LANGUAGE, SOCIETY AND MEANING PAPER ANALYSIS

Language Choice in Multilingual Communities: Code-switching and Code-mixing

Who did not know about the Bahasa Jaksel that people nowadays often use?
especially for younger generations. Bahasa Jaksel is one example of code-mixing.
Code-mixing and code-switching are one package, they cannot be separated even though they
are a little bit different. These codes happen to be useful for bilingual or multilingual
communities in order to communicate with particular groups or communities. Occurs to Janet
Holmes, a speaker may similarly switch to another language as a signal of group membership
and shared ethnicity with an addressee, and that is the reason why the writer chooses this
topic because it is a very close phenomena to every bilingual or multilingual that still happens
nowadays.
According to study by Nnenna Gertrude Ezeh et al (107) “Code switching is basically
the juxtaposition of two languages in a spoken discourse which involves transferring from
one code to another in communication; while code-mixing uses two or more codes in a single
utterance”. In substance, code-switching is when someone speaks one language and switches
to another language that is arranged structurally and grammatically, whereas code-mixing is
when someone speaks a language and adds a few words from another language. Janet Holmes
said that speakers may switch to another language as a signal of group membership and
shared ethnicity with an addressee and this truly happens in reality. For instance, my cultural
experiences.
I am majoring in English Literature and most of my surroundings on campus are
multilingual, either they speak English-Indonesian or their local language. When we are in
class we switch to English since we are required to do that as a English Literature student,
when we are outside the class we do code-mixing in English with each other because we are
used to the English-Indonesia language. Code-switching also appears in terms of family
surroundings. I was born with few cultures rooted in myself since I was a kid. My mother
speaks Bahasa Ambon and my father speaks Tagalog, English and not-so-fluent Bahasa
Indonesia. I was raised for years in Ambon and Sulawesi so I can speak both of the local
languages; Bahasa Ambon, Bahasa Mamuju, Bahasa Makassar. When I speak to my mother,
I speak Bahasa Ambon but when I speak to my father I switch to Indonesian Standard
Language, but now that I live far from the culture I was raised, I cannot speak the local
languages I know because of differ cultures in my surrounding, but there is one moment I
was buying a fried banana and I was just ordering with Indonesian standard language until
the seller started to speak Bahasa Ambon on the telephone then I became more confident and
excited so I switched to Bahasa Ambon in order to shared and showed the same ethnicity and
the interaction after that make the conversation more flexible, means that code-switching put
us together as people who came from the same communities.
Where code-mixing tends to not care about grammar and one of the reasons the code
happens is because of a lack of some specific words that are not the speaker's first language.
For instance, my first language is Bahasa Indonesia but because of majoring in English
Literature I must speak English most of the time. When I find difficulty in finding English
words, I do code-mixing with words in Bahasa Indonesia to help me succeed at
communicating with the addressee. Another example of code-mixing is Bahasa Jaksel that is
really popular among young generations these days. Bahasa Jaksel is basically used by
people who live in the southern part of Jakarta, but it became more popular and used by many
people from different cities in Indonesia. Some of the most popular code-mixing forms from
Bahasa Jaksel are ‘which is’, ‘literally’, and ‘jujurly’. In my opinion, Jujurly is the most
interesting one. “Jujurly, aku ga ngerti lagi sama kamu” as an illustration. Jujurly here
means ‘honestly’ in English but the form is mixed with Jujur (honest) in Bahasa Indonesia
and English’s suffix ‘ly’.
In conclusion, code-switching and code-mixing appear to help bilingual or
multilingual in language choice although they are alike but code-switching tends to have
arranged structure and longer in a sentence, whereas code-mixing is shorter and consists of a
phrase when someone speaks one language to another language.
 REFERENCES
- Holmes,Janet. Chapter 2 : Language Choice in Multilingual Communities.

- Nnenna Gertrude Ezeh, Ifeoma Ann Umeh & Esther Chikaodi Anyanwu. Code
Switching and Code Mixing in Teaching and Learning of English as a Second
Language: Building on Knowledge. Vol.15, no.9, Canadian Center of Science and
Education, 2022.