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CHAPTER 2 —o> — RESEARCH QUESTIONS This particular study focuses on the applicability of Bhatt and Bolonyai’s Optimality Theory framework for the analysis of bilingual use of the Hungarian-American immigrant community living in North Carolina, USA". More particularly, it focuses on what sociopragmatic functions the instances of code-switches fulfill, and how they are governed by the bilingual community grammar shared by the examined community. In addition to the qualitative analysis of the mechanism of code-switching and that of the sociopragmatic functions fulfilled by it, the study also aims to provide a sociolinguistic analysis — based on qualitative data — of the examined community to highlight those characteristics along which the community can be defined, and which make this particular community susceptible to the specific bilingual community grammar determining the ranking of socio-cognitive constraints proposed by Bhatt and Bolonyai™. Bhatt and Bolonyai claim that the sociocognitive meaning-making mechanism of code-switching is determined by conflicts between linguistic candidates competing to fulfill the most optimally a given sociopragmatic function required by the linguistic situation". Relying on the premise of Optimality Theory in bilingual use, this study aims to provide evidence of how the optimal sociopragmatic function instantiated by a particular situation is realized by the successful linguistic candidate competing for surface representation. The study aims to examine how sociopragmatic optimality is maximized by the act of code-switching and which other sociopragmatic functions activated in the linguistic situation have been overridden by the successful linguistic candidate. Representing the sociopragmatic functions (classified as principles) fulfilled by the successful candidate and the other ones activated in a linguistic situation but overridden or fulfilled by the successful candidate in algorithmic 1! Bhatt - Bolonyai, Ibid., 522-546 2 Bhatt - Bolonyai, Ibid., 522-546 13 Bhatt - Bolonyai, Ibid., 522-546 + ]7 +
