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AN OPTIMALITY THEORETICAL ANALYSIS OF HUNGARIAN-AMERICAN BILINGUAL USE
(‘It depends on the environment, you know, for example, if, I already
have a plan for this, in January when I go to Hungary, I will look for the
Baptist church in Budapest where I will get to know, probably there will be
Americans too, so, this way, this way I can hang out with the Americans.’)
(source: data collected by Kovacs in 2008-2009)
In this utterance, the speaker talks about his intentions to visit Hungary
in January. In the fifth line of this passage, when he mentions that while in
Hungary he wants to visit a Baptist church so that he could meet, hang out
with some Americans, he switches to English. The purpose of this switch is
to index that when he is Hungary, he hangs out with Americans as someone
belonging to them. He therefore takes on the position of an American visiting
Hungary and expresses this position by switching to English.
(d) Contrasting
Example [31]
1 [1 (Interviewer 1) “Tudsz példat mondani? Gyereknevelésben, vagy az
iskolában mi a különbség?"
(Can you come up with some examples? What are the main differences (in
Hungary and the USA) in terms of bringing up children or in the school?’)
3 GI1F16,40 "Nálunk meg nem csak a have fun, hanem hát valamit
tanuljon is a
4 gyerek, meg fejlődjön, meg erősödjön meg ilyenek."
(‘Back (in Hungary), however, not only to have fun, but the children, well,
have to learn something, to make progress, to get stronger, and things like
that.’)
(source: data collected by Kovacs in 2008-2009)
Code-switching enables the speaker to “contrast an initial [...] point with
a subsequent one”*”!, In this utterance, the speaker contrasts the standard
requirements of the school system in the USA to those of the Hungarian one.
According to her, the main difference between the two systems lies in the
fact that in the USA, she claims, the school is about having fun, as opposed to
Hungary, where the children have to learn “valamit” (‘something’) seriously
and to improve and make progress. By placing “csak” (‘only’) acting as a
restrictive modifier of the subsequent noun, the speaker already makes an
evaluation that the American school system is not as good as the Hungarian
one as it is only about having fun. When setting in contrast the American
301 Gardner-Chloros — Charles — Cheshire, Parallel patterns?, Journal of Pragmatics, 1332