Code-switching in political news writings: A case study of three Indian English newspapers
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Abstract
The research questions of this study are as follows: Why do political news writings in Indian English newspapers make use of code-mixed texts? And, what kind of linguistic material from Indian languages are likely to be interspersed in Indian English political news writings? To address these research questions, news articles from the Hyderabad edition of three Indian English newspapers, namely, The Hindu, The Times of India, and The New Indian Express were examined from February 2024 to 2025. These news articles were selected because of the political purposes that they served. A qualitative interview was designed and administered to 10 people who were working as editors or reporters in Indian English newspapers. The questions of the qualitative interview mainly elicited the motivations for using mixed codes in Indian English newspapers. The thematic findings from interviews showed that terms from Indian languages were used in Indian English political news writings for textual comprehensibility, etc., and terms that carried political connotations were more likely to appear as vernacular variants than their English equivalents (e.g., Viksit Bharat connotes nationalistic pride but not Developed India). Future research should aim at investigating the benefits of mixed codes on the readers of Indian English newspapers.
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