A u t h o r ' s P e r s o n a l C o p y strategies can be subsumed under a single general principle: speakers make marked choices to negotiate a change in the expected social distance between the participants, either increasing or decreasing it. The Significance of the Markedness Model Since its formulation, the markedness model has been successfully used to explain code switching between languages, between dialects and registers, and even between stylistic choices in literary contexts. The

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... ngth of the markedness model is its ability to explain not only unmarked choices, which other models do as well, but also its ability to explain marked choices. Furthermore, the markedness model addresses the universal aspects of communicative competence in terms of the cognitive abilities that use readings of markedness to assess speakers' intentions. For these reasons, the markedness model is a powerful tool not only for code switching research, but also for any examination of the ways in which speakers use language to achieve interactional goals.