Code switching used by the main charachers in the film of “Around The World in Eighty Days”

ABSTRACT

In a society, it is a normal case for the speaker to speak more than a language in a daily life. The ability to use two or more languages is called bilingualism, whereas the speaker who speaks two or more languages is called bilingual. The speaker sometimes switches from one to the other languages naturally and unselfconsciously in communication. This kind of phenomena is known as code switching. Therefore, code switching occurs because of situational and methaphorical approaches. Situational approach refers code switching which is because of setting, topic, and participants, whereas metaphorical approach is the reason for code switching is to achieve certain communication purposes because of stylistic purposes based on the context. This study examines English-French- Chinese code switching, taken from the film of “Around the World in Eighty Days”. The data contained the utterances produced by three main characters in the film. In this context, code switching is examined to understand how code switching used by the three main characters in the film of “Around the World in Eighty Days”. As a basis for understanding code switching, this study draws on sociolinguistic perspectives to analyze the data, including the situational and metaphorical approaches (Blom & Gumperz in Susanto, 2008).

This study uses descriptive qualitative method, because this study is based on the natural phenomenon of English-French-Chinese code switching of the film. To collect the data for this study is watching the film, selecting, and checking the utterances of three main characters using English-French-Chinese code switching from the script of the film.

This study finds that the reasons for code switching are influenced by situational and metaphorical approaches. From the situational point of view, the reasons for code switching are influenced by such factors as participant, setting and topic. Metaphorical code switching concers language alternation because of the speaker’s stylistic purposes, those certain purposes are to clarify or qualify a message, to mark ‘personality and objectivisation’, to carry out referential, to serve a quotation function, and to specify an addresse. This study also finds English-French-Chinese code switching takes place in sentence, that is, the types of code switching such as, inter-sentential and intra-sentential code switching.

In the last conclusion, the researcher suggested to the future researchers to make research not only in the social class of the participant as the reason, but they could make research in the role and the status of the participant as the reason for code switching.