Code Switching
“What’s Up, Amigo”

We switch between slang, dialect and technical jargon throughout our day – depending on the situation we find ourselves in. It sounds banal, but there’s even a specialist term for this phenomenon: code switching. But ultimately it’s about far more than language.
 

By Petra Schönhöfer

When Barack Obama visited the locker room of the United States national basketball team in 2012 to congratulate them, a video was made that became a social media hit: in the film, Obama shakes hands very formally with the white coach – yet greets the Black NBA player Kevin Durant with an exuberant handclasp. The clip went viral, and now – ten years on – a TikTok by a Black worker (@kajslare4) highlights the “fakeness” of People of Colour in the workplace: Black employees are “walking fake, talking fake, wearing some stuff they ain’t used to wearing – to get work done, keep your benefits, and have your money right,” explains @kajslare4. “Black people be so fake at work and I love it.”

Both these articles brought the subject of code switching into the public debate: the concept describes how we switch language, behaviour or even appearance depending on social context. Sometimes we use slang in our speech, sometimes dialect, we dress formally in one context and wear sports clothing in another. Even Barack Obama sometimes greets with a formal handshake, and others with a chummy handclasp.

“What’s Up, Amigo?”

But the concept of code switching is significantly older than the pictures of Obama or the clip on Tiktok. And to begin with it didn’t have a great deal to do with greeting rituals either: it was coined as a specialist term in the field of linguistics by sociolinguist Einar Haugen in 1954. The researcher used it to describe the phenomenon in which bilingual speakers sometimes incorporate words from a different language into their speech.

Code switching can fulfil a variety of functions here: speakers can use code switching to exclude other people from the conversation or integrate them into it – that would be the direct function. But sometimes speakers also use terms or entire sentences in their native language in order to express their identity: “Here in Colombia the Quinceañera is widely celebrated.” This is the expressive function. If speakers can’t find the right words in one language and therefore resort to the other language, it’s called the referential function: “We need this particular herb, not parsley but... cilantro (coriander)!” And finally there’s the metalinguistic function – when they articulate the main statement in their native language and tag a comment in a foreign language onto the end. That’s exactly what we’re doing for instance when we say: “What’s up amigo?” Or in sentences like: “Spanish property is a good investment, you say? Mucha suerte, mi amigo!”

Good to Know Who’s Babo

As a result of immigration and the associated language contact, such hybrid speech practices can be heard even in Germany today. A typical example of this is Kiezdeutsch, the language spoken by young migrants in Germany. It’s an ethnolect, in which it’s common to find code switching and loanwords from other languages. As language researcher Roland Kaehlbrandt explains, the phonetics of Kiezdeutsch often mirrors the origin languages of the parents, while articles and case endings are abandoned. Prepositions are used incorrectly or are likewise dropped: “Lass Bahnhof gehen (Let’s go station)!” The sentence word order can also often follow an Arabic or Turkish pattern, for instance. The song Chabos wissen, wer der Babo ist (i.e. the chavs know who’s boss) by rapper Haftbefehl can be used as a good example.

Although Kiezdeutsch often has the reputation of fuelling the demise of the German language, German scholar Heike Wiese of the Humboldt University in Berlin sets the record straight – Kiezdeutsch is not broken German. In fact it constitutes a new urban dialect of German. So we can also interpret the code switching used by Haftbefehl in his rap as a sign of special and exceptional expressiveness.

Turkish, Bosnian, Zazaish: Frankfurt rapper Haftbefehl incorporates expressions and codes from a variety of cultures into his lyrics – which earns him plenty of praise from the culture press. | Photo (detail): © picture alliance/dpa/Ole Spata

Schibboleths: Only for the Initiated

In the context of code switching, something called a shibboleth plays a role too. The word comes from Hebrew and literally translated it means ear of corn. But it’s used in the sense of password or test phrase for a unique linguistic feature. Anyone who pronounces it correctly identifies themselves as an adherent of a particular social group or even a region. For instance if someone shouts out “Alaaf” at the carnival parade in Düsseldorf, it’s immediately obvious that they are from the neighbouring city of Cologne. Anyone who doesn’t use the linguistic idiosyncrasy correctly on the other hand marks themselves out as an outsider. In a figurative sense, gestures or symbols can also become a shibboleth for insiders, such as the fish symbol as a sign of Christianity.

The concept of “code switching” has been the butt of criticism in the field of linguistics since the 2010s though. Terms like “metrolingualism”, “polylanguaging” and “translanguaging” emphasise not the “switch” between languages that are actually separate, but are based on a different understanding of language and multilingualism. The concept of translanguaging for example – in contrast to code switching – focuses on languages not being definable and self-contained. This radically challenges the assumption that languages are separate units: normality is more about dynamic language shifting.

The Double Consciousness

So although the concept is faltering on the linguistics scene, its meaning already extends outside the confines of language. The thing is, it isn’t just linguists who are interested in the idea of code switching: it also calls sociologists into action. For them it isn’t just expression through language that’s important, it’s the overall conduct – as we can see from the Obama example.

Even though he didn’t refer to it as such, American sociologist, historian and civil rights campaigner William Du Bois referred to this aspect of code switching back in 1903, when he discussed the dual identity of being Black and being American in his magnum opus The Souls of Black Folk:

“It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his two-ness, – an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.”

Assimilation or Social Competence?

Code switching became a strategy for Black people in order for them to be accorded equal rights in a white world, to receive recognition and to be successful. Even in 2019 a survey conducted by the Pew Research Center in Washington showed that 85 per cent of Black American adults find code switching necessary from time to time. In America it’s seen as a widespread phenomenon for Black parents to teach their children the rules of how to behave towards the police: be especially polite, speak clearly, don’t hide your hands. In this context, code switching is interpreted negatively as an assimilation: as an alignment of one social group to the oppression mechanisms of a dominant culture, whilst relinquishing their own culture.

However the current debate views code switching more as the capacity to mask and adapt to your own advantage. Someone else who supports this argument is Dionne Mahaffey, an American business psychologist and professor who became famous in the USA with a series of greetings cards especially for Black people. She doesn’t see code switching as an unauthentic version of the self, or anything like that. Instead she believes we’re simply using certain aspects of our identity instead of others, depending on the situation and circumstances. So code switching doesn’t necessarily have to be a deficit. It can also be interpreted as a form of social competence, depending on the context.