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OPTIMALITY THEORY IN ANALYZING BILINGUAL USE mechanism of the switched codes, the model can be adopted to describing the structural interaction of any language pair(s) participating in the process of code-switching. OPTIMALITY THEORY IN ANALYZING BILINGUAL USE: A SOCIO-COGNITIVE MODEL OF CODE-SWITCHING Relying on Optimality Iheory, Bhatt and Bolonyais model is an attempt at describing the socio-cognitive regularities in the meaning-making mechanisms of code-switching. Claimed to be universally applicable in any bi- or multilingual speech community, Optimality Iheory in analyzing bilingual use is a framework which aims to demonstrate how the socio-cognitive constraints of code-switching, in interaction with each other, filter the linguistic inputs to finally select the output indexing or constructing the optimal socio-pragmatic meaning and/or fulfilling the appropriate socio-pragmatic function in a given utterance. Relying on the thorough and comprehensive overview of previous literature on code-switching, pragmatics, and conversation analysis, Bhatt and Bolonyai set up five constraints, of which interaction, the optimal sociocognitive meaning of code-switching is created, indexed, and decoded in a given linguistic utterance. Ihese universal optimality filtering constraints are as follows: the Principle of Interpretive Faithfulness (FAITH); the Principle of Symbolic Domination (POWER); the Principle of Social Concurrence (SOLIDARITY); the Principle of Face Management (FACE); the Principle of Perspective Taking (PERSPECTIVE). The premises of Bhatt and Bolonyai’s framework can be enumerated as follows!”: (a) Optimality Theory for bilingual use is a socio-cognitive framework, aiming to describe the socio-cognitive meaning-making process of codeswitching in a universally applicable community framework. (b) It claims that there is a universal bilingual grammar that sets up, generates and evaluates violable socio-cognitive constraints that determine the actual surface representation of the competing monolingual and code-switched candidates. (c) The community-specific framework of OT relies on the algorithmic representation of code-switched outputs, surface realizations, and is backed by the knowledge of socio-cultural characteristics of the examined 106 Bhatt — Bolonyai, Code-switching and the optimal grammar of bilingual use, Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 524-525 107 Bhatt — Bolonyai, Ibid., 522-546 43 ¢
