English and Spanish Code-Switching in the Academic Communication among Undergraduate Translation Students through Social Media

Abstract

The use of social media in the academic community has become very popular in recent years, especially among undergraduate students (Espuny et al., 2011; Gómez-Aguilar et al., 2012; Cancelo Sanmartín & Almansa Martínez, 2013). Besides, Spanish speaking undergraduates usually make use of English when communicating among them in higher education scenarios. Consequently, in this paper we try to detect code-switching cases by undergraduate students in academic scenarios through social media. The methodology used heavily relies on corpus. In a Spanish monolingual corpus composed of samples of communication through social media among undergraduate students enrolled in the Degree of Translation and Interpreting (University of Valladolid, Spain) we detect code-switching cases and analyze them. Results might provide us with data to be aware of the deviations from the Spanish rules. In addition, they might allow us to adopt corrective measures through the creation of new tools to improve academic communication through social media.