Pragmatic Analysis of Academic Discourse: Insights into Code-Switching

Abstract

Language use in academic discourse i.e. in classroom sessions and conference presentations is a controversial issue among linguists and academicians as they carry contrasting perspectives regarding use of language in academia. Some linguists believe that code-switching is an essential part of academic discourse while some other suggests that mutual intelligibility may not be possible if the learners switch their language during communication. The variation of the viewpoints creates a niche to explore the use of language in Pakistani classroom sessions and conference presentations. This study explores various purposes of code-switching in academic discourse including elucidation, giving instruction, translation, change/introduce the topic, asking question and building argument. Pakistan is a multi-lingual country and it has rich linguistic diversity where people use provincial and regional languages and medium of instruction in classrooms is a serious concern for academicians. Moreover, the study portrays present situation and describes future implications from students’ perspective. The second main objective of the study is to explore the contextual relevance, quantity of information and perspicuousness in academic discourse (classroom session and conference presentation). To conduct this study thirty classroom sessions and forty conference presentations were recorded and transcribed. Furthermore, this research highlights the issues related to contextual use of language, quantity of information and clarity of expression in academic discourse by giving examples of transcribed data. The findings reveal the purposes of code-switching and contextual uses of language in academic discourse with specific reference to pragmatic ideology. In the light of the findings of the current study I propose Relative Relevance Model of Communication which has potential to explore relevance and relative relevance in classroom sessions and conference presentations especially. Moreover, this model may also be employed on other genres in order to address pragmatic manifestations with special focus on relevance.