Page 67 [67]
OPTIMALITY THEORY IN ANALYZING BILINGUAL USE
maximize the intended socio-pragmatic effect, by making more prominent
the new message or altering the old message of an utterance. The example
comes from the data collected in a Sikh Punjabi community in West London
by Gardner-Chloros et al.’”*. In the extract, the speaker is recalling a funny
episode when a friend was so tired that she fell asleep at the airport.
Example [13]
(Context: talking about waiting with a friend during an overnight delay at
an airport)
1 A“... and she was sleeping all over the place, so I had to stay awake
2 digdthi-firdthi si everywhere, so I had to stay awake”
[falling around she was]
(she was falling around everywhere, so I had to stay awake’)
(cited by Bhatt and Bolonyai)’”
According to Bolonyai and Bhatt’s interpretation, the code-switch in line
2 demonstrates how the switch to Punjabi in the predominantly English
utterance — by complying with the constraint of Perspective — “lends emphasis
to the point of the story in a way that goes beyond the original statement”1#.
The switch to Punjabi, which is the verbatim repetition of the English sentence,
though more expressive than the English utterance does not add to, modify
or alter the original content of the English utterance. The switch to Punjabi
enables the speaker, by contrasting the Punjabi form of the utterance to the
surrounding English text, to give more emphasis to it. The code-switched
instance fulfils the discourse-related function of repetition more efficiently
than the monolingual candidate as it highlights a particular, the funniest
aspect of the story, without simply repeating it, without making it sound
redundant.
In this section, we have demonstrated how the five principles set by Bhatt
and Bolonyai function as universal constraints. Bhatt and Bolonyai use the
embracing term of ‘principle’ to include the functions that the successful
linguistic input has to fulfill to become the output representation activated
by the socio-pragmatic needs of the utterance. The principles, however, also
act as constraints as they filter the inputs and eventually set the rules of well¬
formedness in bilingual grammar.
78 Gardner-Chloros - Charles - Cheshire, Parallel patterns?, Journal of Pragmatics, 1319
” Bhatt - Bolonyai, Code-switching and the optimal grammar of bilingual use, Bilingualism:
Language and Cognition, 535
189 Bhatt — Bolonyai, Ibid., 535