can you do high quality answers by tomorrow 3 ?

[From the NPR blog Code Switch:]

Five Reasons Why People Code-Switch April 13, 201312:26 PM ET

Matt Thompson

Monday, April 8, marked the launch of Code Switch, our new blog covering race, ethnicity and culture. To commemorate the blog's launch, all week we solicited stories about code-switching — the practice of shifting the languages you use or the way you express yourself in your conversations. People sent us hundreds of stories illustrating the many ways we code-switch and the many reasons for doing it. Five of those motivations came up again and again in the stories we read:

1) Our lizard brains take over: The most common examples of code-switching were completely inadvertent; folks would slip into a different language or accent without even realizing it or intending to do it. One such story came from Lisa Okamoto, who told us she was born and raised in Los Angeles by two parents from Japan, a place she's visited all her life. This trip was particularly memorable (warning, profanity euphemisms ahead): If you ever watched the original Ring movie, I think you will understand this: the Japanese take horror stories

pretty seriously, but in a very creepy quiet way. I find Japanese horror movies and haunted houses to be ten

times scarier than the American counter-part.

I went back to Japan with a friend during the summer of 2009, the height of haunted house season in Japan.

(The Japanese have this concept that the summertime is the best time to tell scary stories, because the chill you

feel from fright will cool you down during the humid months.) My friend loves scary stories, and she wanted

to go into a haunted maze when we were visiting Yokohama. I protested and protested but eventually she

convinced me to go through the haunted maze, instead of making her go through it alone.

The premise of the haunted maze was the following: The setting was a haunted middle school, where a little

girl named Mi-chan died a tragic death. She died so suddenly that she didn't properly enter the after world, and

her spirit was still lingering at the school. You were supposed to go through this maze with an amulet, find Mi-

chan, and place it on her so that she can properly enter the afterlife.

We were handed a flashlight and an amulet prop, and entered into the maze. I already knew I was getting

myself into trouble, but I didn't expect how scary it was going to be. It was terrifying. Periodically, you would

hear quiet scratches and taps on the walls of the maze, with a voice saying, "Watashi wa Mi-Chan" -

translation: I am Mi-Chan.

I was talking in Japanese when entering the maze, but I started losing control because I was just so scared.

Eventually, I started code-switch-screaming English profanities — "OH MY F-ING GOD, GET ME THE F

OUT OF HERE!" — etc., etc. You can fill in the blanks with your imagination. I consider myself fully

bilingual, but I realized at this moment that, when I'm in a fight or flight/survivor instinct situation, my mind

switches to English. (This is probably because I've lived in the US all my life, and never lived in Japan.)

I was yelling and screaming in English throughout the whole maze, and still hearing the "watashi wa Mi-

Chan" voice here and there. But suddenly the voice said, "Watashi wa Mi-Chan... watashi wa... I am... My

name is Mi-Chan," in the most awkward, Japanese-accented English possible. The staff had taken such pity on

my rude profanity-stricken fear that they also code-switched for me. When I heard that awkward English, I

literally fell to the floor and cried and laughed at the same time. I was so scared, but the English took me by

such surprise, and I felt the oddest combination of release.

2) We want to fit in: Very often, people code-switch — both consciously and unconsciously — to act or talk more like those around them. While this can be effective, it can also be perilous, as John Davis told us: I am a Spanish teacher in a high-needs school in Nashville. I grew up in a homogenous town in rural

Pennsylvania. Foreign languages came easily for me, so I majored in Spanish and minored in French at the

University of Pittsburgh. When I moved to my school in Nashville, I had to learn another language: Southern,

African American English. I entered my learning experience with fervor. My students taught me almost as

much as I taught them in my first years. Now that I am well versed in the language, I have trouble code

switching back to Standard American English.

One day my principal walked into my room and asked me, "Mr. Davis, I didn't receive your editions to the

School Improvement Plan." I replied, "Nah, you flaugin' bruh, I put that on your desk yesterday." My boss

froze, with his jaw dropped and one eyebrow raised. After a moment he shook his head and said, "you're

spending too much time with the kids." "My bad."

