Video from Salmon house regarding Thai-English Code-switching
Code-switching refers to when the speaker uses one or more languages or varieties in one specific conversation. Thai speakers is well-known for their frequent usage of inter-sentential code-switching, such as [ʔāːcāːn sàŋ tʰām lesson nǎj ná] ‘Which lesson did the teacher assign us’. However, Thai society is divided on whether one should use an English word instead of Thai word with the same meaning. ChulaSEAL’s new master graduate Piyangkool Thaweephol argues that Thai people would regard this phenomenon as a common one instead of a negative one.
The negative attitude toward code-switching is realistically captured in this parody titled “What if everyone code-switches between Thai and English” published on YouTube in 2017. More intriguing than the video is the comments below the video such as “Code-switching will be considered a problem unless everyone knows English” or “People should somehow consider the context and situation too” seemed to exhibit different stances from the video and reflect the controversial views and attitude of code-switching among Thai peoples.
In his master research on the attitude, psychological state of preference or disclination toward code-switching in Thai people, Piyangkoon aims to examine Thai speakers in Generation Y’s attitudes towards different types of Thai-English code-switching and explore the relationship between their attitudes and two factor – English background and occupational domain.
Even though many studies about code-switching in Thai people have been conducted, attitude toward this phenomenon has not been directly studied; it has been included only as a small section in previous researches. Therefore, the authors intend to
Previous findings from previous studies about language attitude and code-switching (Poplack, 1999; Montes-Alcalá, 2011; Ihemere, 2006) suggested that ability to use languages and social categories (e.g. age, gender, social class) could affect one’s attitude toward languages. The authors have also applied well-known methodology for extracting attitudes: verbal-guise technique (Garrett, 2010), playing conversation recording spoken by many people, some of which using the target language feature. After that, participants will have to evaluate the characteristics of the speakers by completing a questionnaire with semantic differential scale, a linear scale with completely antonymous adjective referring to social attractiveness and social status on each side. By using this method, the participants will never know that their attitude toward the use of language is being indirectly extracted from them.
The authors selected 40 participants using 3 criteria: age, occupation, and language competence. Only female participants aged between 27-45 in 2020 were selected, because the research mainly focuses on the attitude of Generation Y, and gender of the participants could affect the overall results of attitude. The researchers also conducted a purposive sampling occupational domain; the participants are grouped into 2 different groups based on their occupational contact with English. Lastly, the participants are required to self-evaluate their language competence with a questionnaire provided by researchers. Afterwards, the researchers labeled the top 10 participants in each occupational domain as participants who have high language competence. Participants are requested to listen to 17 recordings, which include 8 stimuli: Thai sentence, English sentence, tag-switching, 3 intra-sentential code-switching with a word that differs in level of semantic specificity (high, medium, and low), intra-sentential code-switching with phrase, and inter-sentential code-switching, as well as 9 fillers to distract participants: 5 conversations with slang and 4 conversations noticeable final particle. After completing the verbal-guise questionnaire, participants were also requested to answer several open-ended questions about English.
The results suggested that Generation Y Thai speakers possess a positive attitude about code-switching, overall, since the average score of every stimulus is more than 4, exceeding 3.5 which is half of the score. Excluding the Thai sentence which received the highest score, corresponding with previous researches about attitudes toward code-switching, the intra-sentential code-switching with a single word received the highest score, followed by inter-sentential code-switching, tag-switching, English sentence and intra-sentential code-switching with phrase. Intra-sentential code-switching with a word received the highest score regarding both social status and social attractiveness, corresponding with previous research in other languages, such as Spanish-English code-switching by Anderson and Toribio (2007). Moreover, the participants who use more English in their occupation have a more positive attitude in comparison with people who do not use much English in their occupation.
The main explanation of this phenomenon is Thai people’s more exposure to English; nowadays, English is featured in many parts of daily life, from family to politics, creating people’s familiarity with English, as several participants have reported that the more often they exposed themselves to English, the more familiar with English they will be, resulting in positive attitudes.
Furthermore, the overall attitude of Thai speakers towards the general use of English could be comprehended as positive, since many stimuli containing English received high social status scores. Nevertheless, the stimuli containing english do not receive the social attractiveness score in the same way. Piyangkoon explains the contradicting result that, during the school period of generation Y, English education in Thailand has just started to lay its foundation; therefore, people have received different levels of English education, resulting in the participants’ different attitude about social status and social attractiveness of using English. The results presented above and its explanation also correspond to Varatiporn’s (2020) research which suggest that people accepted that English is a language of education and high social status, but does not create attractiveness, due to the problem of understanding.
To sum up, this research article shows us that Thai people do not consider Thai-English code-switching extremely inappropriate and unnatural anymore, contradicting the controversial stereotype that Thai people usually have a negative attitude toward Thai-English code-switching. In addition, this research can be regarded as an opening gateway for further work on the relationship between attitude toward code-switching, social category and language variant.
Athit Wu
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