Performance of Identity Through Code Switching in Facebook Postings by Dayaknese Students

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to find out what identity(s) that Dayaknese students of English Department performed by doing code switching in their Facebook postings and what factors triggered them to do so. In this study, a qualitative, discourse analytical method was used. The participants of this study were five Dayaknese students of the English Department, taken from the author’s list of Facebook friends. The data was taken from the participants’ Facebook postings from April to November 2015. The data were analyzed and classified into the category based on combination of Bouvier-Hoffman classifications (language functions),Bouvier-Poplack classifications (language forms) and how often the code switching occured. Findings of the study suggested that talking about particular topics (61.26%) and intra-sentencial switching in functionalisation (41.44%) tend to be the most frequent in the participants’ Facebook postings. This presentation showed that they switched their code into English in Facebook because of two factors. They are desire to be seen as young and modern people and to be acknowledged as English Department Students, who are globally competitive due to their ability to use English well.