PEDAGOGICAL AND IDENTITY-DRIVEN MOTIVATIONS FOR CODE-SWITCHING: A GENDER-BASED STUDY OF PAKISTANI UNIVERSITY STUDENTS

Abstract

This paper analyses the pedagogical and identity-based motivation for code-switching (CS) among Pakistani university students, with a specific focus on gender-based variation. Though it is true that CS has been recognised as a prevalent communicative approach across multiple language (multilingual) contexts, little research has been conducted on how pedagogical needs are derived to be integrated with identity performance in Pakistani tertiary education. It employs a mixed-methods design, with data collected through surveys, classroom observations, and semi-structured interviews with 120 undergraduate students. The quantitative findings demonstrate that the primary reasons for CS, according to the pedagogical sources, of making the matter easier to comprehend and filling lexical blanks and conceptual cognition, are the driving forces of CS. Qualitative results also indicate that identity-based motivations play an important role, though in a secondary sense, as students use English to indicate academic competence and prestige, and Urdu to indicate solidarity and cultural belonging. Gender analysis shows that female students rely more on CS as an act of supportive academic support, whereas their male counterparts have more switching behaviour in identity-oriented aspects. The paper finds that CS has woven both the pedagogical and symbolic roles, which are the strategies of learning and its sociocultural positioning. The findings have importance in the area of applied linguistics by further expounding on the multifunctional character of the bilingual practices, and have implications for bilingual pedagogy and the development of an inclusive language policy in Pakistani universities.