Reading Questions for January 23rd Name Packet of short readi.docx

Reading Questions for January 23rd Name:
Packet of short readings on code-switching, various authors.
Vocabulary: Code-switching, Crossing
1. Have you ever code-switched, even if it’s just between a
more casual and a more formal way of speaking? If you do so
often, pick one example and briefly describe it. What was your
reason for doing so—does it match the reasons listed in the first
article (‘Five Reasons Why People Code-Switch’)?
2. The third and fourth articles (from The Washington Post and
the Guardian) both shed further light on the reasons why people
might code-switch and also some of the perils. What are some
of the downsides or social dangers of the practice?
3. In class I described crossing as the linguistic version of
cultural appropriation, but Sociolinguist Ben Rampton, who
coined the term, had a somewhat different – and perhaps more
optimistic—take on the practice. How did he interpret the social
meaning of crossing?
4. What is the social significance of the ‘white voice,’
according to Boots Riley, director of the film ‘Sorry to Bother
You’? Is it meant to be a straightforward, accurate
representation of how actual white people talk, or is there
something more?

[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.)
https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2013/04/13/177126294
/five-reasons-why-people-code-switch
http://www.npr.org/blogs/codeswitch/2013/04/08/176064688/ho
w-code-switching-explains-the-world
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=lizard%20bra
in
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
http://www.pbs.org/speak/speech/prestige/crossing/
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?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/whats-up-with-
that-white-voice-the-tricky-art-of-linguistic-code-
switching/2018/07/06/f083e34e-8044-11e8-bb6b-
c1cb691f1402_story.html?utm_term=.f23bbcc39a08
“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
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/jul/25/sorry-to-bother-
you-white-voice-code-switching
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.
_____________________________________________________
_______
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
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQKiRpiVRQM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ceG3v5a4YgFive Reasons
Why People Code-Switch
Reading Questions January 16th Name:
1. What are a few (2-3) of the distinctive words, phrases, or
other linguistic features of HHNL that are mentioned or
demonstrated in the article, and what do they mean?
2. What are some specific linguistic practices or routines

associated with HHNL?
3. What are a few (2-3) of the key ideas, values and
perspectives about language itself that Alim says are part of Hip
Hop culture?
4. Does anything about this article strike you as different from
the standard academic article format we’ve read many examples
of in this class? Why do you think Alim has chosen to write in
this way?

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