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Code Switching Essay

1239 Words5 Pages

In today’s society, it is evident that situations for Black individuals, being social would be intolerable and extremely difficult. Code-switching, by definition, “involves adjusting one’s style of speech, appearance, behaviour, and expression in ways that will optimize the comfort of others.” (McCluney et al.). Anyone can perform code-switching, but Black individuals use it more frequently than any other group. As portrayed in the novel The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas, Starr Carter uses code-switching to fit in a social group of people, to mitigate stereotypical thoughts and assumptions of others, and to avoid mistreatment from white cops. Clearly, code-switching is a vital skill that is essential for Black individuals to master in order to …show more content…

As noted by Chavarria (2020), code-switching can signal shared identities, values, and experiences that can lead to feelings of belonging within a particular social group. For instance, in The Hate U Give, Starr code-switches to fit in with her African American friends and family in Garden Heights by using African Vernacular English (AVE). Starr presents herself as a different person when at Garden Heights and Williamson: “Williamson Starr doesn't use slang—if a rapper would say it, she doesn't say it, even if her white friends do. Slang makes them cool. Slang makes her “hood.” Williamson Starr holds her tongue when people piss her off so nobody will think she's the “angry black girl.” [...] Basically, Williamson Starr doesn't give anyone a reason to call her ghetto. (Thomas, …show more content…

Maverick is speaking from first-hand experience and only wants his children to be safe. He advises Starr to use “big words” and “proper English” when talking to white cops, even though they use a different dialect at home. Effectively, Maverick uses code-switching as a way to suppress systemic bias within the mind of white cops to ensure safety. By code-switching their language and behaviour, Black individuals can significantly reduce the risk of being victims of police mistreatment stemming from stereotypical thoughts and biases within white

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Darieck Scott argues in Extravagant Abjection: Blackeness, Power, and Sexuuality in the African American Literary Imagination that Blackness is code and functions like any other language (95). Language bridges the gap between the thoughts and feelings of individuals and the rest of the world. While people usually think of languages as something that is spoken or read, language extends beyond the verbal and textual. One frequently overlooked example is body language. While each individual has a unique body language that may depend on their gender, age, race, ability, or any number of factors, certain standards remain for the interpretation of body language.

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Young’s definition of code switching is a transition or deliberate changing of a certain style of language use to another. In the article, Young argues that the traditional unspoken bias towards code switching that is expected at school and/or in the workplace, is discriminatory

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In the novel, The Hate U Give, by Angie Thomas, Thomas uses symbols and characterization to convey how racial profiling and police brutality detrimentally divide a community and cause injustice. Thomas uses symbols to convey racial profiling, police brutality, and the abuse of power against African American people. While at a high school party, Starr Carter meets an old family friend, Khalil Harris. That is until gunshots break out and Khalil offers to drive Starr home.

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As a result of having to adopt a completely new and unfamiliar language quickly, as a mechanism of survival, African slaves developed a pidgin that coexist within the present Black community. A pidgin language possesses syntactic, grammatical, and phonological rules while ridding itself of the superficial aspects of language (Smitherman, 192). According to Zeigler and Sonubi, African American English (AAE) is an example of decreolization, a creole language that has moved away from its original form towards the linguistic patterns of the majority language (592). This decreolization is a result of the general disapproval of the dialect and is evident in the frequency of code switching that is present among AAE speakers.

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Rough Draft Code-switching generates new skills without even realizing. People who code-switch tend to exert their minds learning more than those who aren’t able to use code switching. There are different occasions where Thomas uses code-switching in the book Losing My Cool, and these actions were performed without the intent. While Thomas was around people who believed in the “hip-hop culture”, but he is critically thinking about the problems that the hip-hop culture could lead. However, the influence of his father was provoking Thomas to think more deeply about making the right decision by himself.

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When people switch from two types of languages or dialects often, it is common using code-switching without any consent. For example, in the article Five Reasons Why People Code-Switch, the author, Matt Thompson states, “folks would slip into a different language or accent without even realizing it or intending to do it”. This means individuals with code-switching interactions, commonly use their other language or dialect to express with different people with no intent to code-switch. In the same way, Thomas operates his own code-switching techniques to broaden the possibilities to fit in with the other black kids. Nevertheless, Thomas also uses his code-switching techniques to intimidate other kids in his

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It was once believed that the languages that the Africans spoke varied drastically from region to region but in reality they were “local variations of a deeper-lying structural similarity” (Herkovits 79). This similarity allowed communicating in the New World to be easier than if the languages were all completely linguistically independent, “whether Negro speech employs English or French or Spanish or Portuguese vocabulary, the identical constructions found over all the New World can only be regarded as a reflection of the underlying similarities in grammar and idiom, which, in turn, are common to the West African Sudanese tongues” (80). Language then became an important part of African American culture, whether it be a “secret” language used to help slaves escape, or to tell stories and folklore to children to encourage and motivate them, or express African proverbs from generation to generation. There has been many times when other races seem not to understand what African Americans are saying because of the slang terms we create that then become popular terms, most recently has been the phrases “on fleek” and “twerking”, to name a few examples. Being proficient in verbal arts was prized in Africa and now a value has been placed on verbal expression in today’s culture through riddles and through preaching and teaching (Williams

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Starr code-switches as a means to discredit beliefs that certain characteristics are fixed and inborn to particular groups, including the implied notions that African Americans are more violent, unruly, and not safe to be around, ideas that are commonly portrayed through mainstream media. She also attempts to subvert the association of minority cultures with disorder, primitiveness, backwardness, and violence. Starr’s double consciousness risks the likelihood of her to express a unified identity, demonstrating a

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Furthermore, this may lead to disruptive behavior as the teacher cannot demand good behavior from their learners and thus there will not be enough time to teach a certain subject if all the time spent is on trying to get their learners to work (Rodrigo: 2016). Another negative aspect of code-switching is miscommunication and misinterpreting what has been said. This could lead to a teacher being offensive to learners if a phrase or sentence is used incorrectly and thus diminishing the professional relationship between students and teachers. For example, a teacher might say a phrase in another language but a student could take the phrase out of context, which may cause many problems.

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