two languages. The present study aimed to investigate the code switching of a multilingual speaker in Singapore. Singapore is highly popular for its multilingual language use, Mandarin, English, and Malay. The data source in this study was a secondary data taken from a video site. The participant was a Singaporean called Terry. He spoke English switched with Mandarin and Malay. The present study applied Hoffman's (1991) and Muysken's (2000) dimensions of code switching characteristics. The results showed that there were 20 expressions of code switching produced by the participant. The analysis identified that the participant produced code switching mostly in Malay language than in Mandarin. During his speech, he commonly used inter-sentential switching and insertion switching from his English-Mandarin-Malay language. Tags and exclamation is the major switched code he made in the speech. While phrase is the least codes he created during the speech.