Page 36 [36]
CHAPTER 3 LITERATURE REVIEW
are rights and obligations determining language choices, but these should
be explored in the framework of Conversation Analysis. He calls for a dual
approach which would unify the Conversation Analysis and Rational Choice
models in order to help understand the complexity of code-switching??.
In line with Wei’s call for a dual approach®, among the CA theorists we can
see two main new perspectives. Parallel to the emergence of the neo-Hymesian
linguistic ethnography™ and the anti-universalist ethnopragmatics® in the
field of functional code-switching research, there have been attempts to give
a comprehensive, universal, and bottom-up approach to code-switching based
on the (ethno)cultural examination of a specific speech community.
Ethnopragmatics is gaining momentum, and it tilts more towards the
essentialist, ethnologically determined approach to the meaning of language
choices. Wierzbicka’s concept of cultural scripts opens up a new dimension
in the interpretation of code-switching. It claims that cultures have different
scripts, different shared understandings of reality, and one concept of reality
could be totally lacking in another script. Therefore, the linguistic means of
expressing those concepts are also lacking. However, as bilinguals have access
to two linguistic realities, two ways of approaching and interpreting reality,
they rely on code-switching as a way of filling conceptual gaps inherent in one
language by switching to another.
In the same vein, Pavlenko claims that different cultures have different
emotional scripts®”. Therefore, the array of a linguistic means for the
expression of certain emotions may not overlap in different cultures, and it
could explain why bilinguals switch from one language to another to express
certain emotions.
Chan sees code-switching as a textualization cue, expressing pragmatic
motivations®®. He claims that the act of code-switching “prompts the listener
to interpret the forthcoming message somewhat differently, but it does not
necessarily “signal” or “index” some contextual presuppositions”®’. Therefore,
52 Wei, Ibid., 375-389
53 Wei, Ibid., 375-389
Ben Rampton, Neo-Hymesian linguistic ethnography in the UK, Journal of Sociolinguistics,
11(5) (2007), 584-607
Cliff Goddard, Ethnopragmatics: anew paradigm, in: Cliff Goddard (ed.), Ethnopragmatics:
Understanding Discourse in Cultural Context, Berlin, New York, Mouton de Gruyter, 2006,
1-30
Anna Wierzbicka, Emotion, language and ‘cultural scripts’, in: Shinobu Kitayama and Hazel
Rose Markus (eds.), Emotion and Culture: Empirical Studies of Mutual Influence, Washing¬
ton, American Psychological Association, 1994, 130-198; Anna Wierzbicka, English: Meaning
and Culture, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006
Aneta Pavlenko, Emotions and Multiculturalism, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press,
2005
Brian Chan, Beyond “contextualization”: code-switching as a textualization cue, Journal of
Language and Social Psychology, 23 (7) (2004), 7-27
Chan, Beyond “contextualization”, Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 16-17
+34»