Code-Switching and Code-Mixing in Students’ Short Stories: A Sociolinguistic Approach to Literary Learning Materials in the Merdeka Curriculum
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17509/bs_jpbsp.v26i1.106Keywords:
Code-switching, Code-mixing, Merdeka Curriculum, Multilingual Literacy, Short StoriesAbstract
Multilingualism has become an integral feature of contemporary educational contexts, shaping how students use language in both spoken and written communication. This study examines code-switching and code-mixing in student-authored short stories from a sociolinguistic perspective and explores their pedagogical relevance within the Indonesian Merdeka Curriculum. Using a qualitative sociolinguistic text analysis, the study analyzes a corpus of student-produced narratives to identify patterns and functions of multilingual language use in written discourse. The findings suggest that students employ intersentential and intrasentential code-switching, as well as lexical code-mixing, in systematic and context-sensitive ways. These practices appear to serve key sociolinguistic functions, including identity construction, emotional expression, cultural indexing, and the enhancement of narrative authenticity. The study argues that code-switching and code-mixing in student writing should not be viewed as linguistic deficiency, but as strategic and meaningful resources for narrative meaning-making. By extending sociolinguistic analysis into the domain of written creative texts, this study contributes to multilingual literacy research and demonstrates the potential of students’ multilingual narratives as contextual and inclusive literary learning materials aligned with the principles of the Merdeka Curriculum.
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