In our pitch to users for stories about code-switching, we asked jokingly whether anyone learned Farsi to eavesdrop on their in-laws. And sure enough, in came this story from Amy Proulx:

Yes, I actually did secretly learn Farsi to snoop on the in-laws. I married an Iranian-Canadian, and after

torturing myself trying to learn through the standard language tapes and computer programs, I sort of gave up,

and instead, started watching Iranian soap operas. Oh the drama, the intrigue, the suspicion and suspense!

What a way to learn Farsi, through the vice of sappy television.

My bad habit lead to good Farsi skills, but my handle on slang and colloquial language was the real kicker.

When at a memorial ceremony for my late-father-in-law, I proceed to intone a rather dramatic, but reasonably

common Shi'ite prayer (courtesy of my TV watching). My brother-in-law, in the middle of this most dramatic

and somber moment, nearly fell over laughing. He declared that I proclaimed this Shi'ite prayer with perfect

diction and pronunciation, and that I was a model of a perfect daughter and sister -in-law. I was in the in-crowd

with the in-laws, thanks to soap operas.

3) We want to get something: A lot of folks code-switch not just to fit in, but to actively ingratiate themselves to others. We can not tell you how many dozens of stories we got from people who work in service industries who said that a Southern accent is a surefire way to get better tips and more sympathetic customers. Apparently everyone who works in a restaurant picks up "y'all" immediately upon arriving at their job. If you can pull off the right accent in the right context, you can get all kinds of favors, as this story from Patti Hollingshead illustrates: We lived in Ireland some years ago and noticed there were often two prices for goods and services —

reasonable prices for the locals and much more expensive costs for others (Americans). It was not easy, but I

practiced my Irish accent until we qualified for 'local pricing'. Still, they would often ask me where I was from,

as my accent was anything but flawless. But I'd come up with the name of some obscure town hundreds of

miles away, which explained my 'odd' Irish accent and usually satisfied them. Once, to my, "Ack, I'm from

dahn twards Clara Bog," the guy responded in Gaelic.

I had no idea what he was saying. I continued to smile, laugh, and nod at what I hoped were appropriate times

as he excitedly talked on and on. Finally, another English speaking customer entered the shop and he flipped

back to English then whispered to me, "We need to be careful here (in Northern Ireland) about speaking Irish."

"Oh, aye," I replied.

I pulled my wallet out to pay for my flowers and he held up his hands, "No, me lass, keep yer money. 'twas a

pleasure speakin' to ya."

4) We want to say something in secret: We collected many sweet stories of people code- switching in order to hide in plain sight, a habit most common among people in love. Because this tactic often relies on assumptions, it can get one in trouble, as Veronica Rodriguez can attest: I am from Venezuela and speak Spanish and English fluently and without an accent in either language.

However, I look what most would describe as "Middle Eastern," this means that not only do people assume

that I am from Turkey or Lebanon and try to speak to me in Farsi or Arabic and become very disappointed

when I don't, but many times Hispanic people assume that I don't speak Spanish. This ultimately leads to

someone speaking very candidly around me thinking that I cannot understand what they are saying.

I also speak French fluently enough to get myself into trouble. Living in Chicago during college I encountered

lots of interesting people on the L. We often chose to comment on some of these people in French rather than

English or Spanish since it was far less likely that someone would understand us. One rainy afternoon a very

nice-looking man ran into the train, and my friend and I made some comments to each other in French about

how handsome he was. To our surprise, he answered back, "Merçi!" — in perfect French.

Suffice to say, we were both extremely embarrassed and decided that maybe we would keep our comments to

ourselves from then on.

