This study investigates language use and code switching (CS) in parliamentary sessions of the People’s Council of Representatives in Aceh, Indonesia. Three recordings of plenary sessions of the...Show moreThis study investigates language use and code switching (CS) in parliamentary sessions of the People’s Council of Representatives in Aceh, Indonesia. Three recordings of plenary sessions of the Council were transcribed and used as data sources for the research. The study used transcriptions to obtain frequency and syntactic constructions and interviews with speakers of Acehnese to obtain social functions and perceived attitudes toward CS. It was found that the use of Acehnese relative to Indonesian and other languages in the parliamentary was 26.5% in terms of word count and 3.3% in terms of continuous speech duration and furthermore could be classified as CS wherein Acehnese served either as Matrix and Embedded Language based on Matrix Language Framework (MLF – Myers-Scotton and Jake, 2009). The CS were mostly intersentential in both direction and extrasentential CS were found only from Indonesian to Acehnese. In addition, the CS mainly functioned as a manner of quotation and interlocutor addressing. This study contributed to a better understanding of language and code switching in politically-motivated settings in Aceh or other multilingual regions in Indonesia. Future research in this area could focus on the intellectual and political factors underlying deliberate code switching.Show less
