The games bilinguals play: A discourse analysis of Hebrew-English bilingual conversation.

Abstract

This study describes how speakers who use two languages employ discourse strategies in conversation in order to construct meaning in language games involving two unrelated languages. The analysis is based on a close reading of an audio-recording of a naturally occurring 40 minute Hebrew-English bilingual conversation and on 20 hours of audio-taped follow-up interviews conducted by the analyst with the participants in the conversation. Bilingual discourse strategies are described in terms of constraints from the various contextual realms shaping the discourse. Meaning is perceived not as an abstract entity which can be separated from the word with 'encodes' it, but rather as constructed by the speakers as they use the word in various language games (in Wittgenstein's sense), i.e., as inseparable from the word. The study differs, then, from previous studies of bilingual discourse in that it does not assume a code metaphor of language. Similarly, grammar is viewed not as a static, fixed object, separate from use and prior to discourse, but rather as continually negotiated by participants in the interaction in an on-going process. The notion of language games is tied to the various contextual constraints shaping the discourse, and the description of bilingual discourse strategies is in terms of these games. The study shows that the contrast between the two languages inherent in bilingual discourse is utilized by speakers in order to convey the contrast between the lingual and the metalingual throughout the conversation. Thus, the strategy of language alternation is shown to be employed at various points throughout the discourse in which this distinction is relevant: at language game boundaries, at highly metalingual utterances, and at discourse markers. The strategy of language alternation is described also in relation to marking the distinction between discourse markers and connectives, in relation to the phenomenon of the clustering of discourse markers throughout the discourse, and in relation to phenomena of iconicity and self-reflexive iconicity in the discourse. Strategies of expressing the semantic function of contrast utilizing the contrast between the two languages are also described, and a refinement of some observations of the study of syntactic constraints on code-switching is suggested in this context. (Abstract shortened with permission of author.)