5) It helps us convey a thought: Certain concepts need that perfectbon mot to come across effectively. Many people switch languages or employ colloquialisms to express particular ideas, as in this story from Jennifer Monahan: I ... work in a bilingual school, and my coworkers and I code-switch constantly. Here ... code-switching centers

around lexical gaps: Nonprofit fundraising is a very American idea, so the French speakers tend to switch to

English when that's the topic. Same with technology; if I learned about a piece of equipment or softwar e in

English I have a hard time discussing it in French. It's not just a language proficiency issue, my coworkers who

are native French speakers follow the same pattern. So we tend to talk about "le smartboard" or "un

programme de planned giving." And some concepts just don't translate. French kids eat lunch in the school

cafeteria; the notion of bringing lunch from home is, well, foreign. So is the notion of having a designated

container to bring your lunch from home. So we all refer to "le lunchbox."

The reasons people code-switch and the ways in which they do it are far more numerous than the few examples we've listed here. While many people told us they code-switched to fit in, for example, several also told us they did it to stand out. What the stories reiterated most of all, though, is what our colleague Gene Demby pointed out in his inaugural post: No matter your race, ethnicity, class or cultural background, you probably do it.

_________________________________________________________________________

[From the PBS Series “Do You Speak American” ]

Language Crossing — Borrowing Identity

by Cecelia Cutler

In his 1995 book Crossing: Language and Ethnicity Among Adolescents, Ben Rampton

describes language crossing as the practice of using a language variety that belongs to

another group. Crossing includes a wide range of sociolinguistic practices such as the

"outgroup use of prestigious minority codes" (for example, white suburban teenagers

using African-American English speech markers to affiliate with hip hop culture) and

pejorative secondary foreigner talk (the mocking use of a foreign accent to convey

distance from a particular ethnic group). It also includes practices such as “marking,”

copying a language variety out of context to index a type of person who is different from

the speaker and/or intended hearers (Mitchell-Kernan, Morgan).

Rampton’s book describes how groups of multiracial adolescents in a British working-

class community mix their use of Creole, Panjabi and Asian English. Rampton found

that language crossing, in many instances, constitutes an anti-racist practice and is

emblematic of young people striving to redefine their identities. The young people he

studied used this mixed code to contest racial boundaries and assert a new “de-

racinated” ethnicity.

Although, as shown in this example, crossing is not usually an all-out claim to another

ethnic identity, it can evoke a distinct sense of movement across social or ethnic

boundaries. Most often it involves momentary, ritualized instances of outgroup language

use. Rampton describes crossing as part of a complex process of self-assembly in

which speakers signal their orientation towards the different voices they adopt. It is

concerned with “secondary representations of people, groups and languages” and “the

dynamics of the speakers’ orientation to the voice, the language and the social imagery

they’re evoking” (Rampton 1996).

Tribe Talkin’

Sociolinguists, anthropologists and cultural theorists study the phenomenon of language

crossing (although they may not agree on what to call it) to understand how and why

individuals are motivated to employ the language variety of another group. They are

also interested in how language and other types of social behavior reveal changes in

how people construct their identities. Some scholars have suggested that the

globalization of culture gives young people a greater number of choices. Essentially

they can pick and choose from a range of commodified ethnic style markers in the

clothes they wear, the music to which they listen and their language, forming what

Baumann calls “Neo Tribes.” These neo tribes differ markedly from the more limited

traditional family — and community-based identities and language styles available to

people in the past.

As mentioned above, one example of language crossing would be when white suburban

teenagers use features of African-American English to signal their affiliation with hip hop

culture. This type of language crossing is generally positive because it expresses

identification with hip hop culture. Jane Hill’s discussion of “Mock Spanish” or the

purposeful misuse of Spanish (such as when Arnold Schwarzenegger says “No

problemo” in the film “Terminator”) is a negative example of language crossing. “No

problemo” not only reflects incorrect gender marking on the noun (it should be

“problema”) but also is not an expression that native Spanish speakers would use. Hill

claims that Anglos in the Southwest and California use Mock Spanish as a racist

strategy to distance themselves from Latinos.

Crossing can also function as what’s called a “mitigating discourse strategy” — a way to

ease tension. In the following example, a computer trainer in New York City is training

an investment bank employee to use new software. The software is not functioning

properly and the trainee begins to complain. The trainer, who is not responsible for the

problem and has established a good rapport with the trainee, crosses into a blue-collar

Brooklyn accent.

