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OCR
OPTIMALITY THEORY IN ANALYZING BILINGUAL USE The switch to Hindi from English is an example of fulfilling the constraint of Faith. However, the switch to Hindi from English, to the language of shared ethnicity and socio-cultural heritage from the official language, the language of power and prestige, complies with Solidarity but violates Power. The relation of Faith and Power is of interest to us, though. Tableau 3: Interaction of FAITH and POWER (FAITH >> POWER) Candidates FAITH PERSPECTIVE FACE | POWER SOLIDARITY — (a) “The saat pheras (‘seven circumnavigations’) around * the agni (‘fire’) serves asa lakshman rekha” (b) ‘The seven circumnavigations around the fire | *! * serve as a line (one does not crosses)’. As the intended socio-pragmatic meaning of the utterance is to express most authentically and economically the cultural notion entrenched in Hindi culture, the code-switch to Hindi fulfils this function of Faith more optimally than the monolingual English candidate. The switch to Hindi, therefore, complies with the constraint of Faith, while the English monolingual one violates it. With a view to the constraint of Faith, the code-switched instance is a more optimal choice than its monolingual counterpart. The switch to Hindi activates two other constraints as well. The switch to Hindi, to the language of shared cultural heritage, complies with Solidarity, but violates Power. The monolingual English candidate, though, would comply with the constraint of Power, as English is the official language, the language of power and authority, but it would violate Solidarity. The switch to Hindi, hence, complies with Faith and Solidarity but violates Power. As the actual surface representation is the code-switched candidate, and violating the higher ranked constraint in the relevant interrelation of candidates renders the surface representation of the given candidate impossible, the constraint of Faith must be a more dominant constraint in terms of optimality than the constraint of Power. It is important to note that + 69 +
