Code-switching as a pragmatic strategy in multilingual classrooms: implications for meaning negotiation and learning

This study reconceptualizes code-switching as a pragmatic and interactional resource in multilingual Nigerian secondary school classrooms, foregrounding its role in meaning negotiation and learning. Anchored in Interactional Sociolinguistics, the study examines how language alternation functions as a contextualization cue through which teachers and students jointly construct understanding in classroom interaction. Drawing on naturally occurring classroom discourse and teacher – student interviews from English – Igbo and English – Yoruba instructional settings, the analysis demonstrates that code-switching is strategically deployed to clarify subject-specific concepts, frame pedagogical intent, manage participation, and foster inclusive engagement across science, civic education, and history lessons. Rather than treating code-switching as a compensatory or peripheral practice, the findings show that it operates as a systematic communicative strategy embedded in the organization of classroom talk. By highlighting the interactional meanings of language alternation, the study challenges monolingual pedagogical assumptions and underscores the legitimacy of learners’ multilingual repertoires in academic spaces. The study contributes to discourse-pragmatic scholarship by providing empirically grounded insights into classroom interaction in underexplored postcolonial contexts and advances arguments for context-responsive multilingual pedagogies in Nigerian education.