Code-Switching: Identity, Power, and Social Meaning is a definitive, hour-long audio study guide for students and teachers of English Literature and Linguistics. In this episode of Literary Rides, we explore one of the most pervasive yet misunderstood features of multilingual communication: the practice of moving between languages, dialects, or speech varieties within a single interaction.
Beginning with clear definitions and everyday examples, the episode carefully distinguishes code-switching from related phenomena such as code-mixing, borrowing, diglossia, and translanguaging. It then guides listeners through the major linguistic frameworks used to analyse code-switching, including the Markedness Model and the Matrix Language-Frame model, showing how bilingual speech is structured, rule-governed, and linguistically sophisticated rather than chaotic or deficient.
Moving beyond grammar, the discussion situates code-switching within larger questions of identity, belonging, and power. Drawing on sociolinguistics, postcolonial studies, and cultural theory, the episode examines how speakers use language choice to negotiate intimacy and authority, solidarity and distance, resistance and conformity—particularly in multicultural, diasporic, and postcolonial contexts. Special attention is given to immigrant and bicultural communities, classroom and institutional settings, and the lived realities of linguistic hierarchy and accent prejudice.
The episode also addresses the psychological dimensions of code-switching, including cognitive load, emotional labour, and the impact of linguistic racism. For literature students, it offers insight into how writers deploy code-switching in fiction, poetry, and oral narratives to perform authenticity, challenge dominant norms, and preserve cultural memory. Contemporary digital and globalised contexts further expand the discussion, showing how code-switching continues to evolve in online spaces and transnational communities.
Designed as a comprehensive listening-based resource, this episode is ideal for undergraduate and postgraduate students, UGC NET/SET aspirants, teachers, and researchers seeking conceptual clarity and critical depth. More than a technical explanation, it invites listeners to hear everyday speech differently—and to recognise code-switching as a profoundly human act of meaning-making in a multilingual world.