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CHAPTER 3 LITERATURE REVIEW INTERACTIONAL SOCIOLINGUISTICS Blom and Gumperz?? defined code-switching as fulfilling situational or metaphorical functions. According to their definition, code-switching either takes place in a certain situation or at a specific social event in which codeswitching is the expected language choice (situational switching), or it is used to refer to a certain social event, topic or subject matter even though there is no relevant situation for it (metaphorical switching). Hence, Blom and Gumperz” assume a direct relationship between a social event or a topic and a code or a language choice. However, they pointed out that even though codeswitching can be interpreted in the wider social context, the relation between a code, a topic and a social event evolves dynamically, so no rigid one-to-one relationship can be assumed between them’. Later, in an attempt to clarify the complexity of the interpretability of language use in given situations, Gumperz called for such a conversational study of code-switching which “might bridge the gap between macro- and micro-analysis by providing insights into the functioning of broader social concepts in interpersonal relations.”*. Therefore, he added the conversational function to the repertoire of code-switching functions to provide the means of interpreting code-switching in a given linguistic context. He emphasized that code-switching is a “conversational contextualization cue” fulfilling such discourse related functions as “quotations, addressee specification, interjections, reiterations, message qualification, and personalization vs. objectivization””. Gumperz claimed that the contextualization cues help to reconstruct the wider social reality, and code-switching, as one of those cues, reflects “the underlying unverbalized assumptions about social categories”’*. Therefore, code-switching as a contextualization cue helps to interpret the wider social context. However, the issue of how such an interpretation can be achieved has not been elaborated by Gumperz and triggered further discussions. THE SOCIOCULTURAL APPROACH In explaining the nature of linguistic choices, the sociocultural approach places the greatest emphasis on the objective, essentialist social world as the code-switching, 156-176; Wei, “How can you tell?”, Journal of Pragmatics, 375-389; Gafaranga, Demythologizing language alternation studies, Journal of Pragmatics, 281-300 Blom — Gumperz, Social meaning in linguistic structure, 407-434 24 Blom — Gumperz, Ibid., 407-434 25 Blom — Gumperz, Ibid., 421 Gumperz, Discourse Strategies, 99 7 Gumperz, Ibid., 61 28 Gumperz, Ibid., 99 + 29e
