Code Switching and Culture Series: On Short Skirts and Black Vernacular English, Making Choices from the Intersection

Since we've been discussing code switching and culture on this blog, I wanted to share a post I published previously on my personal blog Balancing Jane. Check out the other posts in the series here and here. And if you have something you would like to add to the conversation, please let us know!

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"That student's skirt is too short. You should tell her. It could be a distraction."

Sigh.

I am an educator, and I want all of my students to be successful, but I understand that "success" is not a one-size-fits-all path. Besides, I am not just an educator. I am also a feminist. I am a rhetorician.

So when someone starts telling me that it's my job as an educator to interfere in my students' personal communicative choices, I have to make decisions from the intersections.

Let's Discuss Code Switching and Culture Series: Hallie Quinn Brown

The term code switching gained prominence in the last few decades due to the work of theorist Lisa Delpit and other scholars of linguistics, rhetoric and literacy.  The concept, however, has existed in U.S. educational arenas for at least a century.

In the United States, Hallie Quinn Brown, an educator at Wilberforce University at the turn of the 20th century, was one pioneer of the acceptability of alternative English vernaculars. Brown is credited with infusing her work as an orator and elocutionist with the African-American vernacular.  

Hallie Quinn Brown

Let's Discuss Code Switching and Culture

I grew up in a code-switching environment in Dallas, Texas. 

I used to puzzle over the Arabic language on labels of my family's Arabic pantry staples; for example, Ziyad Brothers brand of Tahini.

I knew the term Tex-Mex as an identity. The term Tex-Mex reflects a synthesis of Mexican and Texan traditions that result in a unique, vibrant culture.  

 And in Dallas, Texas, who can forget Big Tex at the State Fair, giving us a hearty, cowboy-friendly welcome?  Howdy Ya'll!

These linguistic curios represent subcultural and behavioral norms.

 If we think about it, most of us come from a code-switching environment. Our codes just reside in varying distances from our mainstream American-English code. From my American mother and grandmother, I learned linguistic novelties that most likely hailed from the fields of Alabama where my great-grandmother was from. Active kids were "little fireanzies" (little and full of frenzy) and during moments of levity or chaos we often wondered "what in the sam hill  is going on?!"  I noticed my maternal grandmother and mother liked to add words in-between the syllables of other words; for example, "I guaran (insert favorite word here) tee you" as in "I guaranDARN tee you." 

Reading: Do You Speak American?

PBS has a great resource on different dialects in American English. There are a lot of different entry points into the material, but one way to break it up and share it with students is to assign the section on "American Varieties" as reading. Students could then choose two or three of the different dialects to explore in more detail: Appalachian English, AAVE, Californian, Cajun, Chicano, Lumbee, Midwest, New York City, Pacific Northwest, Pittsburghese, Smoky Mountains, Spanglish, Southern, and Texan.

Since many of these individual sections are written by sociolinguists, some of the language and discussion of dialectical variations can be rather technical and dense. In order to help students discuss their readings in more detail, there are a variety of sources that could be brought into the classroom to help illustrate the way dialects work.