Editor’s Letter Code-switching
Contents
I used the word “y’all” the other day (Southern US English for “you all”).
Losing My Accent, Finding Connections Across Cultures Melynda Joy Schauer
3
Confessions of a Codeswitching Couple Rueben and Golda Amlalo
7
Clocktowers Andrew Ian Mobley
11
Spotlight Interview: Gregory Coles
13
A Vital Task Jemma
23
The Art of Code-switching Megan Norton
27
Switching Perspectives Alexis Chen Johnson
31
Book Review—Displaced: A Memoir by Esther Wiebe Reviewed by Cheryl Barkman Skupa
37
Being Ryo and りょう: From Code-switching to Code-meshing Ryo Adachi
41
June 2021 • Vol. 21 • No. 2 Cover photo by Zane Lee (Unsplash) Editor: Rachel Hicks Copy Editor: Pat Adams Graphic Designer: Kelly Pickering Digital Publishing: Bret Taylor
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Among Worlds
My insides did a little jump. “Y’all”? I’m not a “y’all” kind of person. Why did it slip out? My family had temporarily relocated halfway across the US, to Fayetteville, Arkansas, to get our daughter some unique medical treatment she needs. I was conversing with another patient’s family in the waiting room and “y’all” just moseyed on out of my mouth. Apparently, my TCK brain just did what it’s used to doing in a new cultural situation—try to help me blend in. Now, where we live in Baltimore, Maryland, plenty of people use the term “y’all,” but most of them are African American, and my brain probably realized early on that I wasn’t going to blend in there just by throwing “y’all” around. But I found myself in this clinic in Fayetteville, surrounded entirely by white faces, many of whom spoke with a Southern accent. Down here, everyone is “y’all,” so my brain just jumped on board. Growing up in mostly Asian countries, I often heard the term “Yankee” refer to anyone from the US. It wasn’t until I was an adult living in China and found myself friends with quite a few US Southerners that I realized how much of a Yankee I really am—Yankee as in an American from the north of the country.
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The accents and rhythms of speech my friends used revealed a whole different culture than my what-Ithought-was-generic-Caucasian-American one. I came
