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Towards an understanding of the use of English and Malay in Malaysian-Tamil Hip-Hop songs

ABSTRACT This article describes and investigates the phenomenon of code-switching in Malaysian-Tamil Hip-Hop songs, which are often trilingual. Apart from the Tamil language, these songs also contain Bahasa Malay and English, reflecting the linguistic landscape and repertoire of the Malaysian-Tamils. While the bulk of the research on code-switching is limited to the spoken word in bilingual communities, there has been very little research on both the Hip-Hop genre and trilingual communities. This paper argues that in the case of Malaysian-Tamil hip hop songs, while English is often used in these songs to signal genre and fulfil a lexical gap, the Malay language goes beyond merely fulfilling a lexical gap as it allows for the localisation of the Malaysian-Tamil music, adding uniqueness to it. In other words, there is both a local, regional, and transnational dimension to these songs, reflecting the complex hybrid reference points for Tamil speaking youth in Malaysia.