CHAPTER 1 1.0 Introduction - DSpace@UM - University of Malaya

Asmah (1982), who did a study on verbal communication among Malaysians
observes:
“… bilinguals are on the increase. The role of Malay … as the
National and official language, contributes to the presence of
bilingualism among individuals in Malaysia. Coupled with
this,the English language which …at the moment remains as
thesecond most important language in Malaysia, has also
broughtabout the rise of bilinguals of Malay-English, Cantonese-
English, Tamil-English and so on”. (Asmah: 1992: 119)
Code-switching is a common phenomena in Malaysia and it is accepted by the society
and embedded in the culture. Code-switching also takes place from standard Malay to
Malay dialects.
Studies done by Valdes Fallis (1978) reveal that the term “codeswitching” is also
known as “code alternation”. Code-switching refers to the alternation of two
languages at the word, phrase, clause or sentence level. It involves introducing into
the context of one language, stretches of speech that exhibit the other language
phonological features.
On the other hand, Gumperz says,
“Codeswitching is the juxtaposition within the same speech
exchange of passages of speech belonging to two different
grammatical systems or subsystems”. (Gumperz 1982:59).
Poplack has a dfferent definition for code-switching:
“Code-switching refers to the alternate use of two codes in a
fully grammatical way, in the same discourse, and even in the
same sentence”. (Poplack 1988:238)
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