Code-switching

DavidD

can't be stopped
I think that's the term I want to use (if someone thinks of a better one, i'd definitely edit the thread title!) but basically:

The way a person speaks is obviously closely linked to their background, but growing up in a diverse atmosphere with a sizeable african-american community, sizeable jamaican/haitian minority, a slow invasion of wasps and a quick increase in hispanic-americans (mostly mexican) and a strong minority jewish community, the area I grew up in was a mess of different languages and influences (I'm from chicago/chicago area, i'd prefer not to be specific). It wasn't until i went away to college (i'm about to graduate) in a predominantly uni-cultural white school that i realized the degree to which language was divisive. There is a very small population of african-americans, quite a few international students (mostly from india/pakistan) but it is at least 75% white-american, i believe.

So anyway i have a friend here who is african american (i'm not tripping on the 'i have black friends' tip, at school he is my OBF [one black friend]) and knows more people on campus than most...anyway, a friend of mine pointed out a few minutes ago how he "code switches," like he shifts his method of speaking when talking to different people. I thought this was pretty interesting because i hadn't really thought about it, but even in the diverse atmosphere at home langauge was still divided in many ways.

Anyway I'm not sure what point I'm making with my personal story because its not that interesting, but basically i think it'd be interesting to have a discussion on the degree to which language is mutable from culture to culture, subculture to subculture. I'm sure there's tons of linguistic studies on this out there, and probably lots of literature, so if anyone knows any good books (for the layperson, academic jargon gets the gasface) i'd be interested.

Particularly interesting questions:
Who can 'code switch'? Do people do it without realizing it? Is it easier for say African Americans because theres is not the dominant culture? Is it insulting to do it in a "genuine" attempt to infiltrate, or is it more insulting to appropriate it but stay within your own "circle"? does the diversity of the atmosphere one grows up in allow for more comfortable levels of code switching because of a higher level of langauge "bastardization"? (i dont mean 'bastardization' to be a pejorative, obviously)

I donno, maybe i'm full of crap but i think there's a lot to discuss about this stuff and i hadn't really thought about it much before, so i'm interested in hearing what people think, particularly because this is a more international board than any of the other ones i frequent, so perspectives may be different.
 

Diaz

Well-known member
It's certainly not limited to African-Americans; I'm thoroughly white-bread (white-bred? there's mexican in there some where but it's neither apparent nor in the way I was raised, except coincidentally or subconsciously) and I do it frequently, particularly with race. What's odd is that I find myself acting whiter around black people, mostly because I don't want to come off as a whigger in the slightest. If i'm going to be a white stereotype, I'm gonna be the one who thinks race doesn't matter, because I think there's room to argue that that's better.


But then again, when I'm with some of my nerdier, D&D playing friends, i'll often throw out slang and pose like a hip-hopper, just because i'm closer to it than they are in my mind.


i want to say more on this, but I'm at work....respond if yer still interested in this thread, i guess, and I'd be happy to continue, and hear more about yer experiences with talking the talk.
 

fldsfslmn

excremental futurism
heteroglossia inna canuck style

Must be an American thing. :)

Coming from Canada*, this all sounds totally bonkers. Of course people speak/act differently in different situations. Do you guys actually think this is a bad (or even noteworthy) thing? (There were some comments about infiltration/appropriation that I found a bit baffling.) On an average bus ride I see and hear a web of culture, language, and identity that's both immeasurably complex and yet fluid and fun at the same time. Communicating is neat. People are neat. If I don't always get the joke somebody's telling to their buddy, I'm not going to feel left out. Likewise, if a new Canadian complains to me (in phrases terminated by "Eh?") about the hockey strike, he's not trying to "infiltrate" my white anglo Canadian world (no such thing, sorry). He just wants to chat.

P.S.: You don't tell your mum to fuck off, do you?




* - Yeah, we've got our problems too, I know it. Plus I do have American friends and relatives. I haven't done a hardcore study of this, but I bet they say "Eh?" more when they're talking to me. But who cares?
 

DavidD

can't be stopped
Oh I don't think its a bad thing at all, i'm interested in the complexities of it.

