The Who in Code-Switching: A Case Study for Predicting Egyptian Arabic–English Code-Switching Levels Based on Character Profiles

Abstract

Code-switching (CS) is a common linguistic phenomenon exhibited by multilingual individuals, where they tend to alternate between languages within one single conversation. CS is a complex phenomenon that not only encompasses linguistic challenges, but also contains a great deal of complexity in terms of its dynamic behavior across speakers. Given that the factors giving rise to CS vary from one country to another, as well as from one person to another, CS is found to be a speaker-dependent behavior, where the frequency by which the foreign language is embedded differs across speakers. While several researchers have looked into predicting CS behavior from a linguistic point of view, research is still lacking in the task of predicting the user CS behavior from sociological and psychological perspectives. We provide an empirical user study, where we investigate the correlations between users’ CS levels and character traits. We conduct interviews with bilinguals and gather information on their profiles, including their demographics, personality traits, and traveling experiences. We then use machine learning (ML) to predict users’ CS levels based on their profiles, where we identify the main influential factors in the modeling process. We experiment with both classification as well as regression tasks. Our results show that the CS behavior is affected by the relation between speakers, travel experiences, as well as Neuroticism and Extraversion personality traits.