Trainee: (somewhat annoyed) So you’re saying they didn’t install the program properly?

Trainer: (with an affected Brooklyn working-class accent) Yeah, you gotta problem wit’

that?

The trainer uses the Brooklyn working-class accent to distance himself from those who

installed the software incorrectly. His reply indexes a widely understood stereotype in

New York City of the “tough guy” who does not appreciate being corrected and has little

intention of addressing the problem. If it gets a laugh, it helps to mitigate the frustration

of the situation.

Hark! Do I Hear a Hip Hop?

My research investigates the construction of identity among white, middle-class young

people who affiliate with hip hop. Most of the young people I have studied live in

predominantly white middle-class and upper-middle-class neighborhoods in and around

New York City. Yet they affiliate with a cultural form that has its origins in urban black

working-class communities in, for instance, the borough of the Bronx (Potter 1995,

Samuels 1991). It is difficult to generalize about the class origins of hip hop because

quite a few rap artists are college-educated and middle class, but there is a general

sense that it originates largely in “the street” — read black urban ghetto (Alim). Their

distance from its origins poses some psychological challenges for white middle-class

hip hoppers who are socially and physically removed from hip hop’s creative and

ideological space.

Significantly, white hip hoppers draw on a language style that is clearly derived from

African-American Vernacular English (AAVE) — a variety with which they have little

direct contact, and that is stigmatized in mainstream U.S. society. The variety of speech

that they are targeting is highly influenced by hip hop culture and contains a wide range

of hip hop “slang” terms in addition to pronunciation and grammar that are specific to

the speech of young urban African-American hip hoppers.

White hip hoppers’ exposure to this language takes place principally through electronic

media, such as MTV, rap music CDs and Black Entertainment Television (BET), rather

than through direct face-to-face contact with native speakers. In effect, white hip

hoppers’ speech can be seen as a performance of African-American English speech.

Furthermore, many aspects of white hip hoppers’ personal style, gestures, ways of

walking and even attitudes are informed by their conceptions of blackness. My

preliminary research (Cutler) examines the speech of a white upper-middle class

teenager from New York City whom I call “Mike,” whose language, dress style and

attitude revealed a deep psychological investment in the “gangsta rapper” image. In

many ways, Mike exemplifies many of the young people I targeted in my research: He

comes from an economically privileged family, grew up in a predominantly white

neighborhood, and was drawn to a cultural form almost diametrically opposed to his

own in terms of class and opportunities.

Mike’s speech was an approximation of African-American English only with respect to

phonology, lexicon and prosody — a pattern noted by William Labov. I began observing

Mike’s language practices in 1993 when he was 13. Around that time, he began to

identify quite strongly with hip hop culture: He wore baggy jeans, a reversed baseball

cap and name-brand sneakers, and developed a taste for rap music. Mike became part

of a growing cohort of white, well-to-do teenagers referred to as “prep school gangsters”

in the popular press (Sales). At around the same time, he began to change the way he

spoke, which initially appeared to be a form of “crossing” as described by Rampton

(1995).

At first, Mike’s linguistic efforts to employ this language were rather fleeting and

tentative, but eventually his casual linguistic style began to reflect the influence of

African-American English phonology, prosody and hip hop slang. One incident in

particular marks an early attempt to imitate this speech style. During a phone

conversation with his best friend, Mike — at age 13—made a quick conversational

repair to a widely recognized vernacular African-American English form: “I gotta ask, I

mean aks [æks] my mom.”

My research also shows that most white hip hoppers are indeed engaging in language

crossing because they have not acquired African-American English in any real sense of

the word. Like the young people Rampton studied, they draw on a set of widely

recognized and socially salient linguistic features of another speech variety to stylize

their speech. In the following example, we can see some of the AAVE features tapped

by white hip hoppers. There is an example of invariant “be,” an aspectual marker in

African-American English that signals a habitual or repetitive action (Rickford). We also

see an example of copula absence (I don’t know what they Ø talkin’ about). Another

point of interest is the speaker’s use of ain’t — a feature of AAVE and many other

vernacular varieties of English. Finally, we see a typical hip hop discourse marker —

“you know what I’m sayin’” — that draws interlocutors into the conversation. We’ll close

with an extended example of this type of speech.

