Functions of code-switching in Polish and Hindi Facebook users’ posts

In the modern era the use of English has become very widespread, the language being used more and more by non-native speakers in a variety of contexts. The objective of the paper is to explore the use of the English language as a second and as a foreign language by bilingual Polish-English and Hindi-English speakers in the medium of Computer Mediated Communication, represented in the following study by the social network context, in order to demonstrate differences in the use of the language by the two groups, stemming from the status of English in the two respective circles, the Outer and the Expanding. The particular aspects of analysis include the frequency of the use of English, the length of the English posts and, notably, the phenomenon of code-switching, its typology and the functions which the respective languages typically perform in the switched elements.