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Open Access Knowledge and Scholarship

Date of Award

5-2018

Culminating Project Type

Thesis

Degree Name

English: Teaching English as a Second Language: M.A.

Department

English

College

College of Liberal Arts

First Advisor

Edward Sadrai

Second Advisor

Choonkyong Kim

Third Advisor

Marla Kanengieter-Wildeson

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

Keywords and Subject Headings

Code-mixing, language and gender, reality television shows, Thai-English code-mixing, code-switching, sociolinguistics

Abstract

This study examines the linguistic phenomena of Thai and English code-mixing on Thai modeling competition reality television shows: The Face Thailand season two and The Face Men Thailand season one. These two shows were chosen because of their higher frequency in the number of code-mixing by bilingual individuals on the shows compared to other Thai reality television shows. The study investigates the relationships of gender and role of the bilingual cast members with the incidences of code-mixing. This is to gain insight into whether the male cast members code-mixed more frequently than the female cast members, and whether the cast members who have the roles of mentor code-mixed more frequently than those who have the roles of contestants. With regard to the investigation, recorded data from each of the reality television shows was collected from the first five episodes, standardized, and analyzed with statistical independent sample T-test. The results revealed that female cast members have a higher number of code-mixing incidents than their male counterparts. However, statistics showed that this number is statistically insignificant. In terms of roles, the results revealed that the mentors code-mixed more frequently than the contestants and the number is statistically significant. These results provided support which both conform to and challenge the existing literature done by a number of researchers in the field. The results also suggested possible reasons which explain why the bilingual cast members on the shows employed the switching between Thai and English in their conversations.

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