1Chair, Department of English, College of Arts and Letters, Bulacan State University, Philippines
2Professor, Department of Lifelong Education, Hanseo University, South Korea
3Dean, Liberal Arts & Interdisciplinary Studies, Hanseo University, South Korea
*Corresponding Author: Massuline Antonio D. Ligaya, Ph. D. ESL Teacher/Ph. D. Professor, Department of Lifelong Education, Hanseo University, South Korea E-mail: madligaya@gmail.com
Online published on 21 September, 2018.
The objective of this study was to present insights into the complexities of codeswitching by describing its syntactic patterns and examining it in terms of the motivational functions it plays. Used were face-to-face communication and interview with selected bilingual and multilingual English faculty members from the respondent university. There is no significant difference between and among bilingual and multilingual teachers of English with respect to the frequency and types of the codeswitches. All of them used more intrasentential code switching and significantly less intersentential switches. Majority of their switches are on the word or phrase level, which are less complex. The study also revealed that of the eight possible discourse functions used consciously and unconsciously when bilinguals and multilinguals codeswitch, the two most widely used by the respondent-teachers were Ease of Expression and Insufficient Academic Vocabulary.
Codeswitching, bilingual, multilingual, syntactic patterns, functional motivation
