Language Behaviors Signifying Lecturers’ Social Identity in the Business English Teaching Context

The present study aims to investigate the socio- and applied linguistic functions and frequency of lecturers’ language behaviors (code-switching (CS), code-mixing (CM), and translanguaging) in terms of showing lecturers’ social identity in the Georgian educational discourse, namely, in teaching Business English (English for Specific Purposes - ESP) at the university level. An examination of Georgian discursive peculiarities is a novel addition to this field of research, as there are very few studies focusing on Georgian lecturers’ language behaviors in English for Specific Purposes (ESP). Both quantitative (online questionnaires (70 students) and qualitative (8 lecturers’ recorded lectures) research methods are used to illustrate the functions of using code-switching, code-mixing, and translanguaging in English for Specific Purposes (ESP) (lecturers’ recorded lessons (80 hours). Surprisingly, in contrast to previous studies’ findings, we found that the Georgian and English languages are equally used for informal and formal purposes. Both languages are used to express solidarity in classroom conversations. The given study is a unique example in which both English and Georgian are used as marked/unmarked (“We-code”, “They-code”) choices, as previous studies only considered L1 (first language) as “we-code” and a foreign language (English) was regarded solely as “they code.” Within 80 hours of recordings (ESP), 549 cases of code-switching, 103 cases of code-mixing, and 177 cases of translanguaging, planned use of L1 (Georgian) were detected in teaching vocabulary. Consequently, using translanguaging can be beneficial to business English lecturers seeking to improve and fossilize students’ business terminology in Georgian. The business English lecturers consider the English language to be an inseparable part of their identity, however, they still incorporate the mother tongue in their lectures for encouraging the enhancement of the Business terminology in the Georgian language.