The most common pattern seems to be, as described for that
netgroup, that each speaker is free to speak in the variety of
his/her choice, and to respond in the same or another variety.
(This applies, by the way, to polydialectal communities, too.)
When there are problems of communication, there are usually
bilinguals around who mediate/translate, and sometimes there are
even multi-party chains of translation/interpretation/contribution.
What one has in effect is a fully collaborative group activity
in which communication, or more centrally, the advancement of
the state of the action, is jointly accomplished, and various
language codes are employed as needed and wanted as tools.
Our notion of exact and precise translation is not foregrounded
in these communities. What matters is more the social effect
of what is said, speech as a mode of action, rather than language
as strict form.
Overlaying this basic linguistic democracy of course are the
almost inevitable status, power, and preference differences
among the varieties, which usually simply reflect those of
their core speakers' social groupings. There is also a fair
range regarding 'purity'; some groups seek to keep their
variety as distinct as possible, others are content with
code-mixing. I do not know if anyone has tested my previous
hypothesis re English that politically dominant languages
are more tolerant of borrowings than marginalized ones.
I would be very interested to hear more from others about
the 'natural strategies' of multilingually-mediated activity
in real communities. JAY.
JAY LEMKE.
City University of New York.
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INTERNET: JLLBC who-is-at CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU