Between English and the Mother Tongue: Code-Switching and Code-Mixing in Digital Communication among College Students

The rapid expansion of digital communication has transformed the ways in which young people use language in their everyday lives. Social networking platforms, instant messaging applications, online classrooms and other digital spaces have created multilingual environments in which English frequently interacts with users' mother tongues. Among college students, communication often involves shifting between English and the mother tongue or combining elements of both within a single message. This linguistic behaviour reflects not only convenience but also changing patterns of identity, social interaction and self-expression. The present paper examines the nature and functions of code-switching and code-mixing in the digital communication of college students. It focuses particularly on the interaction between English and Indian mother tongues, with special attention to multilingual contexts in which Marathi and Hindi are commonly used alongside English. The study adopts a qualitative and descriptive approach to examine representative patterns found in informal digital communication. It explores the reasons behind students' preference for mixed-language communication, including ease of expression, familiarity, emotional emphasis, peer influence, humour, identity construction and the informal character of digital platforms. The paper also considers the implications of these practices for English language learning and contemporary multilingual communication. The study argues that code-switching and code-mixing in digital spaces should not automatically be regarded as linguistic deficiencies. Rather, they can be understood as flexible communicative strategies through which multilingual speakers negotiate meaning, relationships and identity. At the same time, excessive dependence on informal digital language may influence students' formal writing habits. Understanding this linguistic phenomenon can therefore contribute to a more balanced approach to language education in the digital age.