CODESWITCHING IN NEWSPAPER DISCOURSE: A CASE OF CRAZY MONDAY ARTICLES IN THE STANDARD NEWSPAPER

Abstract

In Kenya, the codeswitching phenomenon is prevalent in everyday conversation and mass-crafted discourses

because many people are multilingual. These communicators have varied language choices to make due to the

multi-ethnic nature of our social background. As codeswitching has found its way into the language of

newspaper, this study sought to establish the motivation for codeswitching in Crazy Monday Articles in the

Standard Newspaper in Kenya. The data for this study was collected between 2013 and 2014 and was primarily

obtained from codeswitched written discourse of Crazy Monday articles between the stated periods. Library

research and the internet were instrumental in the study as they provided scholarly contributions on code

switching in newspaper discourse. Purposive sampling technique was used whereby the researcher selected

codeswitched written discourse from Crazy Monday articles only. The data collected was analyzed

qualitatively using the principles of Communication Accommodation Theory (CAT) of Giles in 1973 (cited in

Giles, Coupland, & Coupland,

1991). The results show that the motivation for codeswitching are to fill a lexical gap, express identity,

solidarity, informality, economy, aesthetic effects, direct quotations and interjections