PJ:People — people be callin’ me a wannabe, but I don't know what they Ø talkin’

about, you know. I'm just doing my thing. I'm just handlin’ my business. What I do ain't

nobody's business, you know what I'm sayin’, except for mine. I handle my own. That's

what I'm about. You know, what I'm about ain't no — but, hey, I'm — I'm handlin’ my

own. You know, I'm livin’ my life the way I want to live. Ain't nobody got to tell me

nothin’, you know what I'm sayin’?

____________________________________________________

[From: The Washington Post]

‘What’s up with that white voice?’: The tricky art of linguistic code-switching

By Sonia Rao July 6

In high school, a friend told En Low that she used a “white girl voice” during a class

presentation. The observation took Low, the daughter of Malaysian Chinese immigrants,

by surprise — it was the same bubbly voice she used while taking phone orders at her

parents’ carryout restaurant in Northern Virginia, and that she would again adopt a few

years later while working at a call center for the University of Pennsylvania.

“I had done it since I was really young,” said Low, now 20. “This was just what you were

supposed to do.”

Code-switching, or altering the way you speak based on the audience, is a widespread

phenomenon among those whose accents and dialects stray from the national standard,

long considered in the United States to be the language patterns of the Midwest. A

Southerner working as a news anchor in the North might avoid using elongated vowels.

A Latina might ditch the Spanglish slang she uses with friends while interacting with

white co-workers. After a scolding, an African American child might refrain from

speaking in vernacular English at school.

Unconsciously or not, people code-switch to present what they believe (or are told) is a

more favorable version of themselves — an instinct often heightened when interactions

are conducted over the phone, as is the case in the new movie “Sorry to Bother You.”

Boots Riley’s absurdist flick centers on Cassius Green (Lakeith Stanfield), a black

telemarketer in Oakland, Calif., who discovers that the secret to professional success is

talking to potential customers in his “white voice,” or one dubbed here by an extra-nasal

David Cross. It’s like when you’re pulled over by the police, his wise co-worker Langston

(Danny Glover) tells him.

The comment is in line with the movie’s biting satire, which raises a larger question

about the telecommunications industry: People already hate getting calls from these

strangers, whose jobs rely on coming off as trustworthy while still being persuasive.

How does one deal with linguistic bias on top of an already difficult juggling act?

“It’s stressful,” said Lariese Reeves, 45, who works in an auto-financing firm’s customer

service department. For whatever reason, customers who call sometimes exhibit a great

deal of animosity. She referred to her job as an “adult day care” because she must put up

with verbal abuse daily — whether the fault is her department’s or not — and soothe

angry customers by using an upbeat tone.

Reeves isn’t entirely sure what “upbeat” means in this context but knows it is a word her

bosses consistently use in evaluating her performance. Santander, the finance company,

uses a speech analytics software called CallMiner that grades employees based on their

diction and word choice. Reeves, a longtime Texas resident with a “country accent,” has

a tough time with it. She says the right words, but CallMiner can’t always detect them —

meanwhile, her bonus has dropped from about $600 each month to just $92.

“It’s very stressful,” Reeves said, “to have your job on the line for an automated system.”

In a sense, CallMiner is a mechanized version of the linguistic profiling that

sociolinguist and current Washington University in St. Louis professor John Baugh

studied after he experienced discrimination during a housing search in the late 1980s.

He found that Bay Area landlords who invited him over the phone to view apartments

would often express surprise that he is black when he arrived: “Oh, there must be some

mistake,” they would say.

So Baugh conducted an experiment in which he made calls to the same landlords using

African American, Mexican American and “standard American” dialects. The
results,

published in 1999, found a significant difference in the number of appointments granted

to the “callers” with minority dialects and confirmed that racism can extend to phone

conversations.

