A Sociolinguistic Investigation of the Code Switching Practices of Students Outside Classroom in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan

Abstract

Codeswitching is a common phenomenon, generally observed in multilingual communities across the globe. A critical look at codeswitching  literature reveals that mostly codeswitching has been studied in classroom in learning and teaching context  while codeswitching outside classroom in settings such as café, hostel and so on  have been the least explored areas. In view of the above the current research investigated the reasons for codeswitching in the interactive practices of students and their  perecptions regarding the same in outside classroom settings. Data were collected by means of audio recording 90 minutes students interactions in café and hostel and serving an open-ended questionnaire to the partcicipants. The findings showed that the students code switched on account of socio-cutural, socio-psychological and comuniactive reasons. The study is important in the sense that it will further students understanding about CS in outside classroom settings.