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Part of
New Englishes, New Methods
Edited by Guyanne Wilson and Michael Westphal
[Varieties of English Around the World G68] 2023
► pp. 42–64

Functions of code-switching in online registers of Pakistani English

ORCID logo | University of Münster

This chapter analyzes online registers of Pakistani English to identify (socio)linguistic functions for code-switching to indigenous languages. Predominantly English texts containing code-switching instances to Urdu and other Pakistani languages were selected. A corpus of about 1.2 million words was used in this study. 1811 instances of code-switching were identified and divided into seven functions of code-switching: addressee specification, emphatic, free, lexical, message qualification, quotation, and tags. The findings show that tags or discourse level items (discourse particles, idiomatic expressions, religious expressions, honorifics) are the most common functions of code-switching. The use of multilingual resources exhibits how language in Pakistan is appropriated by online writers to convey local identities and fulfil specific communicative needs.

Keywords: corpus linguistics, online registers, Pakistani English, New Englishes, code-switching, computer-mediated communication
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Background
    • 2.1Code-switching, New Englishes, and CMC communities of practice
    • 2.2Code-switching research on Pakistani English
    • 2.3Functions of code-switching
  • 3.Methods and data
    • 3.1A taxonomy for code-switching in CMC
    • 3.2Data
  • 4.Results: Frequency of code-switching in Pakistani online registers
    • 4.1Tags
    • 4.2Lexical
    • 4.3Quotation
    • 4.4Free
    • 4.5Emphatic
    • 4.6Addressee specification
    • 4.7Message qualification
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 14 April 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/veaw.g68.03sha
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