Abstract:
The purpose of this study is to investigate the use of code switching and mixing as
a linguistic resource of students of St. Teresa‟s College of Education, Hohoe. The study
looks at the academic and non-academic discussions of students and tutors to unveil the
type of code switching (CS) and code mixing (CM) found in the college, the reason(s) for
CS and CM, the extent to which CS and CM are a discourse strategy that is used to
negotiate their activities. The ethnographic research design was employed for the study.
The data for the study were audio recordings that were transcribed, used for the analysis.
The analysis was based on Hoffman‟s (1991) and Saville-Troike‟s (1986) theories on CS
and CM. Questionnaires and interviews were also administered to students and tutors to
cross-check the information in the audio recordings. The study found out that the
dominant code type was intra-sentential and among the reasons for CS and CM, members
of the college, among other reasons switched and mixed code for convenience, real
lexical need and for repetition. It was found that students and tutors code switched and
code mixed in their group discussions and teaching respectively. The significant aspect of
this study was to enable readers and policy makers to recognize that CS and CM occur at
all levels of education and must be given the appropriate attention.
Description:
A THESIS IN THE DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH EDUCATION, FACULTY OF
FOREIGN LANGUAGES EDUCATION AND COMMUNICATION,
SUBMITTED TO THE SCHOOL OF GRADUATE STUDIES, UNIVERSITY OF
EDUCATION, WINNEBA IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE
REQUIREMNTS FOR THE AWARD OF THE MASTER OF PHILOSOPHY OF
ENGLISH DEGREE
OCTOBER, 2015
