Harris Gonna Code Switch

The New York Times ^ | Aug. 15, 2024, 3:00 p.m. ET | John McWhorter

[E. Pluribus Unum]

Traditionally linguists have bemoaned the fact that the general public knows little of what we do because the subject isn’t taught in schools. But that has changed over the past 20 years or so, as the internet and especially social media have been so effective at getting the word out. I have rejoiced to see the public becoming ever more hip to the fact that language always changes, that you aren’t handicapping your child by raising them to be bilingual, that the way I just used “them” does not spell the fall of our Republic.

Twenty years ago I never thought I would hear the term “code-switching” used as widely as it now is beyond the halls of academe. Code-switching is perhaps best known in reference to alternating between different languages, such as English and Spanish. However, the same concept applies to different dialects of the same language, such as between a standard dialect and a colloquial one. But as glad as I am to see this, my heart sinks at the way people are mocking Vice President Kamala Harris for code-switching according to the audience she is speaking to. Barack Obama attracted criticism for doing the same thing back in the aughts; I hoped we had gotten past this.

Harris does this readily. In an address in Atlanta responding to “Lock him up” calls about Donald Trump, she said, “The courts are gonna handle that,” later working up the crowd by referring in pep-talk style to “Novem-buh.” In a speech in Michigan she mentioned that “We have fun doin’ hard work.” Some of her switching is simply to good old colloquial American — gonna, doin’ — but at other times, especially for heavily Black audiences like the one in Atlanta, she switches into Black English...

[DouglasKC]

The tone of the article is she’s smart and savvy for doing this. Can you imagine of trump did it? He would be a racist and they would equate it to wearing blackface.

[Salman]

The terminology “code switching” may be new, but I remember Nelson Rockefeller making speeches where he sounded like a woiking class Noo Yawker. But his brother David kept the New England prep school accent.

[irishjuggler]

Do you dispute these points made in the Smithsonian piece?

“...What is more… ‘Ich bin ein Berliner’ is not only correct but the one and only correct way of expressing in German what the President intended to say,” he wrote.

While it is true that a Berliner is a word for jelly donut, it’s not a term that was used in the area surrounding Berlin, which preferred the word Pfannkucken...”

Bottom line... the jelly doughnut story was fake news. The fact that it’s widely believed does not make it any less fake.

[Tommy Revolts]

What’s we is gonna do?

[Governor Dinwiddie]

I saw that walking vessel of VD talking on TV yesterday, trying to talk
"gangsta" and "ghetto". It was cringe worthy. And then there's that cackle. Ouch!

[who_would_fardels_bear]

Is she switching to Python because she is a snake, or BASIC because that’s about all she can handle?

[heavy metal]

code switching is the politically correct definition of chameleon...

[Alas Babylon!]

Hillary Clinton’s fake/phony/lousy “I don’t feel noways tired.”

Hey Leftists, what ever happened to cultural appropriation?

Answer: Only applies when Republicans do it.

For the Left, EVERYTHING is political.

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

Granted, no one would have thought it meant “a donut”.

I have had this discussions with native Germans, so I will dismiss the Smithsonian (Motto: Often wrong, never in doubt) article. I am not saying it is wrong, but if I enter the following expression in google translate:

I am a Berliner
I am Berliner

it translates as

Ich bin Berliner
Ich bin Berliner

no distinction.

Same with

I am an American
I am American

Ich bin Amerikaner
Ich bin Amerikaner

no distinction.

use of the indefinite article is strained, unnatural but not wrong.

I spent 18 months in Germany, and speak a little German. To my ear (not at all native) “Ich bin ein Amerikaner” sounds off, wrong. One indicates nationality with an adjective, not a noun. Amerikaner is both an adjective and a noun.

[SunkenCiv]

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[BiteYourSelf]

Bay be.😏

[oldtech]

She was not smart enough to be a vice president or a presidential candidate either. I think I could make a vice president for Trump (don’t want the job, tho) & do it better than Kamala ever could for Biden. Her ideas for government are nothing bad & worse. Walz won’t be any better; in fact, probably worse.

[Organic Panic]

That’s a long winded way of saying lie.

[x]

Code switching is likely to get you accused of “cultural appropriation” if the accent you’re switching to isn’t one you are “entitled” to, and politicians faking “folksy” accents for gain and personal advancement have always been fair game for satirists and critics. Kamala Harris, like Barack Obama, only has a “black” accent when it’s advantageous to her, so naturally people are going to point that out, and claims that color gives them more of right to do so than other people are bound to be criticized and rightly. Faking accents is part of the wretched political game and ought to be seen as such.

BTW Two months ago McWhorter sort of wished somebody shot Trump, and one month ago somebody did take a shot at Trump. That doesn’t make me hate McWorter, but it does make me wish he stuck to language and left his political opinions aside.

[7thson]

Switching to "black English." In other words, speaking like an illiterate. Thomas Sowell disproved the term "black English" long ago in Black Rednecks, White Liberals.

[Herakles]

Dose code switching apply when her heals are up