By examining a person’s paralinguistic, lexical, grammatical, and phonological features, we can extract details about their history, culture, ethnicity, gender, status, and heritage. My mother tongue is English and I am monolingual. Having been born in Mumbai to Indian parents, my Indian background has played a significant role in my ever-changing accent. Because I’ve lived abroad for most of my life, I have moved further away from Indian English. In Indian culture, elders are greatly respected because they have a higher status in society. For the sake of finding a balance between speaking in a way where I fit into my Indian culture and fit in at school while being respectful of my elder’s beliefs, I have become increasingly familiar with the art of code-switching.
I like to think of the factors that have shaped my accent as a set of layers—the first being my Indian heritage. An Indian accent’s phonological features include a heavy emphasis on enunciating your words and speaking in a rigid rather than fluid way. When speaking, I articulate words more than people with similar accents to me normally would. Furthermore, the covertly prestigious slang like “men” and “yar” (used the same way as innit in England and lah in Singapore) are one of the many unique lexical features of the dialect spoken in the suburb my mother is from, Bandra. When in Bandra, I often find myself using these colloquialisms more and more. Because the stereotypical Indian paralinguistic features have been mocked so often, I have often felt uncomfortable using body language like nodding my head from side to side to say ok. Indian parents tend to be stricter, and there is a prominent power-dynamic between parent and child. My parents make it very clear that I can’t talk to them like we are friends because our relationship is much more formal. A specific example of this is that I can’t refer to my parents with the pronoun “she” or “he” as a sign of respect. Although my Indian layer isn’t very prominent in my speech, I feel most at home, surrounded by people with Indian accents.
The second and third layers come from living in Singapore and Tokyo and act as a barrier from the Indian stereotypes I try and avoid. Because the Indian accent is mocked and ridiculed so much around the world, I am insecure about it. The second layer—the international school in Singapore I attended has influenced me by making it easy for me to subconsciously change the way I speak to fit into my surroundings very fast. In elementary school, my accent would change depending on who my teacher was. By 5th grade, someone could tell I had been to an international school just by hearing traces of several different cultures’ phonological features in one voice. The third layer is the American school I attended in Tokyo, which influenced me to adjust my lexical features. My peers there talked in a sociolect by using covertly prestigious slang like “Whatta G” (meaning how cool is he/she?) and argot like “varsity” and “freshmen.” I also picked up on their phonological features when I started talking in a higher pitch, nasal voice, elongated my vowels and added in extra syllables. On another note, moving to Tokyo also meant joining a new swim team. My new swim team used a lot of jargon like “SKPS”, “DPS”, “negative split”, “marshaling” etc. Though most people would classify my accent as American, I don’t identify with it. In Tokyo where foreigners are seldom seen, my friends would always get excited when they heard someone else with an American accent on the street, whereas I only feel that way when I hear the Indian accent.
On top of my accent sounding foreign to me, there are many other conflicts. Firstly, because we sound so alien to my parents, they can’t tell the difference between mine and my brother’s voice. This is something I can’t wrap my head around because to my ears we sound nothing alike. Moreover, I had to send my grandparents a script along with my graduation speech video because they couldn’t understand what I was saying. Not to mention, even though the American accent is covertly prestigious in India and seen as well-spoken and posh, my cousins have called me white-washed. Situations like these make me feel conflicted because I am proud of my culture but am moving further and further away from my roots because I want to fit in. Comparatively, around the world, Indian English is seen as non-standard, less educated, traditional, and awkward. As a result, code-switching has come in handy for me. Like most people, I have to code-switch in the presence of teachers. I alter my lexical features by avoiding cuss words, sit up straight to show them I’m paying attention, and speaking in a grammatically correct way to match the academic environment. However, I also have to code-switch from school to my Indian family. My lexical features at school include phrases like “What is this cheese?” whereas, at home, I say “Arrey Yar” (both meaning what?!). At home, I pronounce words shorter and faster. Around my parents, grandparents, and any other Indian relatives, my voice automatically becomes more formal and well-mannered. Even though school emphasizes expressing your opinion and standing up for yourself, at home I don’t raise my voice or ever talk back. Similarly, due to the fact that my mother is an English teacher, unlike most people I pay more attention to speaking grammatically correctly at home than at school. Code-switching has not only let others understand me but has also helped me to respect and act differently around different people, depending on their cultural background and my relationship with them.
We live in such a diverse world. Consequently, it has become essential to be aware of one another’s traditions, beliefs, and languages. Code-switching allows for people of different cultures, formalities, and status to understand and respect each other. Code-switching is so vital in my daily life because it helps me fit into both my Indian culture and my international school. Hidden in my voice, the influences that have made me speak the way I do can tell people things about my identity. For example, insecurities about my Indian heritage and pre-judgments people may make about me are manifest by my American accent camouflaging as much Indian as possible. Additionally, the hints of different cultures in my voice when I was younger, imply that I went to an international school. In conclusion, our identities are captured in our voice and through code-switching, we can respect one another’s culture by changing the way we speak. In these ways, my culture, language, and identity are all related.