Code Switching on “Catch Me Up!”: A New Style of News Writing?

Abstract

News writing is generally formulated using a standard, formal language style.
However, Catch Me Up!, an online daily newspaper, broke those strict rules by offering
casual, loose, non-standard language which predominantly used code-switching as one of
the ways to alter formal to informal language styles. Hence, this study aimed to describe
the various types of code-switching that occurred on Catch Me Up! and explain why the
news frequently employed code-switching. Three theories underlie the present research;
types of code-switching by Poplack and a combination of reasons for code-switching by
Hoffmann, Gumperz, and San. The study applied the descriptive-qualitative method since
the data were in the form of words, phrases, clauses, and sentences. The data sources were
taken from 17 international news published in July 2023. The results revealed that, out of
235 found data, intra-sentential switching became the most occurred data regarding code
switching types. In line with the reasons for code-switching, addressee specification and
expressing group identity appeared dominantly in this study, followed by talking about a
particular topic, interjection, indicating emotions, intention for clarifying the speech
substance for interlocutors, and quoting somebody else.