Oldal 31 [31]
OCR
LOCAL VS. GLOBAL APPROACHES Auer claims that as a speech community is heterogeneous by definition, there are no rigid regulations, so the linguistic choice is open to the individuals negotiation “throughout an interactive episode”*’. Therefore, the local analysis of linguistic choices in a given utterance should be at the center of analysis. In contrast, Myers-Scotton’s Markedness Model™ relies on the assumption that there is a normative basis in each speech community. On the basis of that, “members of the same speech community interpret the same interaction as communicating more or less the same social intention”**. Therefore, the interpretation of local instances should be based on global “societal norms” and “community patterns” rather than on individual conversation units™. As an alternative to the on-going discussion of the two main theoretical approaches to code-switching, some researchers placed the bilingual individual and the inherent idiosyncratic psycho- and sociolinguistic characteristics of their linguistic repertoire at the center of their focus. Zentella claims that the factors triggering code-switching can be classified as “on the spot” (depending on the topic, on the psychological setting, and on the audience), “in the head” (psycholinguistic), and “out of the mouth” (discourse-related: phonological and syntactic) factors®*. She concludes that as a consequence of these factors, in bilingual communication, the three most important functions of codeswitching are “footing”, “clarification”, and “crutching”**. Adopting Goffman’s concept of footing that “a change in footing implies a change in the alignment we take up ourselves and others present”’”, Zentella claims that code-switching serves the function of “footing” when speakers switch to another language with the intention of “underscoring or highlighting the realignment they intended” or to “control their interlocutor’s behavior””®. In other words, speakers codeswitch to shift their narrative roles or to check for the interlocutor’s approval, attention, and comprehension. Code-switching may also function as a means of clarification. Instead of the monolingual speech strategy to repeat utterances louder or slower to clarify their meaning, bilinguals rely on the act of code-switching. They switch to the literal translation of an utterance to convey its most authentic meaning. Contrary to footing and clarification, some code-switched utterances serve no purposeful communicative meaning, they are rather prompted by the speaker’s momentary loss of word or by the previous speaker’s switch. These “involuntary” code-switches are categorized by Zentella as “crutches”. Auer, A conversation analytic approach to code-switching and transfer, 190 Myers-Scotton, Social Motivations for Code-switching 53 Myers-Scotton, Ibid., 61 54 Myers-Scotton, Ibid., 109 Zentella, Ta bien, you could answer me en cualquier idioma, 109-132 Zentella, Growing Up Bilingual 57 Erving Goffman, Footing, Semiotica, 25 (1-2) (1979), 29, 5 58 Zentella, Growing Up Bilingual, 93 + 29 +
