Code-Switching in der digitalen Jugendsprache: Eine kontaktlinguistische Analyse mehrsprachiger Mischformen auf TikTok
Code-Switching in Digital Youth Language: A Contact Linguistic Analysis of Multilingual Mixed Forms on TikTok

Author(s): Nedim Livnjak
Subject(s): Media studies, Psycholinguistics, Sociolinguistics, Stylistics
Published by: Društvo germanista u Bosni i Hercegovini (DGuBiH) / Germanistenverband in Bosnien-Herzegowina (GViBH)
Keywords: code-switching; digital youth language; TikTok;
Summary/Abstract: This article examines how code-switching manifests in the digital youth language on TikTok and which communicative functions it fulfills. The analysis is based on a language-contact framework in which code-switching is understood as a communicatively motivated shift between languages or varieties. Particular attention is given to a TikTokspecific form of code-switching that arises from the combination of German-language captions with pre-existing foreign-language sounds. These sounds are receptively recontextualized and assigned new communicative functions by the adolescents who use them. The data consist of a corpus of 100 examples (40 videos, 60 comments) from 2025, created by teenagers living in Germany. The findings show that expressive and phatic functions predominate, meaning that code-switching is used primarily to intensify emotions and to signal social affiliation. In addition, cases of referential, poetic-creative, and directive functions are also attested. Overall, code-switching on TikTok emerges as a strategic, performative practice of meaning-making within globally networked youth discourse communities.

• Details
• Contents