“His Favorite Things Mahi Al-hadia” Social Functions of Code Switching in Bilingual Children’s Conversations

This study explored the occurrence of code switching among six Arabic-English Saudi bilingual children living in United States at time study. A Qualitative research design, using three instruments namely, parental questionnaire, language portraits, and recorded storytelling sessions, was conducted order to investigate social functions switching. The adopted Myers-Scotton’s (1993) Markedness Model examine better motivation behind children’s conversations. Overall, findings revealed participant’s dominant preferred be English, switch English frequent serve certain functions, such as change addressee, engage interaction, make alignment, ask for translation, expand, invoke authority, finish conversation. Moreover, this contributes current on by providing evidence Myers-Scotton marked unmarked observed children. also agrees with previous studies (e.g., Bolonyai, 2005; Fuller, Elsman, & Self, 2007; Myers-Scotton, 2002) that argued are rational actors who choose a given intentionally achieve goals interaction.