Page 167 [167]
AN OPTIMALITY THEORETICAL ANALYSIS OF HUNGARIAN-AMERICAN BILINGUAL USE
3 ehhez a...”
(... we would always have the rehearsals in that high school, in that high
school, where she was teaching and I had a lot of nice memories of this ...’)
(source: data collected by Kovacs in 2008-2009)
In this utterance, the speaker recalls some experience related to a Hungarian¬
American folk dance group in which she participated. She recalls the high
school where they held their rehearsals. In the first line of her utterance,
though, she switches to English. When remembering the venue of the dance
classes first she refers to it in Hungarian, then she switches to English to clarify
it. The Hungarian term, “gimnazium”, which is the cultural translation of ‘high
school’ does not have the same socio-cultural connotation as high school due
to the underlying differences in the American and Hungarian educational
systems. In Hungarian, "gimnázium?" is a specific secondary grammar school
while the English term "high school! is a collective term of secondary schools
in the USA. Therefore, the Hungarian term, gimnázium would not convey the
most appropriate meaning of the intended locution. Moreover, the switch to
English places the utterance in the appropriate, the American, physical setting.
Therefore, by switching to English, whose primary function is clarification,
the speaker fulfils two additional sociopragmatic functions: she contextualizes
the physical setting (Perspective-related function) and also specifies the socio¬
cultural notion of the ‘high school’ term (Faith-related function).
(o) Reiteration
Example [42]
1 GI1M52,70“.. és hat elmentem a vécére, és mielőtt ki akarok jönni, hallom
ám, hogy egy hapsi ööö már nem tudom mi a neve,
mondja te, mit
3 szóltok ehhez a magyarhoz, érted, what do you think about
this
4 Hungarian?"
(‘.. and then I go to the restroom, and before I want to come out, I can hear
a guy,
er, I don’t remember his name, say, ‘what do you think of this Hungarian’, you
know, ‘what do you think of this Hungarian?’)
(source: data collected by Kovacs in 2008-2009)
In this utterance, the speaker recalls an incident when he accidentally overheard
a conversation of his American colleagues speaking about him. He recalls the
particular sentence that he overheard in Hungarian, then he translates, reiterates