CRITICAL THINKING AND CRITICAL

REFLECTION

Fall 2019

Assignment # 2

COMPARATIVE CRITICAL ANALYSIS

Submitted by
Mohsin tajammul
19L-2082
&
Hadia akhter
19L-2089

Submitted to:

MISS HAJRA

NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF COMPUTER AND EMERGING

SCIENCES
Code switching and code-mixing are sociolinguistics phenomena which are obvious in
bilingual and multilingual societies. Speakers of more than one language, sometimes
use elements of multiple languages when conversing with each other. Thus,
code-switching is the use of more than one linguistic variety in a manner consistent
with the syntax and phonology of each variety to interact and get the message across
successfully(Misbah 2016).It has remained under discussion among linguists ;whether
it is a positive or negative distinguished feature; does it undermines one language in
comparison to other and does it impact the purity of one language.

Therefore code switching is one of the interesting area of research in linguistics. In

The first research is Hong Kong based sociolinguistics study of code switching among
three languages: Cantonese, English and Putonghua. “Being a purist in trilingual hong
Kong : code switching among Cantonese, English,and Putonghua” is conducted by Ka
Long Roy Chan at The Chinese University of Hong Kong. This study claims,“using
pure code may hinder communication among Hongkongers”. As the hong Kong has
become multilingual society and three languages has been used in this area because of
different reasons. Thus, using one code which the author has termed as pure code may
hinder the communication between people of Hong Kong. Whereas, the second
research “The reasons and contexts to switch and mix English code by Pakistani young
learners in their native speech:A sociolinguistic study” is a Pakistan based research in
Islamia University Bahawalpur. This study was conducted to find reason and context of
code switching of Pakistani young learners. Being a multilingual society Pakistani
people are also used to switch code while communication.

However, the both of the researches are same in context of exploring sociolinguistics
issue of code switching but they are different with regards to purpose of their research
as well as methodology of research. For instance, the method employed by Ka Long
was same as of Sung(2010) ,which was an observation based activity, to not to be
bilingual while interacting people. He remained purist and used one language
Cantonese for one day and similarly for other two languages, English and Putonghua..
There he observed that there were no equivalents of Cantonese language and other
two languages for being purist and successful vis-a-vis communication. He used to
write reflective diaries to serve the purpose. While, the research on code switching in
Pakistan has utilized close-ended questionnaire from the participants, who were
students of BS Hons. Sixth and eighth semester of Bio-technology and Bio-chemistry
department. Therefore, the first research was conducted through citizens of society
whereas, the participants of secondarysecond research was students of graduation of
government university.

Furthermore, in first research“trilingual Hong Kong”, data was collected and analyzed
manually and field notes were interpreted by the author himself. The writer wrote about
his experience and observation and then critically analyzed it to check his hypothesis.
However, manual interpretation of data can be biased and do not analyze the results
objectively.On other hand, research on code switching in Pakistani context analyze the
data statistically and presented in the form of graphs. They have divided the data into
two sections: reasons of code switching and contexts of code switching. Hence,the first
research has utilized qualitative method to collect and analyze data and second,
research has employed quantitative methodology of research for collecting as well as
interpretation of data.

As far as findings of two researches are concerned,the record of three days experiment
and observation of Hong kong based research showed that code switching is,somehow,
mandatory for proper communication either it would be paired as Catonese-English or
Putunghua-English. Pure Catonese and pue Putunghua caused hindrance in
communication. Though putnghua is there due to language policy as the author has
explicated contextual genesis of code switching in Hong Kong that
because of the recent change in language policy in which Putonghua has placed more
important roles in language teaching in Hong Kong. However, the second, Pakistan
based research has also shown the same results that for better communication it is
necessary for students to use their native language. All participants were aware of
importance of code-switching

In addition to manual analysis of the data of first article, there are some other
limitations which the author himself has explicated that the number of participants were
limited. Hence, “it might not fully represent the whole situation. The other limitations
were his own proficiency of three languages. Moreover, it was conducted in limited
environment in which data was collected from general public of universities and
colleges of Hong Kong. However, this research opens up gate for further researches on
trilingual code switching by observing its social impact or conducting it by adopting
different methods like quantitative and qualitative tools. Similarly, the second research
also highlighted further areas of research like exploring the impact of code switching in
learning foreign language. Nevertheless, the limitation of this research is that it based
on sampling in one area or university(IUB Bahawalpur). However, the data should be
collected from multiple universities in order to adhere the notion of code switching as
sociolinguistics phenomenon.

Moreover, the first research, has enlisted number of researches and literature to develop
the contextual genesis of multilingualism in Hong Kong. Hence, he has provided
various sources as token of his argument and also tried to prove it through his personal
experience of field. As far as, the second research is concerned he has used his close
ended questionnaire to acquire evidence for his argument.

Hence, the debate on comparative analysis of two researches ends by proving the
notion that code switching is a universal sociolinguistics phenomenon and is observed
in multilingual society to enhance the proficiency of conversation among individuals.
Code switching is a constructive element of language. It does not mean that one’s
language is superior or inferior to another but it provides an ease to speaker to practice
both languages at the same time for the facilitation of effective communication.