Code Switching In The Evolving Self

Everyone in this world is in some way connected to a community. Each community is filled with many different people with many different backgrounds and many different personalities that make that community the way it is. The community that people are in is just a little part of a person’s identity. A community shapes people into the people they are today, they learn who they are through there community. The community that I am in at school is way different than how I am with my horses at home. I have to communicate in a whole different way to people at school than when I am with my horses. Being a part of these two communities helps me to form my identity. In the essay “The Evolving Self” written by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi he talks about

In the essay “From Outside, In”, written by Barbara Mellix she talks about this concept of code-switching to adapt to her society. Code- switching is the process of switching back and forth from two different languages in a conversation. Mellix also uses the concept called transcendence. Transcendence is when someone goes beyond their ordinary limits, or one being superior. She uses this concept when she is talking to the police officer she has to go beyond her limits when she speaks standard English. It is impossible to form an identity without being a member of a community because someone’s identity is formed by the community they are a part of it can help people form their morals and beliefs. Memberships in multiple communities create multiple identities because one community might have different beliefs than another. However, it is necessary for people to be members of multiple communities in order to reach their full potential because people should not base their beliefs on just one thing in

According to Csikszentmihalyi, for our brains not to get overloaded, we see things as a whole, instead of the parts that make it up. For example, our ocean is made up of thousands of water molecules, yet we do not see every water molecule that the ocean is made up of. What we do see is the result of what water molecules do. Csikszentmihalyi states, “The self is such a reification, and certainly one of the most significant ones. We usually think of it as a force, a spark, an inner flame with invisible integrity. Yet, from what we know now, the self is more in the nature of a figment of the imagination, something we create to account for the multiplicity of impressions, emotions, thoughts, and feelings that the brain records in consciousness” (216). We can say the same thing about the self, when we look at a person we do not see all the qualities or molecules that make up that oneself, we just see that person them self. We see things but not for what they truly are we only see a part of the whole. We do not know what their morals or beliefs we do not know there back grounds that make them who they are. In Mellix’s case she has to use code-switching in a whole different way. She had to switch back and forth between the standard English that the Caucasians used to the black English that the African American’s used.