CHARTING LINGUISTIC SHIFTS: A STUDY OF CODE-MIXING IN THE SPEECH OF SCHOOLCHILDREN AND THEIR PARENTS

Abstract

This study looks at how the speech of children and their parents’ changes, focusing on the use of English words. The study is qualitative and examines how many English words the participants use in their speech. It also identifies the factors that cause these changes. The researcher counted how often English words appeared in the speech of both children and parents and calculated the percentage of these words. Data was collected through interviews with twelve intermediate-level students and their parents. The English words were compared with an English-to-Urdu dictionary to check if the use of English words increased because there were no suitable Urdu alternatives. The findings show that children tend to mix more English words into their speech than their parents, meaning there is more variation in the speech of younger people. Additionally, the study found that the use of English words mainly affects the Urdu vocabulary.