[My friend Diane, who lives in Singapore and is married to an Australian man, and I have been discussing code switching over e-mail for the past few weeks.  She suggested it as a post topic for me, but I haven’t had an encounter recently that offers the richness of perspective that I got out of my discussion with her.  With her permission, I’ve edited and reproduced it here.]

Diane:

I have been thinking about code switching lately because of NPR’s great blog launched in April. Their definition of code switch is expansive and interesting, but here’s a snippet:  “In linguistics, “code-switching” means mixing languages or patterns of speech in conversation. But as our blog host Gene Demby explains: ‘We’re looking at code-switching a little more broadly. Many of us subtly, reflexively change the way we express ourselves all the time. We’re hop-scotching between different cultural and linguistic spaces and different parts of our own identities — sometimes within a single interaction.’”

I think most of us think of code switching as a dance that some people have to do (want to do?) to ‘fit in’ .. mostly when they encounter differences of race … Obama adding a bit of lilt to his tone in front of black audiences, or taking a bit of lilt out for white ones… and it’s often viewed as negative and alienating… painful to have to deny part of who you are to fit with what others think you are (or should be).

In this terrain, as a member of the US’s racial majority all I can do is acknowledge that I don’t know what that’s like, and listen to my friends who do, and learn.

To learn, and to think. So I’ve been thinking about this broader definition and where in my life I might find something to relate to… what about the extra y’alls that would creep in when I’d visit my grandparents from rural Virginia? Or how Australian I’m starting to sound when I talk to our (mostly) Aussie friends? I use different words, different intonation… etc. Except I DON’T try to drop my Rs. Melbourne is still MelbouRne to me… somehow it feels like dropping that R wouldn’t be ‘adjusting to find common ground’, it would be pretending to be someone I’m not (or probably more rightly someone that they ARE). I also think people “switch” along socio-economic lines. People who “marry up,” families that successfully improve their lot in life… when I was single I felt like I would switch a bit around married friends….

I think you’d be a very interesting person to write on this subject – you’ve been to SO many places, worked and lived in so many contexts, had to tell people not to try their bad Korean… you get the gist!

Charlotte:

The code switching thing is really interesting. I’ll have to think about it a little longer and see what happens when I start typing. That Melbou(R)ne thing used to drive me crazy – it seemed like it was the only word that American expats in Oz would try to pronounce like Aussies, and I couldn’t figure out why. After reading and thinking about your e-mail, I think it’s because it seemed too self-aware, too intentional. I guess I perceive intentional code switching as somehow not genuine. I wonder how African-Americans feel when we co-opt their speech rhythms and vocabulary in a mocking way. It doesn’t happen all the time, but you can see it when it does. Feels disrespectful when it’s mocking.

I’ve noticed that I say y’all more frequently in Texas; when I lived in DC and traveled north of the Mason-Dixon line for the firm, I started switching to “you guys,” just because there’s some stigma attached to y’all, that it’s only used by southerners, who are obviously dumb because of their accents. I’ve also noticed that I sound more Texan when I’m drunk and/or angry. Sometimes, when I’m annoyed at the parochialism of Californians, I’ll purposefully sound more Texan around them.

Diane:

Yes – self aware, intentional… it’s like the minute you’re trying, people can sense it… or you sense it yourself. Do you remember NB from the firm? She and I got on like a house on fire -she’s awesome (I probably think this since we had near-identical Meyers Briggs scores). Anyway she’s black, and once told me she appreciated that I didn’t try. (She had a friend of Puerto Rican descent who tried to say ‘oh, I’m latina, we have the same problems’.. and it pissed NB off. She was mostly venting about the other friend, but by way of contrast she said she appreciated that I acknowledged the figurative “places I couldn’t go, or lines I couldn’t cross” and that I would just acknowledge it.

Anyhoo, expanding beyond that I think the whole concept of adapting to where you are, who you are with, to the part of you that you want to bring forward… that is interesting…. I rarely think about being a southern woman (fist bump), but I can get extremely passionate about manners, sending thank you notes, my china pattern (still yet to be picked out, to my dismay)… and how appalling it is that Asian men in Singapore do not stand aside to let me off the elevator first. (WTF?)

So yeah… I’m ruminating on how to think about the act of bringing parts of yourself to the fore, to find common ground, to imply or directly share values… that bit. It can be nice? Helpful? Certainly using “y’all” helped me to thaw frosty conversations with clients who DID NOT care for that northerner who had been in their office last.  As you see it’s all nebulous but very interesting – especially for world travelers. What is good about code switching? Does it enrich you? Can it be bad? To whom? To your own sense of identity? To others?

Charlotte:

I never met NB, but I understand what she’s saying – it’s a version of that hilarious video with the clueless white dude talking about all the Asian things that he likes. My college roommate told me an interesting story about Whoopi Goldberg and Patrick Stewart being really good friends. Apparently, when he was with Whoopi’s African American friends, he would use their vocabulary, but still use his own voice, and apparently, they loved it. He was doing it to fit in, but he wasn’t doing it offensively or with bad intent, and so instead of being insulted, they welcomed him with open arms.

To your point of figuring out which part of yourself to bring forward, I’m often annoyed at myself for code switching, whether intentional or unintentional. It’s too hard to try to be different for everyone, and it reminds me of a time when I was younger when I thought I had to change who I was to fit in. It’s EXHAUSTING to change who you are to fit in. But maybe code switching is less about trying to change yourself and more about the core of what good manners are — making the people you’re with more comfortable. I like your point about using it to find common ground or to signal shared values.

[Expect to see more on code switching in future posts; it’s come in handy in my work life, but I’m trying to be aware of the instances when I do it.  If you have experiences in this yourself, please tell me about them in the comments.  It’s a fascinating topic, especially in light of what’s happened recently with the Trayvon Martin trial and KTVU’s Asiana pilot name “joke”/Patton Oswalt’s reply “joke.”]