Some people, I have heard—including the former president—have criticized Vice-President Harris for supposedly changing her persona when addressing different groups. I believe the specifics had to do with sounding “more Southern” when at a speaking engagement in Georgia, and resulted in a whole lot of pearl-clutching from the usual suspects.

This isn’t a blog about politics, or I’d point out that the other party lives and breathes by doing exactly that, with politicians consistently using derogatory, violent, or pandering language to rile up certain constituencies. 

But here we’re about communication, and I’d like to talk about that instead. About what language does, both on the surface and more often unconsciously: it shapes the worldview and identity of its users.

In linguistics, code-switching (or “language alteration”) happens when a speaker alternates between two or more languages in a single conversation. My sister and I grew up with this kind of language alteration, often using sentences that were part English and part French—whichever appropriate word came to mind, we used it.

This isn’t necessarily problematic. It never was for us: we grew up in environments where both languages and the cultures they represented were sociologically on a par. We code-switched out of convenience and impatience, not out of necessity. But where it becomes an issue worth examining is when people’s dialects or versions of a given language are perceived by the dominant culture as somehow inferior to the “real” version of the language. To “fit in,” they’re forced to modify how they speak.

Scholar and civil-rights activist W.E.B Dubois wrote about code-switching more than a century ago, talking about Black Americans having double identities—Blackness and Americanness—while navigating everyday whiteness.

“It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his two-ness, an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.”

And it’s not just about the language; it’s how the language both informs and reflects the wider cultural context. Writing in YES! Media in 2019, journalist Ida Harris discusses the skills Black parents must teach their children. “The conversation,” she writes, “involves clear directives on how to switch up behavior when approached by police,” and includes turn down loud music, adjust your posture, keep your hands visible, exercise good manners, speak properly. Good advice for any kid, right?

Except that for white kids, it’s about courtesy; for Black kids, it’s about life and death.

Many of us grew up in multicultural environments (and I pray that number of people increases as the world slowly comes to grips with people falling in love and building lives with people of different races, ethnicities, languages, cultures, ideas, genders, and more). We learn what “works” in each of our two or more cultures, and we honor and respect those differences. Code-switching in that context can be a manifestation of that adaptability and respect.

Yet survival or cultural respect aren’t the only reasons for code-switching. Being aware of and attuned to one’s environment touches on every aspect of our lives. We don’t wear a t-shirt to court or a job interview; fitting in to the sartorial rules of the environment helps ensure a better outcome of the proceedings. If you used the same language at your grandmother’s dinner table that you use when staying up late drinking wine with your friends, you know there’s going to be a pretty immediate reckoning. I don’t have the same demeanor when I attend Mass on Sundays that I might have at a raucous rock concert. We adapt our language, dress, manners, and myriad other behaviors according to where we are and who we’re with.

Always. Every day.

So before we start taking someone apart for having sensitivity to and empathy for different audiences, we’d do well (as most religious philosophies urge) to look within. You try to get through a day without code-switching.

I dare you.