The use of mixed language by today’s youth is almost unchecked in day-to-day conversations and other walks of life. It is also detected in the area of media and creative writing affecting the Generation Next.
B. Tejesh
The use of two or more languages, say, Hinglish, Manglish, Banglish, Tamglish etc. is typical trait of today’s civilisation in general and the techno-savvy youth in particular. Alternative use of two languages called as code switching which is now integral part and parcel of the speech community due to various reasons. Surprisingly, you will witness its leading role in the mass media as a medium for inter-state communication and broadcasting. The use of mixed language is rampant in the area of media and creative writing such as newspapers, movies, advertisements, radio, and film magazines. Most advertisements do employ mixed language as a communicative strategy. You may find this mixing in the following well known instances.
‘Yahi he right choice baby’
‘Ye dil mange more’
‘Limca, fresh ho jayo ’
‘Esko laga dala to life zinga lala’ etc.
You just listen carefully and you will find out many more such examples. Amazingly, your close examination may reveal that even in normal conversation in English language, an average sentence spoken contains words from both English and the relevant Indian language and vice a versa. Most of the time this mixing happens naturally. People who view the use of mixed language optimistically consider it verbal strategy which helps in effective communication, others feel that it can ‘pollute’ and therefore be banned. Of course, this is a question to you as well. Is this mixing hard going or plain sailing? But, unquestionably such mixing among today’s techno-savvy youth and in the creative writings is increasing noticeably.
So far as the creative writing is concerned the use of mixed language serves the stylistic purpose of attracting the attention of the speaker and that is why creative writers use it for the sake of creating humor or parody. Thus, here in the ever widening arena of creative writing the mixing serves more than just informational purpose. You will find the most of comedy programmes do use such kind of mixing. You might have noticed it in many songs. By the way, do you think such mixing of languages has playing harmonising roles in the socio-political-economic context? There are various reasons behind the mixing and we will talk about them in next issue. Please do post your comments on mixing of languages and probable reasons behind it.
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