Kodewisseling tussen Afrikaans en Engels as instrument vir effektiewe kommunikasie : 'n sosiolinguistiese ondersoek

M.A.Although codeswitching as an area of sociolinguistic behaviour has become increasingly prevalent in the public and social life of a multilinguistic and multicultural South Africa, it remains an unexplored area. To many codeswitching is something impure which shows the lack of understanding of this phenomenon. Since 1993 students and lecturers at the Sohnge College of Education have been exposed to a new language contact situation between Afrikaans and English. The alternating between Afrikaans and English within the same conversation (codeswitching) is an option that has been taken in an effort to facilitate the communication process. The aim of this study is to indicate the effectiveness of codeswitching as a means of communication in the language use of lecturers at the Sohnge College of Education. A group interview had been conducted in order to establish what the lecturers' ideas and experiences of codeswitching are. Recordings of lectures, tutorials and meetings were made to ascertain when, where and why lecturers codeswitch. The data was analysed with regard to social motivations and linguistic structures. For this the models of Carol Myers- Scotton, one of the leading researchers in the field of codeswitching, were used. These are the Markedness Model (for establishing the social motivations) and the Matrix Language Frame Model (for analysing the linguistic constraints). Given the fact that this study is the first to investigate codeswitching between Afrikaans and English by using the models of Myers—Scotton, one can only hope that this first effort will cast some light on this common and yet unexplored phenomenon of codeswitching between Afrikaans and English