This concept also plays a part in another summer movie: director Spike Lee’s upcoming

dramedy “BlacKkKlansman,” set in the early 1970s. Ron Stallworth (John David

Washington) is the first black detective to serve in the Colorado Springs Police

Department and, determined to prove himself, leads a sting operation against the Ku

Klux Klan. He puts the theory behind Baugh’s experiment to an extreme test by

“joining” the KKK over the phone, posing as a white man while speaking to local chapter

leader Walter Breachway (Ryan Eggold) and even David Duke (Topher Grace) using

“King’s English.”

Stallworth can instantly switch between dialects, something many people of color might

find familiar. Shereen Marisol Meraji grew up in Sacramento with an Iranian father and

Puerto Rican mother, whose family they lived near. Meraji, now 40, would speak

English to her parents and Spanish to her grandparents — sometimes within a single

conversation — which, coupled with hanging out with mostly Latinos in college,

contributed to a Spanglish-infused vocabulary.

Meraji began to work as a production assistant at NPR in the early 2000s, which she

recently described as a “huge shock to the system” despite her liberal arts education.

Her co-workers used the adjective “uber” regularly. They spoke in references to the

Economist and the New Yorker. They were overwhelmingly white.

“I need to be able to speak the language these people are speaking in because my ideas

are going nowhere,” Meraji thought at the time. “I learned how to code-switch into

NPRese.”

She eventually did, and when she landed 21⁄2 minutes of airtime to talk about hip-hop

legend Nate Dogg on “All Things Considered,” she was so excited about the segment that

she posted it on Facebook. A friend messaged her privately: “I didn’t want to put this on

Facebook, but what’s up with that white voice?”

“It really occurred to me that something was going on inside my subconscious mind,”

Meraji said. “It’s this deliberate thing NPR people do. They pronounce everything very

deliberately, and it’s slower than I would normally talk.”

Meraji now co-hosts the popular podcast “Code Switch.” Though she works in radio and

didn’t deal with the irritated recipients of telemarketing calls, her experience would

probably resonate with those who mimic higher-ups or call to mind politicians who

adopt the vernacular of their audience.

The University of Pennsylvania is a predominantly white institution, En Low pointed

out, so she code-switches from her regular way of speaking — which she has been told

by peers sounds “not really educated” and “really slang heavy” — into a softer tone

unless surrounded by close friends. It took some effort at the call center, even more so

with the pressure applied by a supervisor who would closely monitor calls and criticize

employees if they didn’t get people to donate enough money to the Ivy League school.

After just three weeks, it got to be too much.

“It was weird to be aggressive in a code-switched voice,” Low said. “So I quit.”

____________________________________________________

[From The Guardian Newspaper]

Sorry to Bother You, Black Americans and the Power and Peril of Code-

Switching
AT McWilliams
Wed 25 Jul 2018 06.00 EDT

Long before Sorry to Bother You taught moviegoers the meaning of code- switching –

the act of altering how you express yourself based on your audience – I learned its

power by listening to my father take phone calls. While checking in with his mother in

Georgia he’d drift into a black southern lilt, subtly prolonging vowel sounds as he

reverted to his childhood timbre. From there, he’d answer calls from his white co-

workers, ingratiating himself with carefree enthusiasm and a formal syntax while deftly

employing his lawyerly lexicon.

But at the barbershop, my father was best at being himself. As soon as the shop’s door

swung open, I’d watch him relax his stance before strutting towards the owner of the

shop. As if preparing to bounce, he’d walk with a slight bend in his knee, greeting him

with an ardent “My man!” before dapping him up. From there, he’d pay similar respects

to the other barbers and fellow customers, often extending a hug to the older women

waiting for their sons, smiling at shopgoers the way you smile at family. And as the

barbershop buzzed with local gossip and philosophical debate alike, I’d hang on my

father’s every word, listening to him drop the “r” from “brother” or the “l” from “alright”

or the “g” from seemingly any verb. At the shop, he was cool in a way only black people

can be cool.

My father’s example taught me to love the way black people speak. But the way he

seamlessly shifted between dialects led me to question how people valued the voices he

used to address them. In Boots Riley’s newly released film, which centers on a black

man who discovers his “white voice”, the main character is forced to reckon with a

similar conflict.

