CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Rationale
As a student majoring in English, the researcher often uses English-Thai
mixing in daily life conversation intentionally and unintentionally. The researcher
views that the way one uses English –Thai mixing as ostentation. However, it has
been noticed that the mixing of English in Thai is not limited to only people with
English-Thai communicative competence but in Thai society. Nowadays, there is
frequent English-Thai mixing in communication among Thai people from different
age groups, different occupations as well as different genders.
The phenomenon as mentioned above in linguistic field is called code-mixing.
According to Hudson (1980:53), code-mixing occurs in a bilingual speech community
in which fluent bilinguals talking to one another use both languages and change from
one language and which involves every level of lexical and syntactic structure
including words, phrases, clauses and sentences.
Thailand is considered a monolingual speech community in which four
dialects, Standard Thai (the official language), Northern Thai, Northeastern Thai, and
Southern Thai are spoken. Nevertheless, in the early 1900s, the English language was
introduced into Thailand through contact with English-speaking people (Ministry of
Education, Thailand, 1980:1-5). As a result, there was an influx situation of English
words during that time. At present, the domain of English has gradually expanded to
daily interactions among Thai people such as English use for contact with foreign
countries worldwide, the desire to use English in some daily life activities, listening to
and watching foreign media, and pursuing higher studies in the West. This facilitates
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the increase in use of Thai- English code-mixing or insertion of English words,
phrases, and sentences in Thai.
In T