Code-Mixing and Code-Switching Among Etche-English Bilinguals

This study ¿Code Mixing and Code Switching Among Etche-English Bilinguals¿ was set to find out the use of code mixing and code switching in both formal and informal settings of Etche-English bilinguals using two domains: education and religion. It examined the types of code mixing/switching, the syntactic positions of code mixing, the probable reasons and the impacts of code mixing and code switching on the use of English among Etche bilinguals. The study was based on the subjects¿ performance on the use of code. The researcher collected data from the utterances of the subjects from the sampled schools and churches through observations and these were analysed using Hymes¿ (1974) theory of communicative competence as the theoretical frame work and Halliday¿s (1961) theory of systemic grammar to account for the occurrences of code mixing. Our findings showed that in formal settings, the bilinguals tended to code mix Etche more frequently but code switch to English more frequently than Etche in informal settings. This was attributed to the setting of discourse and probably, there were many expressions in English that are familiar to the bilinguals which they could use in their sentenc