The Mixing of English and Thai in Thai Television Program

Authors

Prathana Kannaovakun
Albert C. Gunther

Publication Date

2003-01-01

Abstract

This study set out to systemically observe and describe the mixing of English with Thai-based discourse, often termed code-mixing, in Thai television programs. Data came from 100 hours of programming randomly samples from five genres of Thai television programs - Thai drama, talk or variety shows, academic or hard talk shows, game shows and sports programs. Finding showed that code-mixing is common, with sports programs producing the most. A great number of code-mixing were single nouns. English mixes occurred even when Thai equivalents existed. A few were used for emphasis or clarification, but most were not. Celebrities produced the most code-mixing, followed by experts and authorities. Most of the code-mixing came from program hosts. Results suggest that code-mixing serves more than a simple utilitarian purpose: the majority of code-mixing displayed neither an emphatic function nor a linguistic need function. It may instead fall into other functional categories, such as a prestige motive or expressive functions observed in earlier studies of code-mixing of English in other languages. Many of the English words embedded into the Thai language have undergone modification: truncation, reduplication, or syntactical change. These processes of nativization of English words into Thai discourse appeared similar to those reported in other parts of the world.

First Page

66

Last Page

80

Recommended Citation

Kannaovakun, Prathana and Gunther, Albert C. (2003) "The Mixing of English and Thai in Thai Television Program," Manusya, Journal of Humanities: Vol. 6: No. 2, Article 3.
Available at: https://digital.car.chula.ac.th/manusya/vol6/iss2/3