Editor's Letter

Code-switching

I used the word “y’all” the other day (Southern US English for “you all”).

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.

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 to understand that among my Southern US friends, I stood out as a Yankee. I was not necessarily blending in—especially when I began asking why monograms, sweet tea, huge baby bows, and Greek university sororities were so important.

It was a strange but somewhat fascinating phenomenon to realize that as an American who hadn’t lived in the US much at all, I still fit into a specific subcategory of American—I could be easily pegged as a real Yankee by my accent. When “y’all” slipped out of my mouth the other day, it made me wonder why I did it.

Language and dialect are often one of the first means by which we identify, or place, others we meet. TCKs grow up with a heightened intuition for how to read a new acquaintance or cultural situation, and we often begin making connections by adapting our speech. One fascinating article from National Public Radio in the US delves into multiple reasons people code-switch. The author, Matt Thompson, groups those reasons this way:

1. Our “lizard brains” take over (we switch languages unaware)

2. We want to fit in

3. We want to get something

4. We want to say something in secret

5. It helps us convey a thought

In this issue, we dig a little deeper into codeswitching as a means of forming or revealing identity. Our contributors ask such questions as:

Can I express my authentic self anywhere if I’m always code-switching? Is there a “shadow side” to codeswitching if it’s done for the wrong motives? Why is code-switching so exhausting?

We hope that you find this issue’s articles helpful in your own lives. We also hope you’ll enjoy our Spotlight feature on TCK author, speaker, and worship leader Gregory Coles!

As always, we would love to hear from you, our TCK tribe! Connect with us on Instagram (amongworlds) and share your comments or questions about this issue. Please consider submitting your own stories, artwork, photography, poetry, or book/film reviews for future issues (see submission guidelines here). And finally, don’t forget to order yourself or a TCK friend a subscription to Among Worlds magazine!

All the best,

Rachel