VIETNAMESE-ENGLISH CODE-SWITCHING IN CONVERSATIONS AMONG VIETNAMESE EFL TEACHERS

Abstract

This study investigates code-switching in conversations among Vietnamese EFL teachers in English 1, Faculty of English Teacher Education, University of Languages and International Studies. More specifically, it seeks to investigate the types of and reasons for code-switching found in conversations among the participants, using the typology suggested by Poplack (1980), and sets of reasons proposed by Malik (1994) and Appel and Muysken (2006). The data were collected by means of recording natural speech of the informants in their conversations with each other. Transcripts of the recorded conversations serve to provide instances of code-switching for categorization, which were then sent to participants. The teacher’s self-report forms aim to elicit the informants’ actual reasons for their code-switching in the recordings. Results show that instances of intra-sentential code-switching were dominant, accounting for nearly all of the detected instances. Meanwhile, the minority of the instances was extra-sentential code-switching, and no instances of inter-sentential code-switching were found. In terms of the motivation for code-switching, the most common reason is habitual expression, followed by the need to quote and to convey semantic significance. One reason not included in the provided list of reasons was given by an informant, which was “to save time”. The findings bear significant resemblance to previous studies and reveal new aspects in the possible reasons for this phenomenon.