A socio-pragmatic Approach to the use of Code-switching by Tunisian Merchants as a Persuasive Strategy in Craft Industry: Djerba as a Case Study

Code-switching (CS) has become a ubiquitous phenomenon marking social group’s linguistic behaviour and Tunisia is not an exception as Tunisians tend to alternate between more than two codes (Tunisian Arabic, French, English…). The literature on CS practice in different bilingual communities and contexts is wide. Yet, a few studies have been conducted in the craft industry sector in Tunisia. Moreover, there is a relative dearth of studies on how CS may be used strategicallyas a persuasive power by merchants in craft industry.Most of the studies on the persuasive function of CS have been conducted within advertising context. Henceforth, this study attempts to investigate CS behaviour among merchants in the craft industry sector in Djerba, Tunisia. It particularly aims to find out whether or not CS is deployed by merchants strategically for the purpose of persuasion. 30 merchants participated in this study. To this end, a mixed method approach was adopted based on quantitative and qualitative analysis. The quantitative approach is based on the use of a questionnaire delivered to merchants to find out whether or not merchants employ CS strategically for the purpose of persuasion. As for the qualitative methodology, it consists in the analysis of 10 samples of recorded conversations held between merchants and Arab as well as Western tourists, applying Myers-Scotton’s (1993) Markedness Model which aims to determine whether or not merchants use CS as a marked choice (deliberate, strategic) for the purpose of persuasion. The results of the quantitative and qualitative study showed that the strategic use of CS is mainly employed with Western tourists, whereas with Arabs it is mostly displayed unconsciously (with no hidden intention), especially with Tunisians mostly constrained by the lack of technical words in Tunisian Arabic (TA). Overall, the findings of this study indicated that the persuasive function of CS depends on the nationality of the customer involved in the interaction. This suggests that merchants calculate their code choice based on the nationality of the tourist. Hence, this study could be seen as a small contribution to understanding Tunisian merchants’ linguistic behaviour in the craft industry sector.It hasvaluable significance in sociolinguistic and marketing research in that it provided consumer researchers as well as marketers with an awareness of the persuasive power of CS practice in the Tunisian craft industry sector.