A sociolinguistic study of secondary students’ attitudes towards code-switching in Malta

Abstract

The aim of the present study is to explore whether ninety-six secondary students’ attitudes towards code-switching with a Maltese and/or English base language reflect underlying sociolinguistic differences. Moreover, it also seeks to explore whether there is a relationship between students’ attitudes towards these utterances and their relative active lexical knowledge of the code-switched words within the same utterances respectively. Participants in this study included Form Four male and female secondary students who attend either state or independent schools since students who attend these types of schools, were deemed most likely to reflect different language preferences. This also echoes Bolonyai (2012: 258) who claims that ‘it is not uncommon for an asymmetrical sociolinguistic order to promote psycholinguistic imbalance between the L1 and the L2, for example in terms of speakers’ attitudes towards their languages’. Findings reveal that both the secondary students’ attitudes towards code-switched utterances with a Maltese and/or English base language and their relative active lexical knowledge reflected underlying sociolinguistic differences. Furthermore, the participants’ attitudes towards these code-switched utterances were not necessarily related to their relative active lexical knowledge of the code-switched words in these utterances respectively.