ENGLISH AND TAGALOG: A STUDY OF CODE SWITCHING IN PHILIPPINE TELEVISION ADVERTISEMENTS

Abstract

This paper aims to study the mixing of Tagalog and English in Philippine television advertisements. Specifically, this paper investigates three aspects: the frequency of code-switching, the types of code-switching utilising Poplack’s (1980) classification; and the motivations of code-switching employing Li’s (2000), and Bishop’s (2006) lists. A total of 40 Philippine advertisements compiled during the year 2020 were gathered from YouTube channels. The study shows that 51% of the words were code switched to English. On average, each advertisement has eight code-switching instances, 2.8 words per instance which occur every 4 seconds. Intra-sentential type of code-switching is the most frequent across the advertisement categories. The same data also suggest that code-switching is motivated by various motivations such as euphemism, specificity, bilingual punning, lack of words, language facilitation, style, expression of identity, and making request.