Language choice and codeswitching in the Balkan polylogue (a case of the bilingual community of Velja Gorana, Montenegro)

Abstract

The article describes strategies of language choice and codeswitching (CS) in the Slavic-Albanian bilingual community, which lives in the village of Velja Gorana in the south of Montenegro. An attempt has been made to find out how individual features of communicants (age, sex, origin, linguistic competence, etc.) influence the presence or absence of CS, and what conventions and rules governing the language choice and CS exist in the community. The study is based on dialogues and polylogues with the participation of monolingual and bilingual speakers, recorded during the field trips in Velja Gorana in the years 2014 and 2015.