Underpinnings of Code Switching: An Observational Study of Black Americans’ Code Switching Tendency
Creators: name: Johnson, Darin
name: Cooper, Nicole
name: Mattan, Bradley
name: Falk, Emily
Publisher: name: Open Science Framework
Year: 2022
Subjects: subject: Communication
subject: Linguistics
subject: FOS: Languages and literature
subject: International and Intercultural Communication
subject: Social and Behavioral Sciences
subject: Psychology
subject: FOS: Psychology

description: In everyday situations people make communication choices that carry risks and benefits with respect to their self-presentation (McCluney et al., 2019; McCluney et al., 2021). One way people do this is by code switching. Code switching is the practice of adapting one’s communication style (e.g., one’s speech and behavior) across different contexts (Gumperz, 1977; Myers-Scotton, 1995). Although code switching is a relatively universal practice, the risks and benefits of code switching may vary depending on the racial identity and linguistic practices of the communicator (Johnson et al., 2021; McCluney et al., 2019; McCluney et al., 2021). Linguistic racism (i.e., discrimination targeting the cultural identity and linguistic practices of people of color) creates conditions whereby communicative styles frequently associated with Black Americans face scrutiny (Baker-Bell, 2020; Dovchin, 2020; Johnson et al., 2021) and are subject to prejudicial attitudes from listeners (Baugh, 2005; Flores &amp; Rosa, 2015). As a result, Black Americans may engage in self-protective code switching in an attempt to avoid negative perceptions of their communicative practices (Johnson et al., 2021) and/or manage the impressions of listeners (McCluney et al., 2021). Code switching is a phenomenon common to interpersonal and intergroup communication. Research about code switching spans disciplinary bounds and methodological approaches; however, it is heavily concentrated within linguistics, education, and psychology and typically approached qualitatively (for a review, see Johnson et al, in press). As such there is sparse evidence of any experimentally validated psychometric scales to measure this construct. This study aims to use an online survey to (1) adapt a measure of code switching from the African American Women Shifting Scale (Johnson et al., 2016), a measure of African American Women’s self-alteration strategies to study code switching more broadly, and (2) investigate the potential between-participants associations between code switching and individual differences in a variety of psychological constructs that may be relevant to the motivations for and outcomes of code switching. This research will attempt to traverse disciplinary and methodological boundaries in exploring code switching as a psychological construct of interest (in line with two recent studies (McCluney et al.,2019 &amp; McCluney et al., 2021)), allowing us to empirically examine how code switching may be associated with additional constructs that capture social and affective motivations that may be linked to code switching (e.g. social connectedness, need to belong, stereotype confirmation concern, stereotype confirmation concern, awareness of shifting behavior, general ethnicity questionnaire, and the multidimensional model of Black identity). In addition, this study seeks to (1) provide support for adapting and validating a code switching scale to use in follow-up studies that will investigate how perceptions of code switching in listeners/perceivers are influenced by raciolinguistic ideologies and linguistic racism and (2) lay the groundwork for future research with the goal of creating a theoretical framework to explore consequences of the demands for self-protective code switching for people whose speech practices may be perceived as non-standard. The hypotheses in this pre-registration (Study 2) are informed by an earlier study (Study 1), which was also pre-registered (https://osf.io/rz56c/). Preliminary findings from Study 1 are detailed below, and inform the current pre-registration.