Abstract:

This study investigates the use of code switching by the employees of Saudi private Hospitals from a socio-cultural perspective. The aim is to explore the motivations behind code switching practices in this multilingual medical workplace and the functions of code switching in spoken interactions taking place in those hospitals. The study sample includes25 participants; doctors and nurses from different Arabic and Asian countries. The researcher uses the qualitative method to analyze the study data which is collected through observations and individual semi-structured interviews. The findings revealed that the workers in the multilingual private hospitals in Saudi Arabia tend to code-switch for personal reasons, institutional reasons, linguistic practices, socio-biographical reasons, or emotional necessity. Moreover, this study revealed that the most important functions of code switching in private Saudi hospitals are to facilitate communication among participants, to provide emphasis about something, to repeat in order to clarify, to fill lexical gaps, or deliver the message fast when they use switching.

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