Code - switching ET code - mixing Chez quelques fonctionnnaires Dagara dans la ville de Nandom

Abstract

One of the inevitable results of the co-existence of English and the Ghanaian Languages is the fusion in their form and function. This natural socio- linguistic symbioses has invariably brought about the emergence of an artificial language that some people term « mixed », « hybrid », or even « third» language. This phenomenon is common with Ghanaian languages, as with local languages elsewhere. Today many socio-linguists are interested more concretely in the phenomenon of code-mixing and code-switching. Spoken Dagara has not been an exception to this socio-linguistic transformation. Many Dagara speakers often resort to the use of English words or even switch totally to English in a speech situation. Our preoccupation here is to examine how the phenomenon reflects in the Dagara spoken by literate natives. To realize our objective we undertook to analyze ordinary conversations of people in many locations, especially people who speak both English and Dagara. Our findings indicate that this « third tongue» permits the resort to the English language when the word is not readily available in Dagara. It also has a social and psychological effect on the speakers ofaagara. It also came to light that the phenomenon does not necessarily lead to a grammarless and sub-standard language. Guided by these finding, and also given the fact that code-switching and code-mixing have become the norm in the speech of many today, we propose that one, the phenomenon he seen as a natnral produet of language contact, serving very important communicative and cognitive functions and not one that has been negatively and erroneously considered a confused language, and two, that it be encouraged rather than condemned.