Introduction
Language plays an important role in our lives, but people may live in a society which uses different languages to communicate with each other. As many people tend to travel across countries and continue to ask for more education as much as they are exposed to other cultures. There is variety of languages in different societies; so people tend to share a range of common languages therefore they are also more vulnerable to mix these common languages within their conversations; which known as 'code switching'.
Citizens in the society maybe divided into different social classes such as high, middle, and low classes, according to the economic levels. Code switching is a common practice of bilingual or multilingual, it may have developed as a result of the speaker's habit and maybe for specific reasons. Code switching appears in media through T.V series and movies. When code switching is used in movies , it is used to show the differences between social classes as it is used as a tool to clarify the differences So, this research will represent code switching in the Egyptian movie 'Ramadan Mabrouk Abul Alamain Hamouda'.
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As the research paper is about Sociolinguistics, so the paper will mention the meaning of it. It is the study of the relation between language and society – a branch of both linguistics and sociology. American Linguist William Labor has called sociolinguistics secular linguistics, ' in reaction to the contention among many linguists working in a broadly Chomsky an frame work that language can be dissociated from its social functions ' ( Key Thinkers in linguistic and the philosophy of language , 2005 ).
Bilingualism which native – like control of two languages. ( Bloom Field 1933-55). It leads to use code switching.
Research Objectives
The research paper is investigating the phenomenon of code switching in the Egyptian movie Ramadan Mabrouk Aboul Alamain Hamouda to know when it is used and to spot out what influences the use of code switching.
Research Questions
- How does the social class has an effect on Arabic-English code switching in the Arabic movie' Ramadan Mabrouk Abou Al Alamain Hamouda' according to Yasser Suleiman?
- What are reasons behind code switching?
Methodology
Theoretical Framework
Functions of code switching into six functions according to (Gumperz 1982 p. 59)
They are explained as follows: quotation, people tend to quote from other languages. Second function is interjection, use to express sudden feelings. Third one is addressee specification, the function of code switching is to draw attention to the fact that the addressee is being invited to join the conversations. Fourth one is Reiteration, it is to say something in one language and repeat it in the other language to clarify the message. Fifth function is Message Qualification which is qualify the message or to convey the main message. Sixth function is Personalization by changing to the other language, the speaker tends to express his own knowledge about specific topics.
The research is focusing on interjection, quotation, reiteration, and addressee specification functions in the movie.
Corpus of the Research
Ramadan Mabrouk Aboul Alamain Hamouda is a comedy Egyptian movie starring Egyptian actor Mohamed Henedy, written by Youssef Maati, directed by Weal Ehsan and produced by Good News Films.
The movie is about a teacher who left his poor village's governmental school and went to Cairo where he teaches in a private school where most of the students are sons of ministers and businessmen. There are two characters in the movie, first one is 'Ramzy' the son of The Minster of Education who sends him to the rural school in order to be more responsible. Ramzy is one of the three students who deals with the main character ' Mr.Ramadan '.
The other character is 'Naglaa Fathy' the Lebanese singer who lives in Egypt and seeks for the Egyptian residency, so, she had to marry an Egyptian citizen in order to get it.
Data analysis
The target of the analysis is to identify the social motivation of code switching among different social classes within the movie. Accordingly the data was analyzed and arranged as follows:
After analyzing the scenes, selective examples that are significant and representative were chosen for the analysis when choosing the sample, since the stress is to identify the social motivation of code switching within the different social classes, special stress was provided to examples that include interactions between different social classes. The analysis was concerned with performed stylized code switching of the Egyptian movie Ramadan Mabrouk Abou Al Alamain Hamouda in relation to social class.
The social class differences as stated in the movie in the beginning of the movie, the students are introduced in a way that highlights the social class difference between them.
The first scene starts with the line of the first of the academic year shows the school in the rural areas as old buildings and the students were wearing low quality uniforms. The students were controlled by the teacher and they fear him, whereas, the following scene shows the school of the upper class people where the sons of the highest officials were in. In this school all the students were having cars and motorbikes and they were showing off a kind of drafting and races and the school's uniforms were fancy compared to the rural school's uniforms. The school contains many playgrounds and many activity areas in addition to a swimming pool as they also have swimming session. The teachers at this school were unable to control the students as the students can kick the teacher out of the class.
The analysis will focus on the upper class student who code switches when he enters the rural school when he said in English language to the head master 'I'll sit at the back '. He also used rejection function of the code switching in the scene when he was driving his car in the village ' Meet Badr Halawa' on his way to school, the teacher was in front of him while the student 'Ramzy' was talking in the phone and he was talking in Arabic and the situation happened suddenly , then he shifted to English language and said to the teacher : ' move off the way man ', in this scene he shifts to English language spontaneously because his English language domains Arabic language another example of rejection when 'Ramzy' and his colleague 'Gigy' were late for the class , 'Mr. Ramadan' asks him ' sayben el hessah w konto fyn ' and he answered ' take it easy ' . As an example of addressee specification function of code switching, when Naglaa Fathy ,the Lebanese singer, was trying to achieve solidarity through talking by Egyptian dialect ,for example when she said ' Ana m'darsh amshy mn hina, mish hyinfaa' argaa' Beirut inta a'rif al mashakil 'ly a'ndy hinak itsarraf ' and in another scene she was talking in Lebanese dialect when she said to Mr. Ramadan: ' itfaddal itfaddal ahla w sahla ', she was trying to be part of the Egyptian society. The movie also represents the reiteration function of code switching when Mr. Ramadan asked Ramzy to analyze an extracted stanza from an Arabic poem and Ramzy started to analyze it with ' lam adat gazm , yastate' verb modarea' ' and he repeat it with the Arabic language ' fea'l' as a result of his fear.
Findings and conclusion
The affection of social class on Arabic-English code switching in the Arabic movie 'Ramadan Mabrouk Aboul Alamain Hamouda' according to Yasser Suleiman.
Social class differences appears clearly in the movie when high social class people deal with people in low social class, in some situations , the social class difference made them switch to the other language 'Arabic' in order to make their message clear to the lower class people. The social class itself in the movie is the main object that make the participants talk in two languages and do code switching. Yasser Suleiman says that, ‘the phenomenon of CS is very common and is looked upon as something prestigious and a sign of education and competence in more than one language’ (Suleiman, 1999).
reasons behind code switching.
Code switching in the movie is used by 'Ramzy' in order to show his social class and to indicate that he belongs to higher social class. So do Naglaa Fathy the Lebanese singer used code switching from Lebanese dialect to the Egyptian in order to fit in the Egyptian society as an essence of solidarity.
In conclusion, the Egyptian movie ' Ramadan Mabrouk Abu Alalmain Hamouda' is a perfect example of code switching. Through the scenes of the movie, the functions of code switching is represented in many different ways. Each of the characters used code switching for hisher own purpose.
References
- John J.Gumperz (1982). Discourse Strategies. UK: Cambridge University Press.
- Suleiman, Y. (1999). Language and society in the Middle East and North Africa: Studies in variation and identity. UK: Curzon Press.
- 'Ramadan Mabrouk Abul-Alamein Hamouda' IMDb.
- IMDb,December04,2008.Web.May14,2019.
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