CODE-SWITCHING AS A TOOL OF POWER AND EMPATHY: A SOCIOLINGUISTIC ANALYSIS OF ENGLISH AND NATIVE LANGUAGE USE IN PAKISTANI UNIVERSITY CLASSROOMS

Abstract

In multilingual educational contexts like Pakistan, the language use in classroom talk significantly influence authority, emotional involvement and learning. This qualitative study explores the role of code-switching between English and L1 as a power/empowerment tool that is used in Pakistani ESL tertiary classrooms. The data was collected by conducting semi-structured interviews with twelve undergraduate students studying in 6th semester and 8th semester the BS English discipline at Federal Urdu University of Arts, Science, and Technology (Karachi), Abdul Haq Campus. Participants were selected by purposive sampling to meet specific linguistic and academic criteria. The interviews were transcribed and thematically analyzed using NVivo software. The findings of the study suggest that English is used to construct academic authority, administer and maintain institutional order while native languages are employed for demonstrating empathy, comfort expression and promoting understanding. The paper demonstrates how teachers work with and against these roles strategically using code-switching, as a practice which enables them to maintain their professionalism whilst fostering shared and supportive relationships between school members. By focusing on the dual sociolinguistic functions of code-switching, this analysis provides a nuanced insight into language-power-emotions relationships in university classrooms.