Oldal 167 [167]
OCR
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 HungarianAmerican 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 sociocultural 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
