Malay–English Code Switching in Political Discourse: A Study of Keluar Sekejap Podcast

Podcasts have become an influential tool of political communication in the modern digital age with its spontaneous and unstructured format that opposes the traditional media and its formality. This paper explores the language process of code switching in Malaysian political podcasts, Keluar Sekejap, hosted by Khairy Jamaluddin and Shahril Hamdan. Although code switching is a common practice in a multilingual society of Malaysia, the available literature has mostly been limited to the educational and entertainment settings and there is still a significant gap in understanding the bilingual strategies in political speech. The study applied a qualitative research design approach by conducting a word-to-word analysis of a single episode of a podcast with a former Prime Minister, Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad, to reflect the natural ways of language alternation. The Structural Model of Poplack (1980) leads the analysis in the identification of types of switches, and the Functions Model of Gumperz (1982) to identify the communicative functions. The background information indicates that politicians use Malay-English code switching strategically to clarify key points and establish a relatable connection with a diverse audience. The results indicate that intra-sentential switching is dominant compared to inter-sentential (86.8% vs 13.2%), and that language alternation was strategically used for Idea Organisation (66.33%) and Turn-taking (33.67%). The study finds that code switching performed in the podcast functions to emphasize (36.94%). The study contributes to enhance the understanding of strategic language usage by showing the code-switching as an effective communicative tool in the Malaysian political discourse.

Code-Switching, podcasts, political discourse, communicative functions, discourse management

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