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CHAPTER 3 LITERATURE REVIEW
of instances of code-switching, and it does not make assumptions about a
socially constructed extra-conversational context in which these instances can
be interpreted. As such, it strengthens the fundamentally linguistic, discourse
analytical approach to the meaning-making functions of code-switching.
Hence, by not assuming that an extra-conversational, socially constructed
wider context exists per se in which the instances of code-switching become
actually meaningful, it fails to explain how code-switching acts for the actual
speakers as a social means of negotiating the different extra-conversational
social realities of different speech communities.
We have seen above that the various approaches to the interpretability of
meaningful instances of code-switching can be positioned along the continuum
of the (re)constructed and essentialist language reflects society continuum.
These different approaches are posited on this theoretical continuum tilted
towards one of its two extremes, with one claiming that the meaning of code¬
switching can be attributed to extra-contextual/interactional social structural
evidence and the other claiming that it can be attributed to intra-contextually/
interactionally constructed social reality. In recent theoretical approaches
there have been attempts to narrow the gap between these different approaches
and to provide a more unified approach to the interpretation of the meaning
of code-switching.
LOCAL VS. GLOBAL APPROACHES
In addition to the debate whether the meaning of code-switching can be
assumed relying on extra-interactional factors or it should be demonstrated in
the interaction proper, there has been a discussion of whether code-switching
as a choice lies more with the individual constrained by the dynamics of
specific interactive episodes” or constrained more by a community’s linguistic
repertoire”.
® Auer, Bilingual Conversation; René Appel — Pieter Muysken, Language Contact and
Bilingualism, New York, Edward Arnold, 1987; Ana Celia Zentella, Ta bien, you could answer
me en cualquier idioma, Puerto Rican codeswitching in bilingual classrooms, in Richard
Duran (ed.), Latino Language and Communicative Behavior, Norwood, N.J., Ablex Publishing
Corporation, 1981, 109-132; Zentella, Growing Up Bilingual
Myers-Scotton, Social Motivations for Code-switching; Myers-Scotton, A theoretical
introduction to the Markedness Model, 18-38; Myers-Scotton — Bolonyai, Calculating
speakers: code-switching in a rational choice model, Language in Society, 1-28; Anna De
Fina, Code-switching and the construction of ethnic identity, Language in Society, 36 (3)
(2007), 371-392; Bhatt — Bolonyai, Code-switching and the optimal grammar of bilingual
use, Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 2011, 522-546
+ 28 +