Effects of written code-mixing on processing fluency and perceptions of organizational inclusiveness

Participants read English-based online texts from fictional organizations that either included no code-mixing, Hawaiian words without glosses (i.e., parenthetical translations), or Hawaiian words with English glosses. Relative to no code-mixing, code-mixing without glosses disrupted processing fluency, leading participants to feel less welcome in the organization. Code-mixing with glosses did not disrupt fluency for participants from Hawai‘i, where this practice is common, but did for people from elsewhere. No differences in feeling welcome emerged between code-mixing with glosses and no code-mixing conditions. These results suggest that code-mixing in written organizational materials can have both costs (i.e., disrupted fluency) and benefits (i.e., cueing inclusiveness), and that these effects depend on audiences’ familiarity with code-mixing as a practice, and the format of code-mixing.