Abstract:
The study examines the features of Bangla-English code-switching in language use in the
social medium Facebook by Bangla speakers of Bangladesh, suggestive of the frequency of
code-switching, types of code-switching, their frequency, and their morphological patterns. It
also analyzes the contexts of code-switching and the use of different scripts while
code-switching. In addition, this study discusses to what extent the main features found in
Bangla-English code-switching on Facebook correspond to those in other languages. Some of the
significant findings of the study are that only two types of code-switching were found in the
collected data which are inter-sentential code-switching and intra-sentential code-switching and
between these two, intra-sentential is the most frequent type, and Noun is the most frequent
word-class category to be code-switched. The study also found that during code-switching, both
English and Bangla scripts are used randomly for non-native language. Bangla-English
code-switching was also found sharing some similar patterns with Spanish-English,
Navajo-English and Hindi-English code-switching. Using of Facebook terminology, technical
terms for different disciplines, abbreviated forms related to social media are some of the most
common contexts that induced Bangla-English code-switching.
