Code-switching: An Essential Skill For Bilinguals Essay

“Our culture, our traditions, our languages are the foundations upon which we build our identity.” - Unknown. Bilingualism has many different interpretations and definitions and can cause problems in the community or unite it. The concept of bilingualism represents several different ideas, two writers, Martin Espada and Richard Rodriguez share in their essays their personal stories about being immersed into the English culture and learning the language. They share their views of what bilingualism means to them personally and make arguments about the importance of the concept. The two essayists bring awareness to the major role bilingualism plays in the communities today and highlight the effects of disagreements between cultural groups.

I will get into the Linguistic Double Consciousness,” this article is about the mindset and ideologies and also it gets into code meshing. From my understand on this article its getting that a lot of African Americans have to switch up when they are speaking to a Caucasian person and they also have to mind how people are thinking of their behaviors, for example this article points how African Americans have to code mesh when it comes to school they are more likely have to do things that they may not be very use to. This would mean if an African American kid is thought different when they are at home it’s going to be harder for them to mesh in the classroom with other none blacks.

“Our culture, our traditions, our languages are the foundations upon which we build our identity.” - Unknown. The concept of bilingualism represents several different ideas, two writers share their personal stories about learning being immersed into the English culture and learning the language. They both share their views of what Bilingualism means to them personally and make arguments about the importance of the concept.

In America, there is a predominant growth in multiple ethnicities and cultural backgrounds; leading to the usage of multiple languages in the American culture. There is a growing need for many people to learn and utilize multiple languages within the workplace and within one 's own personal life. The importance of bilingualism and the knowledge of multiple languages is ever increasing, and therefore becoming more important for the younger generations. The push for knowing multiple languages and becoming bilingual has many potential negative and positive effects.

Movements for bilingual education rose in 1974 with the Equal Education Opportunity Act and Bingual Education Act, which ordered federally funded schools to meet special educational needs for students not proficient in English. Unfortunately, dropout rates and lack of English-language proficiency alarmed the states that these bilingual programs were not efficent. Because of this, arguments between English-only advocates and supporters of bilingual educations emerged. Articles such as the New York Times have proclaimed the failures of bilingual education. One cause could be the resistance of immigrants from English language acquisition, who hold tight onto their first language and culture. Despite this, studies show that generations

Code switching is a part of everyone’s daily life. Gloria Anzaldua expressed how she used code switching in her story “How to Tame a Wild Tongue.” Anzaldua grew up in Texas, near the Mexico border, to a Mexican-American family. Her family primarily spoke Spanish, but while at school and in the community, they had to speak English, the accepted language of America (Anzaldua 530). Anzaldua did not want her native language to die, so she wrote “How to Tame a Wild Tongue” to express her feelings, and to show how code switching affected her everyday life. In the story, Anzaldua expressed that depending on who she was talking to,

In this essay, June Jordan primarily focuses on explaining what Black English and how it’s become oppressed by Caucasian Americans throughout the years. Jordan believes African Americans have been raised to modify Black English to Standard English in order to be accepted into the societal and scholarly norms of America. Jordan states early on her essay, “As we learn our way around this environment, either we hide our original word habits,or we completely

In the begging of the chapter, Anzaldúa decides to incorporate the use of code switching to show how both languages are a

With a background affected tremendously by the dark history of African Americans, language has become a significant problem to what the term Black English really means to different people. In If Black Language Isn’t a Language, Then Tell Me, What Is, James Baldwin attempts to analyze what a language really means and how Black English evolved to fulfill an important role for Americans. Black English sounds proper to blacks, but to whites it may not be a proper use of language. Throughout this essay, Baldwin uses a specific tone and relates to his audience by opening his mind to both emotion and logic while still upholding his credibility. Baldwin tries to persuade the audience to respect the language of Black English using his personal experience. The history of different languages mentioned in the essay is used to help convince the audience of thinking about the term language from a new perspective. Whites and Blacks both may speak the same language, but that does not mean that they understand each other because the language can be spoken in different matters. As Baldwin states, “The white man could not possibly understand, and that, indeed, he cannot understand, until today”. A white man or black man had to be careful about the words they used in front of each other because some words would be considered offensive for one another. Baldwin uses African American language and culture to reveal the impact that the English language Americans use has created.

In Richard Rodriguez's essay , “ Aria: A Memoir of a Bilingual Childhood ” he writes about how he struggled as a child who only spoke Spanish language but lives in a society where the “public” language is English . He believes that speaking proper English will somehow help him fit into society and find his “true” identity. Throughout the essay he contrast the Spanish language identity and English language identity. As a young boy, Rodriguez finds consolation and safety in his home where they only speak Spanish. He feels that he only has a true identity when he is at home surrounded by those who speak the same language as him . On the contrary , he becomes trapped and disoriented when not being able to speak / understand the English language . He feels as if he is not part of “their world” and has no identity in society. By comparing and contrasting Spanish language identity and English language identity . Rodriguez's essay is an example that speaking different languages should not make anyone choose an identity . In fact being able to speak and understand multiple languages in his case Spanish and English makes the language a part of his identity, but with two different sides .

Although bilingual education has some merit, avoiding the implementation of the more popular language of a community is detrimental to the incorporation of mostly you people in society and hinders their ability to develop a keen sense of identity. For example, "language gets learned as it gets used (7).” In other words, one masters the language as he speaks it. Speaking and language skills tend to sharpen if they are used regularly. Rodriguez argues that learning both languages and using them rather than leaving one begins to lead to a better sense of identity and freedom. But according to Rodriguez it makes one become insecure, growing up

In learning and speaking many different languages, the Narrator finds only another way to hide from his true identity. The metaphor of passing is also used to demonstrate the idea of not belonging. “I spoke better Spanish than many of the Cuban workmen at the factory” (73). In society, being able to communicate through speech is one way to assimilate more easily into a community. By speaking four languages by the novel’s end, the Narrator’s experience mirrors that of a person who does not belong to any one community or people. Johnson offers a social criticism that highlights how, many times, people unnecessarily will do things to fit in, rather than be true to

Typically Black people who are accused of talking white don’t code switch back when talking to AAVE speakers giving off a sense of being too good, superior, or showing off.

Believe or not, code-switching is very common especially for an international student like me Because my first language is not English but Cantonese. Said by Matt Thompson, the author of Five Reasons Why People Code-Switch, “we want to fit in … to act or talk more like those around us.”. Studying abroad in Seattle with literally everything in English, rare can other understand me if I speak without code-switching in language. Nevertheless, my major is Computer Science. In the learning of CS, technical terms which often used by us are hardly understandable by the non-CS learner.

In this world, there are a lot of languages used to communicate. Nation and cultural diversity are a source of variation in the languages. The diversity of the language used by a particular group is a factor of the occurrence of bilingualism. According to Grosjean (1984, p. 1) bilingualism is the use of two or more languages. The proficiency of bilingualism may vary depending on the exposure to the other users of language and opportunities to use the language. It is one of the factors of replacement of the language. This phenomenon known as code switching, it can occur as a whole, the incorporating elements of other languages in the language being used, or the turn of a variation of a language. Based on Poplack (1980) theory code switching is the alternation of two languages within a single discourse, sentence or constituent. Garrett (2010, p. 11) said that code switching is the most powerful feature of informal communication. Code switching happens when speakers speak in one language into another language as example when they