MOTIVES BEHIND THE EMPLOYMENT OF CODE SWITCHING (ENGLISH-INDONESIAN) BY THE U.S PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA DURING PUBLIC SPEAKING AT UNIVERSITY OF INDONESIA

Research in code-switching has traditionally been carried out in sociolinguistic perspective. A sociolinguistic study concerns with the role of social structure factors within the occurrence of code-switching phenomenon. The aim is to determine the patterns of any occurrence of code-switching phenomenon and how this phenomenon may be affected by social structure factors such as context and speaker’s role relationship.

Keywords: the occurrence of code-switching phenomenon, social structure factors

Introduction

People usually tend to choose particular code when they speak, that is any dialect or language that they choose on any occasion. Besides, people often switch from one code to another code or even mix those codes together within the utterances. Therefore, the situation in which people tend to switch their codes or mix the codes together within their utterances is well-known as a code switching phenomenon.

According to Gal in Ronald Wardhaugh, An Introduction to Sociolinguistic 4^th Edition, code-switching is a conversational strategy used to establish, cross, or destroy group boundaries; to create, evoke, or change interpersonal relations with their rights and obligations (100).

Further, code switching is a communicative strategy by itself which means that a speaker in communication carries out the strategic switching two or more languages or variants in order to realize his or her own communicative objective. Many years ago this phenomenon, code-switching, was viewed as the strategy used to compensate for diminished language proficiency or a communicative strategy and a change of communicative style. Besides, it is often regarded as a concrete communicative strategy that shows a language choice which is closely connected with the overall context to some extent. In context, a speaker expects to use code switching in order to realize his or her specific communicative objective.

Indeed, code-switching phenomenon often occurs toward speakers who themselves are bilingual or even more in multilingual people and it also takes place in bilingual or multilingual setting. It happens because those speakers have such tendency to switch or to mix their languages on their own reasons. To illustrate, consider the following example;

e.g.: “Thank you to the people of Jakarta and thank you to the people of Indonesia. Emm’.. pulang kampung nih.”

From the example above, we can clearly find that the code-switching phenomenon takes place in conversation. The speaker of English switches his language to Indonesian as in pulang kampung nih. This example is taken during the public speaking given by the U.S President, Barack Obama at University of Indonesia. Barack Obama himself had been widely known living in Indonesian during his childhood for about four years.

From the illustration above, some of us may guess that Obama suddenly switches his language into Indonesian because he was also an Indonesian boy in the past and now he wants to show his identity to the audience that he is still a part of them, on the other hand if he wants to keep social distance he may not use that kind of code-switching. Another reason is that he wants to get close with the Indonesian audience by reducing formality during  his  public speaking and one way to do it is by switching his English language to Indonesian therefore the atmosphere  of his public speaking would be less formal or more relax. Surely, there will be many reasons behind the previous illustration and the way to figure it out is by seeing this code-switching phenomenon through sociolinguistic point of view.

Indeed, the writer is interested in carrying out this phenomenon into a piece of research. This is because code-switching phenomenon is the most common linguistic phenomenon taking place in bilingual and even multilingual people who often switch their language or even mix their codes together. They do it for reasons and by looking this phenomenon through sociolinguistic study we would be able to reveal the reasons behind it. Therefore, the writer focuses his research on the code-switching phenomenon employed by the U.S president, Barack Obama from English to Indonesian language during his public speaking at University of Indonesia.