Code Switching

            Some people may not realize that they code switch until it is brought up to them.  Code switching is when you talk in one “voice” to certain people and another to others.  In the article “How Code-Switching Explains The World” by Gene Demby he gives a very common example of code switching.  Demby states, “You drop the g's at the end of your verbs. Your previously undetectable accent — your easy Southern drawl or your sing-songy Caribbean lilt or your Spanish-inflected vowels or your New Yawker — is suddenly turned way, way up. You rush your mom or whomever off the phone in some less formal syntax ("Yo, I'mma holler at you later,"), hang up and get back to work”.  This is very common in many people.  Even though I don’t think I code switch that much I know I do at times.  I know when texting friends I use abbreviations or shorthand, but when I’m texting an adult or say my boss I never use abbreviations.  I agree with the statement “We’re hop-scotching between different cultural and linguistic spaces and different parts of our own identities- sometimes within a single interaction” by Demby.  It states that people code switch when they are put in different situations based on culture, linguistics, race, and ethnicity.  In the video of President Obama in the restaurant it first shows that he can be a regular guy just like everyone else.  It also shows that when he is in a different atmosphere, people of his own race for example in this video, he even code switches.  He knows when it is appropriate to speak in some may call it, slang, and when it’s not. 

            I know of one example in code switching in my life before I knew “code switching” was even a thing.  A friend of mine is from England and moved here when she was little.  She can speak perfect English with no accent because she moved when she was little.  But when she is around her family or calls them on the phone she has a heavy accent.  In her mind she does it without thinking because she is so used to it.  I think it is kind of cool that she can do this because she doesn’t loose her culture from where she was born, but she can also adapt to the people and culture she lives in now.

            Code switching can happen not only when speaking but it can also happen with sign language.  Just like there are different languages in the world and different dialects, there are also different types of sign language.  In the article “Sign language that African Americans use is different from that of whites” by Frances Stead Sellers, she explains that there is a difference between black ASL and “mainstream” ASL.  Carolyn McCaskill is a black deaf woman that realized there is a big difference between the two when going to a deaf white school.  She had to learn a new version of sign language at school, but then know how to code switch when she was back with her family and friends. 

            No one thinks that people who use sign language would have to code switch, but just like English, French, and Spanish, sign language has different dialects that everyone speaks all around the world.