Mission Linguistic Observation - Code Switching Hey! Hello ! Good morning! Namaskārām! One of the key skills in anthropological studies is understanding linguistics. It goes without saying that language is essential to communication, since it is used every day. The way you talk to your friends may be different from the way you talk to your family members, all of which comes into play when talking about the way people speak and communicate. For example, a student from a bilingual family might be fluent in another language at home. These are the most common cases of code switching, language switching, or language variety in a conversation. Given an observation at a friend's house: I used participant observation to observe how my best friend talks to her. She now spoke Spanglish. She laughed and responded to him in a mixture of Spanish lexicon while speaking some English in the same sentence, some of her Spanish lexicon included the words chancalas (flip flops), loca (crazy), Hermosa (beautiful). At this point in the conversation, its syntax is completely turned upside down, because Spanglish has its own set of rules and structure and doesn't follow either language. She flip-flops between the two languages, which is very common in bilingual families. When she spoke to her cousin, she was much lighter and laughed, in this case her tone became higher, became less serious with her cousin, her hands were everywhere and her speaking speed increased. . Many people use code switching for these reasons to create a connection, say things in secret, etc. From what we've learned in class, we know that the way someone speaks changes someone's perspective on them. That's why she spoke in Spanish to her family members rather than to us. It was a joke between them about their family, and it wasn't like we were fluent in Spanish, all we understood was little knowledge of Spanish. She used code switching to ensure understanding with her family members, to connect with her specifically. This study focuses on Puerto Rican language, race, and class. I chose this study to support my dissertation because it focuses on this specific observation of code-switching within a bilingual Puerto Rican family. In the overview of the study given in the book, she explains how Puerto Ricans are told that their English is impure because it is mixed with Spanish. The parents in this study grew up in Puerto Rico, while their children grew up here and were forced to learn English as a second language. The reason my best friend's family tries not to speak Spanish in public is that Puerto Ricans, like all other migrant minorities, face linguistic prejudice: they are told they won't be able to have that accent. Spanish. So they hide this part of themselves, just knowing that coming from a bilingual family, your culture comes out when you are with family or with others like