Oldal 119 [119]
ANALYSIS
ANALYSIS
A similar portion (5 pages, written in 12-point, Times New Roman, double¬
spaced, approximately 7,200 characters with spaces or 1,100 words) of the
transcript has been taken from each participant’s interview. When selecting
the text to be analyzed, the middle part of the interview as well as the one
toward its end have been preferred. By the middle of the interview, subjects
became comfortable with the interview situation and were open to speak about
their immigrant experience. Toward the end of the interview, they became even
more relaxed and some spontaneous conversations about varied topics started.
As we were interested in subjects’ spontaneous code-switching practices, their
most possibly spontaneous language use and unconscious linguistic choices
were of particular interest to us.
All instances of code-switching from the similar portion of text have been
counted, and then analyzed qualitatively and quantitatively.
The aim of the qualitative analysis is to demonstrate that the community
specific ranking of the sociopragmatic constraints of the optimality bilingual
grammar proposed by Bolonyai and Bhatt?” can be applied for analyzing
the Hungarian-American bilingual community’s code-switching patterns in
North Carolina. For the discussion of the community specific ranking of the
Optimality Theory, only the socio-pragmatically meaningful instances of code¬
switching — which can be interpreted as serving a particular sociopragmatic
function in light of the given context — have been considered. Code-switched
instances prompted by a lack of appropriate Hungarian competence have
been excluded from the scope of my examination. As G2 speakers’ Hungarian
competence is considerably weaker than their G1 fellows’, their code-switching
patterns have not been analyzed.
Sociopragmatically meaningful instances of code-switches have been
classified into five categories fulfilling functions related to PERSPECTIVE,
FAITH, SOLIDARITY, FACE, and POWER (Chapter 4). These five functions are
part of a comprehensive classification including all sociopragmatic functions
attributed to code-switching in previous studies. The five-fold classification is,
hence, based on the thorough research of relevant literature on code-switching
(see Appendix 1).
The instances of code-switches fulfilling one or more of the five functions
have been analyzed and quantified (Chapter 7). The results have been classified
in tables. According to premise of the Optimality Theory for analyzing
bilingual grammar, the functions that code-switched instances fulfill also
compete with each other in a community-specific ranking of constraints.
272 Bhatt — Bolonyai, Code-switching and the optimal grammar of bilingual use, Bilingualism:
Language and Cognition, 522-546
* 117 +