Banglish as Academic Stance: Code-Switching, Lexical Hybridization, and Language Ideology among Bangladeshi University Students
DOI: https://doi.org/10.65840/jllcd.v1i3.55
Banglish, code-switching, code-mixing, translanguaging, Bangladeshi university students, language ideology, matrix language, cultural pragmatics
Abstract
This article examines Banglish as an interactional and ideological repertoire among Bangladeshi university students. Using a 20-record analytic dataset of Bangla-English code-switching, code-mixing, translanguaging, and intra-lexical hybridization, the study combines matrix-language analysis, pragmatic discourse analysis, and language-ideology critique. The corpus shows that Banglish is concentrated in two structural forms: intra-sentential switching and intra-lexical code-mixing each account for 35% of the records, while inter-sentential switching accounts for 15%; emblematic switching, translanguaging, and diversity-oriented code-mixing each account for 5%. Bangla is the matrix language in 70% of the records, indicating that English usually enters as a lexical, academic, symbolic, or affective resource rather than replacing Bangla as the grammatical base. Five functions organize the data: academic precision, interactional emphasis, digital convenience, stylistic modernity, and pedagogical scaffolding. The article argues that Banglish is not linguistic deficiency but pragmatic bilingualism under institutional English: it enables knowledge repair, social alignment, youth identity, and technical precision while also producing anxieties about language purity, status inequality, and the long-term symbolic position of Bangla.
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