Oldal 27 [27]
THE MARKEDNESS MODEL
As speakers are supposed to “exploit the possibility of linguistic choices in
order to convey intentional meaning of a sociopragmatic nature”*’, they make
linguistic choices which can be interpreted as such by the other participants
of a speech event. The linguistic choices are interpreted by speakers in a
given community who “interpret the same interaction as communicating
more or less the same social intention”**. As all speakers operate their own
“degrees of markedness”*’, on the basis of which they make linguistic (marked
or unmarked) choices, this markedness model is claimed to be universal.
However, as these choices are determined by the speakers’ motivations to
negotiate their positions in a given situation against their sets of rights and
obligations”, there is a normative basis on which this set relies. As the salience
of certain factors determining the interpretability of linguistic choices varies
in different communities, the normative basis is not universal but rather
community-specific.
Conversely, the rights and obligations along which marked and unmarked
choices can be defined and interpreted are determined by an array of linguistic
(interactional) and extra-interactional factors. Therefore, when interpreting
the meaning of language choices of speakers, linguistic as well as extra¬
interactional factors such as the sociolinguistic variables of the examined
speech communities, situational factors, and the sociopragmatic values and
norms of the particular code-switched languages have to be considered.
The Markedness Model claims that, with the help of code-switching,
speakers intentionally convey a sociopragmatic meaning relevant to the other
participants of a speech act interpretable in the context of the set of rights
and obligations defined by a particular, extra-linguistic, sociocultural reality.
Opponents of this model, however, question how much meaning and intention
can actually be ascribed to code-switching per se. According to Stroud”, as
there is no universal and objective way of evaluating the actual intended
meaning of the speaker and the meaning perceived by their interlocutor(s),
the analyst should not assume any extra-linguistic social reality, but should
rather demonstrate how meaning and intention is constructed at the (con)
textual level of a particular interaction, and then how it can be interpreted in
its interactional social reality.
The Markedness Model has been under criticism for assuming a normative
set of rights and obligations given a priori in a given speech community.
However, its basic assumption that code-switching has an actual socially
meaningful value has been widely accepted. The main conclusion of this
37 Myers-Scotton, Ibid., 57
38 Myers-Scotton, Ibid., 61
Myers-Scotton, Code-switching as indexal of social negotiations, 155
10 Myers-Scotton, Ibid., 180
“| Stroud, The problem of intention and meaning in code-switching, Text, 131
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