NEGOTIATING IDENTITY THROUGH CODE-SWITCHING IN MULTILINGUAL LEARNING SPACES

Abstract

The study tires to explore the frequency of code-switching in classroom between minority language speakers and majority language speakers. And the way identity is created and portrayed using a language. For this purpose, students from different universities of Peshawar were studied. Data was collected with the help of online surveys and interviews. Different reasons came up for code-switching. Code-switching helped students talk or discuss those topics which were difficult for them to communicate in second language. Another reason of code-switching was to create relations with peers and form a bond. Majority language speakers switched between languages more freely as compared to minority language speakers. Majority or dominant language was understandable to larger number of people. Whereas minority language speakers usually switched to their native languages with peers who shared same the language. Using a specific language or code-switching to a specific language indicated about their background. And students also used to code-switch to maintain and implicitly tell about their cultural background.

Key words: Code-switching, identity, dominant language, minority language, students, multilingual classroom