Manifold code-mixing in computer-mediated communication: The use of English in Dutch youths’ informal online writing
Lieke Verheijen, Roeland van Hout
Abstract
The pervasiveness of the English language in society and education in the Netherlands, as well as its status as online lingua franca, has caused concerns. English is a manifest aspect of oral youth language, as reflected in online written messages, but has in no way replaced the Dutch language. This paper presents a large-scale corpus analysis of computer-mediated communication by Dutch youths. These social media messages (392,169 words in total) were studied for the presence of code-mixing with English, in terms of amount and manner. They contained 7528 English elements: (parts of) words, interjections, textisms (typical of ‘digi-talk’), phrases, and sentences. We argue that the concept of ‘manifold code-mixing’, consisting of four pathways – discourse framing, insertion, alternation, and integration – is necessary to truly comprehend the complexity and social meaning of code-mixing. These pathways relate to the SUPER-functions of textisms (speechlike, understandable, playful, expressive, reduced) and reveal Dutch youths' high proficiency in English.