Hindi-English bilingual code-switching in college memes

Abstract

Indian universities form multilingual societies with people from various backgrounds. Hindi-English bilingualism is one of the most common linguistic practices observed in West and North India. This study looks into dynamic and interactive linguistic behaviors in Hindi and English through publicly shared college memes. A popular college meme Instagram account was selected to analyze university students’ linguistic repertoires and their pragmatic functions and stylistic effects, and 200 posts were chosen for thematic and linguistic analyses. Major findings are as follows: First, code-switching in multilingual users shows a great variety of patterns depending on the languages, situations, conventions, and other contexts. The expressions used in memes show the interplay of situational factors and stylistic effects, but overall they follow Hindi-based structure, and English terms used in the classroom and formal documents. Second, the types of discourse prevalent in the college environment were categorized into mainly in four main themes: (i) response to the announcements or policy change, (ii) complaints of life, and (iii) current issues such as the COVID-19 pandemic. It shows how students strategize to communicate through and relate to each other by generating and responding to memes.