Code-Switching in a Bilingual Environment

Living in bilingual or multilingual societies in the context of mobility and globalization, bilingual interaction is a norm instead of an exception. English plays an essential role in the lives of many young people all around the world, which frequently is not a result of direct language contact, but rather due to the widespread use of the Internet and the influence of the media. The present ethnographic research on code-switching involves questioning undergraduate students at a university in Latvia about their engagement with code-switching in their lives. It has been concluded that students are engaged in different communicative modes, and codeswitching from Latvian or Russian to English is an important meaning-making resource and a tool to enhance their online and offline interaction when communicating on social media, conversing with friends, or gaming. The main reasons of code-switching are students’ temporal
transitional state of language proficiency, the absence of terms and concepts that describe or originate from the other culture, students’ wish for self-presentation, instances of showing off, and a means of expressing sudden emotional experience or ‘verbal habits’.