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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 extrainteractional 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 25°
