This thesis aimed at investigating code-switching used by two female Indonesians with different ages, who were exposed to English language in the past and have continued to use the language until present time. The two participants involved, when all data were taken, were an 87-year-old lady (Eyang, abbreviated as E) and her 34-year-old granddaughter (Tya, abbreviated as T). They both lived in the United States for a certain period of time and actively communicated in English and other languages at home; besides, they also liked reading and travelling abroad which made them be able to maintain their proficiency in English as an International language. The collected data were recorded during their natural conversations in different situations i.e. at home (mostly), at the hospital, and at the work place, and with different people i.e. the mother (the granddaugther's mother who is also the grandmother's daughter), the writer, and the granddaughter's colleagues. All speech units were recorded within the period of July 2014 to November 2014.
Throughout the research, three types of code-switching (CS) and their functions were found. Intra-sentential CS appeared the most in both participants' speech, E had significantly higher numbers than T. As for the functions, the participants used more metaphorical CS (especially for qualifying and emphasizing functions) compared to situational CS. Also, there were some functions which could not match their code-switching types; which could be interesting to be further investigated. It was also found that E had her vernacular language (Javanese) as her matrix-language, while the granddaughter had Indonesian as her matrix-language. However, the granddaughter could consistenly use complete, relatively well-structured, English sentences, thus lowering numbers of code-switching. The grandmother used CS strategies to get her messages across since she mostly used incomplete sentences in her vernacular language. Interestingly, unlike in other CS case-studies which usually found two or three languages mixed in their CS findings, the grandmother could use five languages in one utterance, namely Javanese, Dutch, French, Indonesian, and English. |