| The term code-switching is used to describe the alternations which take place between one code and another within discourse. The subject of this study is Prague colloquial Czech. The purpose of the study was to determine which codes make up this variable conversational style, and to study their interaction.; The research design consisted of recording the naturally occurring speech of twenty-nine native speakers. The recordings were transcribed and prepared for analysis using the Oxford Concordance Program (OCP). Forty linguistic features were studied from the phonological, morphological, lexical and syntactic levels of language.; No evidence was found to substantiate the hypothesis that there exists a spoken form of the literary language (hovorova cestina), which is used for everyday conversation. Literary Czech (spisovna cestina) and common Czech (obecna cestina) are distinguished as the two end points of the linguistic continuum; they are the two codes which blend into the colloquial language used in many informal and semiformal situations. The basic code in these conversations is common Czech. Switches to the literary Czech code are a means of foregrounding information. Since a predictable pattern of foregrounding would result in a new automatization, it is precisely the phonological, morphological, lexical and syntactic variability in this style which makes the foregrounding functional. The intra-sentential codeswitching which characterizes colloquial Czech is functional in the sense that it provides clues to the speaker's attitude towards the topic or other participants in the conversation. |
