grammatical constraints and motivations for - University of the ...

spoken about is clearly Afrikaans and, thus, the switch to Afrikaans is a means of
exposing his Afrikaans identity.
The host begins turn 57 in English after being interrupted by a question from the
co-host. As the co-host questions him in English, he initially responds in English
but almost immediately switches back to Afrikaans. This occurs as soon as
identity becomes an issue. It is likely that the speaker initially responded in
English as courtesy to the co-host or even as a means of accommodation.
However, once the communicative goal is achieved, he proceeds to portray the
identity of the subject of the conversation by switching to Afrikaans.
The story then proceeds in Afrikaans apart from the insertion of the nonce loan
and minimal constituent, ‘cases’. A suitable translation for this would be
‘koffers’, but it appears the speaker has avoided using what the audience may
consider ‘suiwer’ Afrikaans by using the English equivalent in its place. This
suggests accommodation as the speaker demonstrates his ability to take the
audience’s preferences into account.
The next switch to English is made in order to provide additional by-the-way
information. The dominant or matrix language of this turn is Afrikaans. Thus,
the body of the story and, therefore, its main points are conveyed in Afrikaans. In
this way, a shift from Afrikaans to English signals a shift from the main points of
the story to less relevant information. One would expect the speaker to maintain
the use of Afrikaans once the identity element comes into play – “…he was quite
happy…” - but here he intentionally avoids using Afrikaans in what appears to be
an effort to indicate that the information being conveyed is less relevant to the
story as a whole.
The switch to Afrikaans beginning with ‘met’ – “met, met sy [bəgΛ:З ]” – may be
an attempt on the host’s part to alter the tone to a more humorous one, thus
serving a phatic function (Appel & Muysken, 1987). However, the host later adds
the English phrase, “and all.” What is peculiar about this utterance is that the host
90