Code-Switching and Code-Mixing in the Practice of Judgement Writing in Malaysia

Abstract

This study explores the use of code-switching and code-mixing in the practice of writing the grounds of judgement in the Malaysian Judicial System. As these grounds of judgement are official documents published for the public interest, a lack of lexical accuracies for the important terms and phrases may lead to poor linguistic representation of the legal text. Thus, thirty-two samples of grounds of judgement written in the national language from 2015 to 2021 were extracted from The Current Law Journal and analysed according to Appel and Muysken and Malik’s theories on code-switching and code-mixing in terms of the frequency used in the legal text. Findings revealed extensive use of intra-over inter-sentential code-switching in the form of insertion, alternation, and congruent lexicalisation of code-mixing. These were driven by the absence of specific legal terms in the national language, the lack of registral competence among the writers as well as the functions of the legal terms to serve the pragmatic contexts of the text, emphasise a point or highlight the semantic significance of the terms, and reflect the identity of the writers. The present study shows limited linguistic corpus on legal terms in the national language; therefore, language experts should intensify their efforts to expand the corpus and increase awareness of the terms through language courses for legal practitioners.

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