CAPS #3 Fadhilah Lokman

CAPS BLOG #3

For this week caps blog, I would like to choose the concept of code switching to be my topic. According to Martin, code switching is a term technically used of changing language, accents or even accents in communication. There are regular reasons for code switching which are (1) to accommodate the other speakers, (2) to avoid accommodating others, or (3) to express another aspect of their cultural identity.

Although English is undeniably the lingua franca for now, we could not say that English used in Malaysia is the same as the one we are using in United States. People would adapt the usage of English to their own culture. The first example that I want to show is this video.

In this video, the Malaysian student is expressing her cultural identity where in Malaysia, people would shorten the English words or sentence by directly translate it from Malay language. In the other hand, for second video;

The student is trying to talk in British accent. He is a Malaysia student who is studying in United Kingdom. I believe when he only speaks in British accent because he was being interviewed by UK reporters.

Without us realizing, we might have done it for millions times. In life, I could not resist myself from meeting different people as I travel to Vietnam, Australia, Korea and here, United States. Other than engaging myself with people from these three different countries, there is an also huge chance for me in meeting people from other countries like United Kingdom and Mexico and all these people have different accents entirely. During my teens years I‘ve already started to enjoy mixing myself with people from different backgrounds especially with different ethnicity. This is because I love to learn other cultures. This is all roots to my home country Malaysia, where we are made up of three main races, Malay, Chinese and India. Learning this concept make me realized that I have been using it in everyday life without realizing it. In future, I would be more aware with code switching. To have better communication skills, I think by accommodating others, it is also means that we are accommodating ourselves so the words could be conveyed and interpreted in the right way.

Reference:

Martin, J.N., & Nakayama, T.K. (2009). Intercultural Communication in Contexts (5th Edition ed). New York, NY: McGraww-Hill.