Document Type

Article

Publication Date

Winter 11-11-2025

Abstract

Code-mixing occurs when speakers alternate between two or more languages within a single utterance, and it is used in different social contexts such as academic, media, and daily conversations. Given the paucity of studies conducted on codemixing phenomenon at the university level in Egypt, the current study aims to examine the perception of phycology Department students toward English-Arabic code-mixing at a private university in Egypt. The participants of the study were 70 Egyptian female and male students that aged from 17-23 years old. A survey of 18 questions was distributed to the participants. The qualitative and quantitative methods were used to collect data. Research findings demonstrated that code-mixing helped students to express their emotions clearly without feeling anxious or embarrassed about speaking with their addressees within different social contexts, and most of the students showed a positive attitude toward code-mixing. During informal or casual conversations with others, codemixing served as a language that each one used to represent their identity. In academic contexts, students were encouraged to codemix in lectures, which helps them to join more discussions during the lecture and to express complex concepts easily without feeling anxious. While, other students used code-mixing strategy to express some specific technical expressions that are culturally refined with their native language. As for the current results, they provide a valuable insight for further research, which suggests to distribute the survey across all faculties or piloted to other universities to understand more about the attitudes and perceptions of students toward code-mixing at university level in Egypt. Thus, code-mixing is not a direct form of language, but it is an important communicative strategy that is used in different communities. The importance of the current study stems from its sociolinguistic approach to cover a distinct gap in code-mixing, based on previous studies.

Comments

In conclusion, the present study aimed to examine the perception of Phycology Department students toward English-Arabic code-mixing at a Private University in Egypt. By investigating the students’ motivations and perspectives toward code-mixing, the results demonstrated that most of the students are motivated to code-mix to express themselves effectively and to fill in lexical gaps. In addition, some students code-mix to converge to their interlocuter speech pattern. Besides, the findings revealed that students are motivated to code-mix with others according to social contexts. In the off-campus context, the students were highly motivated to code-mix with others, especially in parties or clubs with friends. Moreover, the students were engaged to code-mix in academic contexts such as lectures, which helped them participate confidently and express themselves clearly without anxiety. Furthermore, most of the students showed a positive attitude toward code-mixing; however, some students seen that code-mixing had a negative impact on the speaker’s sentence structure but was still sufficient for listening. In general, this study concludes that code-mixing is an important phenomenon that plays a pivotal role in everyday conversations, especially in multilingual communities. Code-mixing may not be a direct language, but it is an effective communication tool that helps people communicate and understand each other in various situations, avoiding lack of communication.

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