I think it might be more compliated in the states, i donno, whats so baffling about issues of infiltration/appropriation? I know plenty of cats at school who'll just start flipping into "whats up, dun" talk when they talk to a black guy, they're afraid of not being down or whatever, or the reverse, they'll start emphasizing "whiteness" in language because they don't want to the guy to think that they want to be down. And its obviously a lot more complicated, wrapped up in intentions and how its delivered and how its interpreted and context, so without specific examples it is sort of hard to discuss, i guess.

Obviously language is fluid, like all aspects of culture, it can't be controlled...but I'm talking about wholesale codeswitching, not just small bastardizations of language, but like, talking differently to different groups of people. don't you have like pangs of unease when some white dude thinks he's being funny when he makes fun of black slang, then passes it off as making fun of white people appropriating black slang? I think there's a lot of issues around appropriation and infiltration.
 

fldsfslmn

excremental futurism
DavidD said:
I know plenty of cats at school who'll just start flipping into "whats up, dun" talk when they talk to a black guy, they're afraid of not being down or whatever, or the reverse, they'll start emphasizing "whiteness" in language because they don't want to the guy to think that they want to be down.

The only picture this paints for me is one of insecurity. I don't mean that to sound hostile, but I see an undercurrent of neurosis in this "code-switching" discussion. I realize you're not claiming it's bad, but the examples you use are very loaded and problematic. Do you have another example?

DavidD said:
I think it might be more compliated in the states

I wouldn't doubt it. There are, after all, ten times more Americans than Canadians. Canada is niiiice and manageable.
 

DavidD

can't be stopped
Well, yeah, the other example was my friend from the first post; he does it for ease of comunication, as a way to move in and out of social circles, i presume - but because he is black, it seems like fewer white people notice it than when he does it - he always sounds like himself, i presume, because its NOT insecurity. I certainly wasn't judging him when i said it. I was wondering about the "rules" - and by that i mean unspoken "rules" - that people follow that allow them to codeswitch .... and a bunch of other questions, but yeah. I was being sort of open ended/vague on purpose.

another q would be - is it still code switching when a white dude on the lacross team acts "down" with the black guy he meets? And vice-versa...if a black person is trying to fit in to white society, its still considered "code switching" is it not?

(I don't know the answers to these q's)
 

jenks

thread death
we all do it - it's what linguists might call a speech repetoire. some researchers have suggested that men do it more than women because there is covert prestige in non- standard forms i.e it makes us sound tough and umm, manly. lots of the time it will be an unconscious thing as we converge or diverge depending upon the differing contexts we are in , also it depends upon to whom we are talking - if we wanna be down with the kids we might try and appropriate some of thier language - if the kids realise we're prats they will diverge from us to make us look daft.
what is interesting is the attitudes towards speaking in a variety of codes - there is still much pressure in schools to enforce a standard accent/ dialect usually through the examination board's requirement to write in standard english,and for example it explicitly states that to get marks for speaking and listening - worth 20% of an english gcse - you must speak in standard english. there is also i feel a definite yoking of speech and behaviour, somehow that those who do not speak 'properly' are therefore unlikely to behave 'properly' - those whose codes are far apart on a continuum are likely to be the ones who are under the most suspicion as if they are putting the 'incorrect' accent on.
loads of stuff on this - old but still controv. is the bernstein/ labov debate from the late sixties about restricted and elaborated codes, also my favourite norman fairclough has much to say on standardisation in language and power, trudgill on covert prestige.
hope this is of some use to you
 

DavidD

can't be stopped
Yeah thats kind of what i was wondering, where the debate is coming from here.... i know the huge debate about "ebonics" here in the states was a huge deal, and i never really understood 1. how they could define such a thing - doesn't it imply a sort of monolithic black community, and simultaneously deny any other sort of cultural or ethnic language? (including white dialects?) And 2. Why we should be teaching "proper english" when the whole concept has absolutely no logical support.
 

Pearsall

Prodigal Son
I think this is a pretty interesting subject. I lived in Britain for twelve years (eight in London, four in Edinburgh) and what I found after a while was that, even though I still pronounced words in an American way, I would speak in a British rhythm (because the rhythm of sentences in American dialects are different from in British dialects). When I moved back to New York it took all of about a month for my accent to revert back to what it was originally, which is a mild (white) New York accent. I never speak with a pseudo-black accent, but I do find that, depending on circumstances (like, well, when I'm drunk), it can broaden out into a stronger thing, an outer-borough blue collar white kind of accent, which is still kind of silly I guess.
 

