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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 communitybased, 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 +
