Matt Walker Language Autobiography

Mathew Walker

12/16/10

            Ones ability to code switch is key to how one lives. Code switching is something that everybody does whether you’re from the United States or Japan, it doesn’t matter. Now I will explain the larger idea for you but not in detail, basically I am going to throughout the paper give you situations where I and other people have code switched and some why it was bad. In the end I will ask the question is Code switching good or bad and explain to you my position on it.

 I have code switched all my life one time I was on my way home with my friends after playing basketball at a court which was about 20 blocks away from my house and had trees all around. We were talking and here is a little bit of the conversation. “Yo you’re really bad at basketball” I said, “Stop fucking playing wit me you da one who sucks” Cory said, “Haha you funny but if someone is really bad here it has to be Eric” I said, “I wasn’t even in your little convo” Eric said. This is how I talk when I’m around my friends and it will be constantly brought up during this paper.

When I got home my speech changed to where I was not talking to my friends but my parents and the rest of my family. Here is how I talked to them; “Mom I’m home” I yelled, “Ok dinner is almost done” My mother said, “ok,” I said. I walked into the dinning room took of my hoodie and went in the living room My dad started talking to me “Hey son” “Hey dad” I answered, “how’d you do playing basketball today” He asked “Fine” I replied. This is not the whole conversation but most of it. So what I want these parts to explain is that code switching is an everyday thing for me and I sometimes choose when I want to do it but other times it comes without me even realizing it. When I am at school I talk to my friends the same way but when I talk to my teachers I talk to them way differently than I talk to my parents. When I’m talking to teachers I will say “Yes sir”, “No sir”, “Yes mam”, “No mam”. I would talk more respectful although I am already respectful to my parents.

Amy tan shows a perfect example of this in her story “Mother tongue”, She is an example because at home she talks non-educated but when she is out in public she uses big words and tries to pronounce a lot more. Sometimes though code switching can be a problem because when you don’t have control over it you could possibly switch at the wrong time. I remember one time I was down my grandmother’s house and my grandfather said, “Mat what do you think about the cowboys”, “I fucking hate them” I answered. After I said it I realized what I just said and I looked over at my grandfather he looked shocked. Afterwards I apologized and explained that it slipped out but right after that moment I started questioning myself and asking myself if I was loosing grip on the real me, if I was loosing my identity? In Aria a story by Richard Rodriguez, he was talking about how later on he couldn’t speak his native language at home anymore thanks to schooling and to me when he could speak his native language he was code switching because he would talk to his teachers with the English he learned but go home and talk to his family in Spanish. Now this code switching has basically made him take another identity, which I do not want to do.

 What I have been trying to get to is, that Code switching is good but after a while you start to loose track of who you really are. Now the reason loosing your identity is bad is because when you loose track of your identity you can possibly loose track of your culture like in the movie that we watched about the Ladahk people and tourist came in and started to bring modern stuff into their little town where the whole place was family. When they lost their identity they lost their family and they started to be more easily influenced by other culture. So things like crime rate, pollution levels all those bad things started to rise and make their community a very bad place. This is what I don’t want to happen because I love my family and I feel that I should always be with them. Which means people should try to stop code switching and try to stick to one way of talking.