{"id":4575,"date":"2024-08-16T19:22:03","date_gmt":"2024-08-16T17:22:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/arcanaverba.org\/academia\/?p=4575"},"modified":"2024-08-16T19:23:07","modified_gmt":"2024-08-16T17:23:07","slug":"when-a-politician-switches-into-different-dialects-its-not-necessarily-pandering","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arcanaverba.org\/academia\/index.php\/2024\/08\/16\/when-a-politician-switches-into-different-dialects-its-not-necessarily-pandering\/","title":{"rendered":"When a politician switches into different dialects it\u2019s not necessarily pandering"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

[…]<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Harris does this readily. In an address in Atlanta responding to \u201cLock him up\u201d calls about Donald Trump, she said, \u201cThe courts are gonna handle that,\u201d later working up the crowd by referring in pep-talk style to \u201cNovem-buh.\u201d In a speech in Michigan she mentioned that \u201cWe have fun doin\u2019 hard work.\u201d Some of her switching is simply to good old colloquial American \u2014 gonna, doin\u2019 \u2014 but at other times, especially for heavily Black audiences like the one in Atlanta, she switches into Black English: \u201cNovem-buh\u201d; \u201cfoah\u201d for \u201cfour.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A lot of people think there is something wrong with her doing this. \u201cHarris seems to put on an accent for Atlanta rally,\u201d read one chyron<\/a> on Fox News. One take on X, typical in its tone on the issue, displays familiarity with the term \u201ccode-switching\u201d but frames<\/a> it as a cynical act: \u201cCode switching is a convenient way to describe blatant pandering.\u201d Of course Trump has joined in asking \u201cDid you hear a new accent?\u201d with his running mate, JD Vance, right behind him claiming that Harris is using a \u201cfake Southern accent.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First of all, Harris is not doing a \u201cSouthern\u201d accent. She is not summoning Jeff Foxworthy, the comedian Fortune Feimster or Rue McClanahan\u2019s Blanche Devereaux. What people are hearing as Southern is Black English with which white Southern English overlaps only partially. Black English has a great many traits alien to white Southern.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More to the point, language is about reaching into another mind. It\u2019s about connecting. Code-switching is one of the ways that humans use language to connect. Using the colloquial dialect of a language serves the same function as drinking or getting a mani-pedi together. It says, \u201cWe\u2019re all the same.\u201d It is especially natural, and common, when seeking connection about folksier things or summoning a note of cutting through the nonsense and getting to the heart of things in a \u201cLet\u2019s face it\u201d way. This is why many of us readily say \u201cAin\u2019t gonna happen\u201d even if we aren\u2019t given to saying \u201cain\u2019t\u201d regularly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a global sense, Harris\u2019s code-switching is completely ordinary. Many people from other countries would be perplexed about anyone thinking her code-switching is remarkable, much less offensive. It is president Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt in the 1950s and 1960s sprinkling<\/a> Egyptian Arabic, a colloquial variety, into his speeches that were mainly in the standard variety. It is a restaurant sign<\/a> in Bavaria that starts out in standard German for \u201cEating is a need but enjoyment is an art,\u201d but then glides as a \u201cP.S.\u201d into Bavarian dialect to say \u201cDrum schaugst a bissl rei zu uns!\u201d \u2014 \u201cSo take a little look-in at our place!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Closer to home, Maya Angelou deftly explained how Black Americans code-switch when she wrote: \u201cWe learned to slide out of one language and into another without being conscious of the effort. At school, in a given situation, we might respond with, \u2018That\u2019s not unusual.\u2019 But in the street, meeting the same situation, we easily said, \u2018It be\u2019s like that sometimes.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is in this light that we must evaluate an X post<\/a> like \u201cIt\u2019s pretty weird to change your accent on the fly depending on which audience you\u2019re speaking to.\u201d Wrong. This is like saying it\u2019s pretty weird to dress according to what your plans for the day are.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

[…]<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

John McWhorter<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2024\/08\/15\/opinion\/harris-code-switch.html<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[…] Harris does this readily. In an address in Atlanta responding to \u201cLock him up\u201d calls about Donald Trump, she said, \u201cThe courts are gonna handle that,\u201d later working up the crowd by referring in pep-talk style to \u201cNovem-buh.\u201d In a speech in Michigan she mentioned that \u201cWe have fun doin\u2019 hard work.\u201d Some of … Sigue leyendo When a politician switches into different dialects it\u2019s not necessarily pandering<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[795,855],"tags":[859,856,858,857],"class_list":["post-4575","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dialectologia","category-ingles","tag-code-switching","tag-john-mcwhorter","tag-kamala-harris","tag-the-new-york-times"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcanaverba.org\/academia\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4575","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcanaverba.org\/academia\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcanaverba.org\/academia\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcanaverba.org\/academia\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcanaverba.org\/academia\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4575"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/arcanaverba.org\/academia\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4575\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4577,"href":"https:\/\/arcanaverba.org\/academia\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4575\/revisions\/4577"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcanaverba.org\/academia\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcanaverba.org\/academia\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcanaverba.org\/academia\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}