When you mix words and phrases from two languages or dialects, or mix

standard and specialized vocabulary, you are __code-switching__. You can

code-switch to emphasize membership in a social, economic, regional,
ethnic or religious group, for example.

What Did He Just Say?

Have you ever watched a Bollywood movie? Whether old-style musicals with
lots of singing and dancing, or modern-style dramas, these movies can be
startling to a new viewer who isn't prepared to hear a stream of Hindi
interspersed with words and phrases in English. When I visited India, I heard
ordinary Indians speaking this same mix of a local language plus English,
one example of a phenomenon known as code-switching. Scientists
studying languages refer to individual languages, as well as dialects, jargon
and regionalisms, as different codes. Code-switching is a normal linguistic
frtion for people who speak multiple languages, or multiple dialects,
regionalisms and jargons. Many ethnic writers use code-switching in their
work, especially in fiction.

Code-switching occurs primarily in one of two ways: within a sentence

('Vamanos, you silly chicos.') or between sentences ('If y'all want me to, I
usta could build furniture. I might be able to again.'). In the first example,
the speaker inserted Spanish words into an English sentence. In the second
example, the person answered in Southern dialect - 'y'all' and 'usta could'
and then reverted to standard American English in the second sentence. It
is possible, but uncommon, to insert a second language's grammatical
structures into an individual word. This most frequently happens by adding
an English-style plural ending to a foreign word that is already plural. When
you learn about all the other forms of code-switching within a single
language, like specialized vocabulary and variants that convey income
disparity, among others, they also exist in the two most popular forms of
within a sentence and between sentences.

Why do people code-switch? Simple reasons include tiredness, being

overcome by emotions, or the need for specialized vocabulary. An English
speaker whose native language is Vietnamese might drop some Vietnamese
into her conversation at work immediately after a phone call in which she
discovers that a loved one has died.

Some code-switching involves specialized vocabulary. A Buddhist will code-

switch when conversing with another Buddhist, sprinkling sentences with
'bodhisattva' or 'samsara,' but will use inexact but standard American
English words like 'saint' and 'human existence' when talking to non-
Buddhists. An IT expert will use technical vocabulary at work and explain
new products using ordinary English when talking to family members.
People may also use code-switching to obscure information that they don't
want casual listeners to understand.

Do You Understand All the Meanings I

Just Sent You?
Most code-switching does not stem from these simple causes. Code-
switching allows people to communicate ideas without speaking those
ideas out loud, a process known as sending a meta-message (a message
about a message). If you say, 'I hate you,' while you smile or wink, the body
language is a meta-message that changes the meaning of the words.

Most commonly, meta-messaging conveys the message that you are or want
to be considered part of a group--or the opposite message of wanting to be
outside the group. Many Americans speak an ancestral language with
grandparents or tradition-minded coreligionists to convey their membership
in the ethnic, religious or social group, but they could also send this meta-
message by interspersing English with words and phrases from the
ancestral language. African-American doctors might speak standard
American English at work, to convey the meta-message that they want to be
perceived as competent, highly-educated professionals. They might also
code-switch with Black English words, phrases or grammatical structures
when talking to another African-American, to send two messages: the
professional competence of a physician added to the meta-message of a
shared cultural and ethnic heritage.

A high-income professional talking to a person of a lower socioeconomic

class might speak in impeccably-accurate American English, and
intersperse more complex words, or might use wealth-oriented specialty
dialect, like ROI and value index, when discussing ordinary topics that don't
require that dialect. All of these send the 'I am wealthier and more powerful
than you' message to the listener.

Have you ever been in these kinds of conversations? Most people

unconsciously understand the meta-messages of code-switching, even if
they don't know the term 'code-switching.'

Do We Code-Switch Consciously?
Do people who code-switch consciously choose to shift their word choices
to send a meta-message? The preponderance of the scientific evidence from
psychology, sociology and linguistics seems to support the idea that some
code-switching meta-messaging is unconscious while other meta-messaging
is very conscious, indeed. Two Native American faculty members in my
university department always switched from their native language to
English when I approached. This mid-sentence code-switch, accompanied
by a smile, communicated their invitation for me to join the conversation--
even when it was a subject, like sports, for which I had no opinion to
contribute! The meta-communication of welcome was conscious in this
case.
In other cases, the switches seem to be unconscious, as you saw in the
Vietnamese-American example earlier.

You have almost certainly engaged in code-switching yourself, at least

occasionally, during your lifetime, whether you knew the technical term or
not. The meta-messages of code-switching help us to fine-tune our
communication with each other, and to avoid unnecessary miscues--and
that clarity is the ultimate goal of all human communication!

Summary
A speaker may mix words, phrases or sentences from one language into a
communication that primarily relies on the vocabulary and grammatical
rules of a second language, in a process called code-switching. A code-
switch can also involve regional and other dialects and specialized jargon.
Speakers and writers use code-switching to emphasize membership in a
social, economic, regional, ethnic or religious group, or to signal the
opposite message. Code-switching appears to be either conscious or
unconscious, following different mechanisms in different contexts.
Scientists tell us that code-switching is a normal form of communication for
speakers and writers.