Code switching and code mixing in Bulgarian-Turkish bilingual individuals

Bilingualism is one of the concepts studied within the context of sociolinguistics and is a significant phenomenon observed in at least half of the world population today. Bilingual individuals can be defined as those who have proficient mastery of two different languages. The most noticeable and significant linguistic phenomena observed in bilingual individuals are code switching and code mixing, and these emerge as a result of the combined use of two separate codes in a discourse context. The switches in the form of switching from one language to another at the sentence or clause level are called code-switching; the use of an affix, word or phrase within the same sentence in the other language, on the other hand, is called code-mixing. In this study, the code-switching and code-mixing mechanisms used in the daily conversations of bilingual Bulgarian Turks were examined; it was investigated which communicative functions these phenomena performed and which of these functions were preferred more frequently by the language users. In an attempt to answer the above-mentioned research questions, voice recordings of bilingual Bulgarian Turks were taken, translated into transcription and the requisite analyzes were made. In conclusion, it was found that the Bulgarian Turks performed code-switching with 11 functions and code-mixing for 7 functions in their daily conversations, and the code-switching in speech was more frequent than code-mixing both quantitatively and funtionally. Keywords: Code-Switching, Code-Mixing, Sociolinguistics, Bilingualism, Bulgarian-Turkish Bilingual Individuals.