Code switching on social media among private university students of Bangladesh: a case study

Abstract

Code-switching has become a common phenomenon in Bangladesh particularly among the teenagers. Social media such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, WhatsApp etc. gains a huge popularity in Bangladesh. As social media itself is informal in nature, social media users tend to switch codes frequently in their conversation, particularly the trends have seen among private university students. As English is the medium of instruction in almost all the private universities in Bangladesh, students from these universities tend to switch codes more often. This study critically explored the nature of code-switching among private university students of Bangladesh. This study was conducted using a qualitative approach. Data were collected through observation, interviews and analyzing various textual data from social media conversation. The result revealed that private university students have used tag switching, intra-sentential switching, inter-sentential switching and intra-word switching in their social media conversation. The study also has found that students switch codes in social media for communication purposes, not for showing mastery of English language. They do believe using English in social media posts can draw attention of others. The result also showed that code-switching does have negative impact on the Bangla language.