An Overview of Tag Switching in Radio and YouTube Advertisements

Tag switching, though the least commonly used type of code-switching also occurs in advertising engagements which has its uniqueness and utilitarian qualities in contributing to the successful transfer of information about advertised products and services. The objective of this study is to identify the unmarked and marked nature of instances of tag switching, describe the patterns of the tag switched expressions, interpret their functions and highlight the aesthetic features in the tag switched expressions in the selected Radio and YouTube advertisement jingles. The primary source of data was drawn from 60 code-switched advertisement jingles collected from 30 radio commercials and 30 online advertisements on YouTube through purposive random sampling technique. The 30 radio jingles were collected from 12 radio stations in the Southwestern states in Nigeria which are Osun, Oyo, Ondo, Ogun, Ekiti and Lagos. In each of the states, a private radio station and a public radio station were selected. The result showed that the tag-switched expressions are either marked or unmarked because of some specific reasons and they have three (3) patterns of occurrence which are English-Yorùbá Tag switching (EYTs), Yorùbá-English Tag switching (YETs) and Naija-Yorùbá Tag switching (NYTs). Also, the tag-switched expressions perform both the Expressive and Phatic functions and contain two (2) aesthetic features which are alliteration and simile. These all help in enhancing an effective transmission of the information about the advertisement products and services to the listeners. Therefore, it is recommended that tag switching should also be considered useful in advertisement campaigns and be used by advertisers in the conveyance of messages to listeners especially in bi/multilingual societies.