Pearsall

Prodigal Son
Well, proper English has to do with grammar and spelling and is, I think pretty essential for communication. Accents in and of themselves are not really important, but what you are saying should be clear and should be well constructed.

I've always thought that arguments about 'standard English is not important' are a means of, unintentionally of course, fucking the working class by ensuring that they don't pick up the necessary skills for communication. In this world to get anywhere you need to write clearly, and you can't write like people on, say, the RWD forum do if you want to get anywhere. Who is going to hire anyone who can't write a sentence that makes grammatical sense?
 

DavidD

can't be stopped
I guess i'm not sure that clarity neccessarily is impeded by not following "proper english rules," so finding that fine line between knowing how to communicate ideas clearly while not neccessarily conforming to the dominant culture's idea of 'proper english' is the idea behind this. "blacK" english (being totally reductive, "black english" is obviously different from region to region) does follow syntactical rules and clarity...a friend linked me to an article last night when we were talking and i cant find it, but basically it said that the one group of people who back up the idea that black american english is is a legitimate "proper" enlish dialect is not blacks, not liberal whites, but linguists...i think that was what it was arguing, i might be paraphrasing. I'm gonna look around and see if i can find the article.
 

jenks

thread death
grammatical sense - that's a bit of a linguistic minefield - all dialects have a grammar, many regional dialects make far more 'sense' than standard english i.e. in many northern dialects they may use thee and thou, thus differentiating between subject and object pronouns in the second person, something that cannot be done in standard english (or not for the past three hundred years or so), or the scouse use of you and yous, distinguishing between singular and plural second person, again, not available in St.Eng.
also look at past tense formation - i.e i done it , you doen it, s/he done it, we done it, you done it, they done it is far more logical than St.Eng. regional dialects often iron out the illogicality of irregularity.
all dialects have systems, otherwise communication would be impossible. we have priveliged one dialect over another for a number of political and economic reasons and not because one is inttrinsically better or more logical or makes sense than another. i would point people to fairclough, among others on this in his language and power
finally there is this constant in the press that somehow education and english should be in the service of the job market - you won't get anywhere speaking like that sonny jim, as if we are not aware that different contexts demand deifferent writing/speaking skills - there's very little shouting out in funerals but plent at football matches and we don't have to be told that , we know it.
 

Pearsall

Prodigal Son
I think that there's a difference between spoken and written English. I find it really tiring to read through something that is littered with grammatical and spelling mistakes, whereas in spoken English I don't think it matters so much (but then again, you can't speak the same way at a job interview as you would when you are shooting the shit with someone in a bar).

But yeah, I'd be interested in reading the article.
 

dominic

Beast of Burden
I have lots of black friends, but I speak grammatically proper English with them, for the simple reason that that's who I am, where I'm from, what I'm about, where I'm at -- shooting straight

And I get really annoyed with middle-class white people who talk hip hop style. I just don't buy it.

Which is not to say that certain slang terms are not useful or amusing -- and indeed i'll from time to time use slang when a slang term helps me say what I want to say -- but there's a difference between (1) use of slang terms where appropriate and (2) wholesale appropriation & mimicking of the patterns and rhythms of how other people (black people) speak . . . .

So why do I object to such wholesale appropriation? Because I don't think the appropriation is honest, because I think the appropriation here is more a case of mimicking, that it's shot through with either (a) irony and condescension or (b) an appalling lack of self-knowledge. It's the same syndrome as white middle-class kids (often "kids" in their 20s and 30s) who style themselves "graffiti artists"

Again, when it comes to this sort of question, I endorse "shooting straight." American history is simply too tricky, too fraught with exploitation & oppression of blacks, to pursue any other kind of policy of style & speech . . . .

