SWITCHING CODES, AFFIRMING IDENTITIES: WRITING IN TEXAS CZECH
SWITCHING CODES, AFFIRMING IDENTITIES: WRITING IN TEXAS CZECH

Summary/Abstract: This contribution focuses on English/Czech codeswitching (CS) in a collection of letters written by a third-generation Texas Czech to this author, a European Czech living in the US since the 1990s. Specifically, the article explores the writer’s CS vis-à-vis her selfperceived ethnolinguistic identity. While the quantitative analysis establishes English as the letter’s dominant language, CS itself, rather than English, is proposed to be this writer’s unmarked choice, reflecting her dual ethnic membership and positive attitudes towards both codes. The qualitative analysis further shows that most switches to Czech serve identifiable pragmatic functions, such as letter openings/closings and a variety of parenthetical comments used for emphasis, humour, clarification, elaboration, topic closings/move-on, and mitigation.

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