Thanks to the breakout film, code-switching has re-emerged in America’s racial

discourse. When Einar Haugen introduced the term in 1954, he sought to describe the

fluid nature with which multilingual people moved between languages. Since then, the

term has expanded to capture how individuals adjust all forms of communication and

expression based on their audience. Whether you’re a bilingual Puerto Rican seamlessly

switching between Spanish and English, or you’re simply addressing your grandparents

with added formalities, you’re code-switching. But Sorry to Bother You, a fantastical

dystopian satire, paints a darker picture of this natural linguistic technique.

Soon after the main character, Cassius Green, begins a new job as a telemarketer – and

fails to make a single sale – a black co-worker offers a radical suggestion: “Let me give

you a tip. You wanna make some money here? Use your white voice.” Cassius’s new

white voice quickly becomes his greatest asset.

Sorry to Bother You then uses Cassius’s surreal code-switching to illustrate the tragedy

of assimilation, but the reality of the linguistic act is far more
complex. And as a tool for

social mobility – or in the case of black people, a tool for survival – it must be examined

for both its power and potential peril.

From navigating job interviews to ingratiating oneself with clientele, there are countless

reasons people of color code-switch in white spaces. But historically, code-switching has

served as a defense against linguistic discrimination: a form of bias that is partially

implicit. In one study, the psycholinguist Shiri Lev-

Ari determined that we’re “less likely to believe something if it’s said with a foreign

accent”. Lev-Ari also found that trust decreases when exposed to non- native languages,

meaning our brains are predisposed to unconscious, linguistic discrimination. But even

for black people who are native English speakers, dialectic discrimination abounds.

During a 1999 study, the black researcher and linguist John Baugh sought to test the

severity of such discrimination. To do so, he called landlords across California to inquire

about housing opportunities while alternating between “African American vernacular

English” (AAVE), “Chicano English”, and “standard American English”. In doing so, he

found that in predominantly white areas of California such as Palo Alto, San Francisco

and Woodside, standard English resulted in more “confirmed appointments to view

apartments advertised” by up to 50%. Therefore, in the search for modern essentials like

housing, code- switching can provide access often denied to black people. This is why

the comedian Dave Chappelle – who incorporates a satirical white voice into his standup

routines – once said: “Every black American is bilingual. All of us. We speak street

vernacular, and we speak job interview.”

But despite our best comedic efforts, code-switching, now more than ever, is less than a

laughing matter. Police brutality, which has resulted in unarmed black men being killed

by police at 3.49 times the rate of unarmed white men, has rendered one’s blackness a

perpetual signifier of danger. To date, black people have been killed by police for

walking to their apartment, carrying a toy

gun, staring, and many other harmless acts too ordinary to be worthy of death. When

black people can be killed for simply being themselves, code-switching presents itself as

a form of self-protection.

The harsh reality of linguistic profiling has even spurred educators to bring code-

switching into the classroom. In 2014, the University of Michigan professor Holly Craig

introduced Toggle Talk, which provided lesson plans intended to help students

acknowledge and shift between the English spoken in their homes and standard

“academic” English. On one hand, the Toggle Talk curriculum legitimizes AAVE as a

true dialect with its own syntactical rules and standards. On the other, it risks

formalizing a hierarchy between traditionally white and black speech patterns,

encouraging students as young as five to view one as more beneficial than the other.

Instead, we should be teaching black children – and all children from communities

unconstrained by standard English – to love their most natural forms of expression.

Rather than criticizing code-switching, we should criticize the conditions under which it

occurs. After all, for black people, loving ourselves means loving the way we express

ourselves to each other – cool in a way only black people can be cool.

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When you’ve read these articles, watch the clips at the links below [Note: strong and racially- charged language in both clips]: Trailer: Sorry to Bother You (2018) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQKiRpiVRQM Vice News interview with Boots Riley and Lakeith Stanfield on “the White Voice” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ceG3v5a4Yg