Code Switching in the 21st Century
“I don’t think I really consciously noticed it when I first started code switching…it was more like a ‘backing into a corner’ feeling. Like the impending doom of feeling socially ostracized with the next thing I said, if I wasn’t careful.”
Shona’s experience is very common and what many people, especially people of color, would describe as a reason why they code switch. As a first generation American, whose family is from Punjab, India, Shona has felt the impact of having to conform to other cultures, “I feel like I HAVE to act and speak very differently because I do literally already get stared down…and me being me, I very obviously look like I’m from somewhere else because of the way I talk and dress. I don’t much care anymore about changing…but I still feel the judgment and that bothers me.”
Code switching is not something most people consciously do. More so, it’s a survival technique that gets picked up or put upon a person from a young age due to the differences they represent. Often times kids are bullied for having an ‘accent’, teachers and other adults chastise them for not speaking correctly or for using ‘slang’ terms. Tai, an African American makeup artist, first noticed her own code switching when she was in middle school. “It was noticeable when talking to adults, especially strangers or people I was not comfortable around. To a certain degree, yes, I did feel like I had to code switch.”
Code switching is the process of shifting from one linguistic code (a language or dialect) to another, depending on the social context or conversational setting. It’s a tool that many people use to maintain a sense of community and identity while assimilating into the dominant culture. Oftentimes, in the US this means assimilating to a dominant white American culture. As a result, many people of color feel the pressure to “talk white” or “talk American” to avoid discrimination and violence. To adapt, people learn to code switch by changing the tone, pitch, and vernacular of their dialect. For example, instead of saying “Yo, what’s good?” a person might say “Hi, how are you?”.
We all code switch to an extent in our everyday lives. For example, at work when talking to someone higher up or when meeting a new client, we might use more “sirs, ma’ams, thank yous” or enunciate more to be respected, or to be heard. For Tai, code switching wasn’t just a way to be understood. At one point, it was how she kept her job. “This feeling became more intense when I began working retail and sales. I noticed that speaking a certain way attracted more customers and helped build my sales. It has a huge effect on my professional life, I feel unprofessional when I’m talking in my regular voice and vocabulary. When I speak to customers, clients, or anybody else in my work field it’s a noticeable change in my voice pitch, vocab, and overall demeanor.” Anthony, a recent college graduate who identifies as half white and half black, has a similar take on code switching in professional settings. “When my being is such a threat to people’s common sense about race, gender, and class, or in some cases a threat to people’s own livelihood, switching to the right code at the right time has been the quickest shorthand I’ve found to defuse that tension. I code switch the hardest in the spaces of ruling class, like employment.”
People often feel the most pressure to code switch in their places of work, or what they consider professional environments. These environments have an assumed “right” way of speaking, acting, or a combination of both, that is required in order to be taken seriously or be considered professional. For persons of color and people who are queer this often means assimilating to the dominant white, heterosexual culture in order to keep a job, to be taken seriously, or to be considered for professional opportunities. People will go to extreme lengths to make sure their accent is undetectable: taking speech therapy classes, changing the volume of their voice, staying away from speaking their language in public, or saying certain words that might be considered ‘slang’.
“But when we’re thinking about someone’s accent, let’s be honest — we’re making judgment calls. We’re listening to the way they speak to tell us whether they have power, whether they’re trustworthy, whether they’re smart, kind, annoying, innocent or guilty. We use people’s accents to discern if someone is like us or if they’re not like us.”
— Shereen Marisol Meraji, Host of NPR’s Code Switch Podcast
Code switching reinforces stereotypes that continue to keep marginalized groups oppressed, by insinuating that if you talk a certain way you must be dumb, dangerous, or not normal. In the summer of 2018, NPR’s Code Switch Podcast, produced an episode exploring the idea of what it means to “Talk American” in the US today. In the episode, the show’s hosts, Gene Demby and Shereen Marisol Meraji, walk through the idea of accent base bias, or Linguistic Stereotyping. They found that, “By age 10, kids are ranking people with northern accents as sounding smarter. Americans think they are getting worse service when they hear someone with an Indian accent vs. American or British, as well as viewing people with a foreign accent as less trustworthy.”
NPR’s Code Switch Podcast| Episode
Think about your favorite podcasts, radio shows, or even broadcasters. Think back to your heroes and idols growing up, how your boss talks, how “successful” people talk. Their speech patterns are probably very similar: showcasing a heavy influence of Standard American English and a very white sounding accent. This homogenized way of speaking reinforces the idea that there is a “normal” way of talking, giving it power and privilege over other accents. By continuing the idealization of the Standard American English accent, opportunities are being limited for entire communities of people who don’t sound like the “norm”.
We can break down stereotypes through broader representation in media. Being exposed to a variety of dialects normalizes these different ways of speaking and allows us to learn how to listen to new ways of expressing ourselves through language. A person’s dialect should not impact the value, worth, status, or opportunities of that individual. And we can’t have authentic representation without embracing and shining a light on the different lived experiences of people.
