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CHAPTER 7 FINDINGS
The metalinguistic function of code-switching can be observed when
“comments are made directly or indirectly about the languages involved”*™.
In this utterance, the speaker makes a comment on her own code-switching
strategies. She explains why she sometimes code-switches to English from
Hungarian. She explains that one reason for her code-switching to English
is linguistic economy, that is, she switches to English when the English word
seems more ‘economical’ because it is shorter than its Hungarian equivalent.
To illustrate her explanation, she cites the English word, trunk, as the shorter
equivalent of the Hungarian ‘csomagtartd’. The switch to English, hence, serves
as a metalinguistic comment, a linguistic illustration to reinforce the point
about her code-switching tendencies.
(m) Identity
Example [40]
1 G1F51,80 “.. ott sziilettiink, ott nevelkedtiink, de we are Americans.”
(... we were born there, we grew up there, but we are Americans.)
(source: data collected by Kovács in 2008—2009)
De Fina claims that “among the strategies that have the greatest role in indexing
ethnicity, language use appears to be the most important”*”. The extract above
shows how code-switching functions as the most economically and readily
available discursive device of expressing identity. In this utterance, the speaker
talks about her life, and she says that although she was born and grew up in
Hungary, now she feels that she is an America. She begins her utterance in
Hungarian, then she switches to English to say that they (together with her
husband) are now Americans. The switch to English, therefore, accentuates
the force of the statement that despite her Hungarian roots, now she identifies
herself as an American.
(n) Clarification
Example [41]
1 GIF51,79 “*... mindig ott gyakoroltunk abban a gimnäziumban, abban
a high
2 schoolban, ahol ő tanított, és nagyon sok szép emlék fűz
hozzá,
305 John Karras, Greek-English code-switching, Calgary Working Papers in Linguistics, 17 (1995),
59
306 De Fina, Code-switching and the construction of ethnic identity, Language in Society, 379
* 164 +