Oldal 35 [35]
NEW PERSPECTIVES
By setting rationality as its centerpiece, the Rational Choice model gives
the possibility of a more individually tailored and local interpretation of the
meaning of code-switching than the markedness model. However, among the
filters it sets to linguistic choices, not only individual but large scale societal
or external factors (first filter) are also listed. Markedness also remains
a significant internal constraint (second filter) to linguistic choices, but
rationality newly emerges as a third filter.
In defining rationality, the Rational Choice model claims that acting
rationally means that "speakers take account of their own beliefs, values, and
goals, and that they assess these in regard to internal consistency and available
evidence””’. The model claims that evidence is everything that “can be seen or
heard and stored as intuitions, frames, rights and obligations sets, certainly
as norms, and even as somatic markers”®®. In line with this definition, the
concept of evidence, therefore, involves both external (“norms”) and internal
constraints (“somatic markers”), belonging to the group of first and second
filter. As such, the concept of evidence seems too broadly defined, and it is not
clear how the third filter, rationality relates to it.
Even though its concept of evidence seems to be too broadly defined, the
Rational Choice model sets up a normative framework that enables the complex
interpretation of linguistic choices of individuals influenced by external
(societal and discourse-related) and by internal (markedness metric, somatic
markers) constraints as well as by rationality. Although the Rational Choice
model is too abstract, it attempts to unify the individual, the community¬
based, the conversation-based descriptive, and the sociolinguistic normative
models into a comprehensive one.
NEW PERSPECTIVES
As I have pointed out above, in the quest for a unified understanding of the
meaning of code-switched instances, some recurring patterns have emerged
as belonging to the fundamentally conversational analytical or sociocultural
normative frameworks.
Relying on various approaches, researchers take different stances on how
the meaning of code-switching can be interpreted. Wei, for example, criticizes
the Rational Choice model from the perspective of the Conversation Analysis
framework, for making too many assumptions about the speakers’ rationality
and other extra-interactional factors instead of focusing on the locally relevant
instances of code-switching®!. He does not reject, though, the notion that there
7% Myers-Scotton — Bolonyai, Ibid., 22
80 Myers-Scotton — Bolonyai, Ibid., 22
8. Wei, “How can you tell?”, Journal of Pragmatics, 375-389
+ 33 +