English Code Switching: A License for the Violation of Urdu Linguistic Taboos?

Abstract

Norms and values of any society rely heavily on language; language mirrors the core culture of a particular society with regard to the practices that are either allowed within that society or are forbidden. In Pakistan being a multi-lingual society, code switching could be observed as a commonly exercised phenomenon. The present study investigates the violation of Urdu Linguistic taboos via English lexical items through the process of code switching. 28 Urdu linguistic taboo words were selected. The words were categorized in six commonly existing categories. The data to investigate the research questions of the current study was collected from 100 under graduate and post graduate students of  English departmentThe findings based on the quantitative data analysis indicate that English code switching has become a popular phenomenon among the speakers of Urdu language to mention taboo words, leading ultimately to the violation of Urdu Linguistic taboos. The study opens door for future researchers to investigate the violation of their own languages through code-switching