MARKED AND UNMARKED CODE CHOICES IN JANGLI–ENGLISH CODE MIXING

Abstract

This paper aims at exploring the marked and unmarked code selections in Jangli-English code mixing in the context of Markedness Model of Myers-Scotton. Moreover, the study is based on the naturally occurring speech data of Jangli-speaking bilingual people in Pakistan with the emphasis on the insertion of the English lexical items in the Jangli morphosyntactic structures. Meanwhile, the study prefigures the sociolinguistic motivations and interactional meanings of code mixing unlike other studies that treat code mixing as a structural or grammatical phenomenon. The results indicate that English insertions are both unmarked and marked options in different contexts, roles of the participants and communicative objectives. In the social and professional spheres, English lexical items are frequently functioning as unmarked options, and that on indices of competence, modernity and institutional alignment. Nevertheless, during more informal and intra-community communicative interactions, the same insertions can be called marked choices, indicating prestige, distance or identity negotiation. As shown in the analysis, coe-mixing is not random or an entirely structural phenomenon but a rational negotiation of rights-and-obligations (RO) set as suggested by the Markedness Model. The research also has theoretical value, in that it applies Markedness Model to a smaller-known regional variety (Jangli), and is also an empirical contribution because it reveals that code mixing acts as a strategic sociolinguistic tool in multilingual Pakistan.