e crucial information about the social and cultural dynamics in a multilingual setting would also be lost

University of Michigan - Ann Arbor

C-S across Languages: Indian Context

ignoring these studies and data could have serious consequences

perform a quantitative study of 18 recent Bollywood (Hindi) movies and find that C-S is used for establishing identity, social dynamics between characters and the socio-cultural context of the movie

the types and functions of C-S between Hindi and English across the TV programs

language technologies are not yet capable of processing C-S as seamlessly as monolingual data. 

We identify three main limitations of the current state of computational processing of C-S: data, evaluation and user-facing applications.

Computational Approaches to C-S

Limitation:  the lack of end-to-end userfacing applications that interact directly with users in multilingual communities.

1) Although computational implementations of grammatical models of C-S exist (Bhat et al., 2016), they do not necessarily generate natural C-S utterances that a bilingual speaker would produce

2) Most crucially, current computational approaches to C-S language technologies do not usually take into account the linguistic and social factors that influence why and when speakers/users choose to code-switch.

User-facing applications

Investigations into code-switching (C-S) within Indian written media, advertising, and film reveal a generational shift in language dominance. While Hindi was the primary language with occasional switches to English in early productions, English became the dominant language in later productions, particularly among younger generations.

Evolution of Code-Switching in Indian Media

In the Indian multilingual education system, high-cost English Medium (EM) education is highly valued by affluent families. Code-switching (C-S) is commonly practiced among students in schools across India, making it unrealistic to expect students to rigidly separate their spoken languages.

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