Attitudes toward code-switching in a Saudi public hospital

الملخص EN

The study was conducted at King Khalid University Hospital (KKUH)—a multilingual and multicultural environment—because of the different nationalities and backgrounds of the medical staff working there.

These differences created the likelihood that code-switching (CS) would occur between the spoken dialects and languages.

This study investigated the attitudes of the medical staff toward CS between Arabic and English as they were the most spoken languages in the hospitals.

To achieve its aim, the study adopted a mixed-methods approach.

It distributed 64 questionnaires among the medical staff working at three units in the hospital and interviewed seven members.

The qualitative and quantitative data showed that the majority of the staff expressed positive attitudes toward the practice in the hospital.

However, almost all of them expressed negative attitudes toward CS during a medical discussion.

The variables that had an effect on attitudes towards CS were the nationality (linguistic background), and social status.

However, age and gender were not found to be influential social variables, as both females and males as well as young and old participants expressed similar attitudes.

These findings suggest several courses of action for hospital administrations and designers of preparatory courses.