Attitudes toward code-switching among bilingual Jordanians: a comparative study

Abstract

This study employs a quantitative analytical descriptive approach to explore the attitudes of two Jordanian communities toward code-switching (CS). The first community lives in the United States (a migrant community), while the second community resides in Jordan (a native community). Data were collected using an online questionnaire and the attitudes of these two communities were compared with respect to their sense of identity, religion, communication efficiency, and audience design. The study also examines the influence of self-perceived language proficiency, the direction of CS, and gender on the positivity or negativity of individuals’ attitudes toward CS. The study pays particular attention to the use of CS as a polite or impolite behavior in different contexts. The findings of this study indicate that both groups have relatively similar attitudes toward CS in terms of communication efficiency, topic, audience design, and politeness. However, the migrant community has an overall more positive attitude toward CS in terms of religion and sense of identity, particularly when language proficiency is taken into account.