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Persuasive Essay On Code Switching

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Imagine talking to your African American friends. You, as an African American, ask them a simple question with the words “guys” in it. They look like they had just seen a ghost. Since you have been going to a mostly white school, you don’t think anything of this, but what you don’t understand is this word is unacceptable in their community. They may not treat you the same anymore or make fun of you (Deggans). Because of this story and many others like it, it is clearly a useful tool to be able to code switch. Code switching is used in social conversations, work-related encounters, and education. While code switching helps improve chances of having success in the real world, not everyone knows how to code switch effectively.
Code switching affects how students and adults view each other in different cultures depending on how much they know about each other's background. Kids are around many different cultured students, and they have to make sure not to offend anyone but also do this effortlessly. Since communities are so diverse, kids can sometimes automatically just pick up on different culture norms. According to Deggans, Boston kids use more of an accent when they are around people from the same place as them. For kids living in a community with only one culture, they find that it’s quite a struggle to meet new people in college since they aren’t familiar with other kids backgrounds. Even adults as important as Barack Obama use code switching. When Obama was giving a

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