Resumen de Codeswitching for humour and ethnic identity: Written Danish‐American occasional songs
This study examines individual bilingual language performance in occasional songs, focusing on the use of Danish and English, by a female member of a Danish‐American organisation, Harmonien, based in Seattle, Washington. The subject occupied the dual role of Harmonien's song writer producing occasional songs for its celebrations, or for events in the lives of members, and its secretary who took minutes of its regular meetings. A prior study of her written performance as secretary, conditioned by the constraints of social role and format of the minutes, forms the backdrop to this study. An analysis of the two types of data is performed comparing the scope for creative employment of bilingual resources in the two genres. The findings confirm the hypothesis of a conditioning effect of features of genre and social role on the exploitation of two codes in writing. Occasional songs, as an expression of Harmonien group belonging and ethnic distinctiveness, contained not only types of transfer characteristic of the core‐vocabulary of members and of the semi‐formal minutes, e.g. integrated loans and loan translations, but also specific markers of the oral mode of interaction, not present in the minutes, e.g. nonce loans, tagswitches and codeswitching used as contextualisation cues.
