examples

“Code-Switching” to Popular Culture

Have you ever thought about what it’s like to live a double life, or are living one right now? Do you change the way you think, act, speak, or present yourself differently to different groups of people? If you answered no to any of these questions, take a look at your Twitter, are those tweets everything you would say out loud? How about your Instagram? Does it accurately portray your daily life as a whole? When looking at the grand scheme of things, most of us are living double, maybe even triple lives to an extent.

My double life started my first day of kindergarten when I looked around the room and did not see one girl that looked remotely similar to me. And what do you do when you stand out? Try to blend in. And being the brown girl whose parents had fled the country of Afghanistan and brought her up in a Muslim household, that’s a pretty hard thing to do. One of the most difficult was communication. Throughout my life, I was speaking English at school and with my friends and coming to a home required to speak Farsi. I didn’t know this at the time but I had developed a skill called “code switching”. According to​ ​dictionary.com​ code-switching is “the practice of alternating between two or more languages or varieties of language in conversation.” This isn’t

just about speaking different languages, it is about the ​way ​you talk to different people. Whether it’s your friends or colleagues, family or strangers.

The video below is about how the code-switching process affects African Americans and the way they speak corresponding with their culture.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpLQmyS7-jw

This but I don’t think it should only apply to language. I believe that we “code switch” to whatever is popular culture. And it is normally into surface or shallow culture. According to Zaretta Hammond’s “Culture Tree”, shallow culture is the observable and changeable aspects of a certain culture. So when I go to an Afghan gathering, I am not only dressed differently, I am eating different foods, speaking a different language, my attitudes towards my elders are different, and the list goes on and dips into “shallow” culture, which are the unspoken rules and attitudes required to follow a culture.

Being in a different environment require people to understand and learn the surface and shallow cultures that come with it. You could even say that is a very hegemonic process as the dominant culture can conform your actions and being. By following the rules of a culture you are essentially consenting to it. This process can come from things are big as moving cities or countries, or the way you act when you are with your friends vs. with your family.