Motivations of Code Switching among Arab Young People in Formal and Informal Discourse Settings between Arabic and English

Along with the communicative functions of language, there is always a social function to show the role played by language in the society. This function can be seen in the field of sociolinguistics through code-switching. The current study aims to investigate the motivations behind code-switching between Arabic and English by Arab young people in their daily conversations from a sociolinguistic perspective. The researcher employed a qualitative analytical approach to obtain the results. Thus, this research paper focuses on analyzing and discussing semi-structured interviews with Arab young people to gain information on code-switching in their daily conversations. Data was collected through conducting the interviews and transcribing them for analysis. The findings of the study indicate that there are five motivations behind Arabic-English code switching among Arab young people; excluding group members, showing social status, expressing literacy, expressing belonging to a certain group and finally affirming their identity. The current study is meant to contribute to the development of the sociolinguistic field when it comes to the Arabic-English language pair.