And it follows from this that white people shouldn't talk jive among themselves if they're not going to risk such speech in the presence of blacks

And just to clarify: what I have in mind here is "wholesale appropriation/mimicking" of black speech, not the occasional use of this or that slang term -- for the simple reason that slang terms are often useful, revelatory, or clever & amusing

sidenote: i especially enjoy cockney slang (e.g., "dog & bone" = telephone; "arkedaly" = israeli) -- but then i'm a hopeless anglophile
 

turtles

in the sea
What do you call the opposite process, wherein you start using speech patterns from other social groups you've been hanging out with in innapropriate places? Like for example when I started playing on a predominantly working class, mixed-race (east vancouver) soccer team while I was in high school, my parents (white, middle class) started to note that I was suddenly swearing a whole lot more around them. Or also using slang that me and my friends had come up with in our own little in-group in situations where no one would understand it.

That seems to happen to me a lot. I tend to pick up slang from whatever social groups I end up hanging around and then using them pretty much uniformly when I'm talking (job interviews and other very formal situations obviously excepted). I definitely subscribe to the "there is no one proper english" theory. I really like the rhythm and sound of a lot of different slang, pretty much regardless of culture. I also get a lot of shit for using big words around my friends too. I think I'm just a vocab whore. :)
 

DavidD

can't be stopped
bpdave OTM, esp. with regard to the formation of yr own in-group slang etc....my friends do this as well...

While I think i agree w/ what dominic says in practice for the most part - i don't go around trying to imitate slang wholesale because i've heard on BET or something - i think the complexities of appropriation etc. are a bit more entangled than simply "i talk white or i'm being dishonest and appropriating." I mean look at music as a parallel - if white people didn't engage with black music, what kind of music would we be listening to right now! And people do say this to me all the time re: my music taste...listening to 3-6 mafia or Aaliyah or something ('do you think you're black?')

Similarly, I'd say black culture (and i'm using this as an example, clearly many, many cultures have contributed to the language of American - wasn't the word "OK" a native american one originally? I'm not sure which particular American Indian nation it was, but i'm pretty sure i recall reading that somewhere) has had a massive effect on language in the united states, and words that generations ago might have been pretty "edgy" to white mainstream due to their association w/ black culture become co-opted over time and its just a part of the intangibility of culture. And in some ways, I think that the influence of black language on american language as a whole is a positive thing. Here's a quote by Greg Tate that referrs to hip-hop's importance, but you could probably apply it to language in general.


"Because at heart, hiphop remains a radical, revolutionary enterprise for no other reason than its rendering people of African descent anything but invisible, forgettable, and dismissible in the consensual hallucination-simulacrum twilight zone of digitized mass distractions we call our lives in the matrixized, conservative-Christianized, Goebbelsized-by-Fox 21st century."
 

Backjob

Well-known member
Well I can't link to or quote sources, but I've definitely seen academic material which documents that nearly everyone has at least 5 or 6 different modes of speech or accents dependent on context. Most of the time we're not aware of it, and as pointed out above, this can be as simple as not swearing around your parents.

I think using hip hop slang as an example makes this overly contentious because it's a very loaded area. To give other anecdotal examples, I grew up in Scotland and went to university in England, and I was always conscious of how much more Scottish my accent got in the holidays and how quickly it switched back when I was with my university friends. Or, to give another example, in Singapore most people speak an English dialect known as "singlish" which incorporates some Hokkien words and some uniquely Singaporean quirks. Most singaporeans will switch between singlish and more "proper" english depending on whether they're talking to a white expat or another singaporean, and this can even happen from sentence to sentence when in mixed company.

I think it's just simple politeness to do this - good social skills means making an effort to communicate with people and also to signify that you want to have common ground with them. I don't think this has to be seen as condescension or as anything to be embarassed about - it's like making sure you speak slowly and clearly and avoid opaque idioms when talking to a non-fluent English speaker.
 

michael

Bring out the vacuum
FWIW, in linguistics I've only heard "code switching" used to describe switching between distinct languages. The context I came across it was studies of bilingual kids who might eg. all speak Tagalog in their own houses but play games where they switch into English because they're all attending an English speaking school. Or something.

Regarding the point on whether this kind of thing is not noteworthy, I recall a sociolinguistics theory called "speech accommodation theory", which basically states that speakers will change their speech to account for who they are talking to. Whoopee. Pretty self-evident. You can obviously dig deep into when these changes happen, what the changes are, and so forth, but I wasn't very impressed with this part of linguistics so ran off to study other things.
 
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