Code switching between cultures

When your cultural identity is far too diverse for the adopted culture that you are making your own, be prepared to be surprised on an unexpected route to belonging.

A few years ago, I was eating lunch in the office kitchen when my phone rang. It was a dear friend calling from India. I answered the call, we chatted for a few minutes in English before hanging up. It was a brief, vaguely broad conversation that ended with us agreeing to to chat at a better time that suited us both.

“Were you talking to someone from India?” asked my Wellington born and bred colleague as she hustled about the kitchen fixing lunch.

“How did you know?” I knew how but I wanted her to confirm it.

“Because you spoke differently. Not the way you speak with us here. It was nice to see that different side of you,” she smiled.

I had guessed right.

A year or so after I had moved to New Zealand and had soaked up enough local culture, I had started to subconsciously switch between my two, distinct cultural identities depending on what culture I was engaging with.

I seem to employ a different accent and ways of being with each culture, and I only notice this switch after it has happened. The switch is also usually invisible to the onlooker as I am rarely in different cultural settings at once. To my colleague, seeing me almost swap personalities in a matter of seconds in the office kitchen must have been a little surprising.

I am one kind of person when conversing in English with a hint of a Kiwi accent, and a somewhat different person when speaking English with an Indian accent, and yet another one when I am chatting in Marathi. Every version is authentically me.

I learned only recently that the term for this behaviour is code switching. When you literally ‘switch code’ between two or more ways of being (speech, style, appearance, or expression) to assimilate better with the culture that you may be interacting with. Code switching isn’t unusual for many migrants who pick up the lingo, dress code, and many ways of being of the dominant culture that they are surrounded by.

Forget migrants, code switching is also apparently common for Māori, who although indigenous to New Zealand, often find themselves having to adapt their Māori identity to the more Eurocentric culture that still dominates New Zealand society.

Members of the Black, Indigenous and People of Colour (BIPOC) community the world over report feeling a stronger need to code switch than others.

I imagine religious minorities living amongst hostile majoritarian religious cultures don’t just need to code switch but feel compelled to mask large parts of their religious and cultural identities for fear of persecution as well.

My own reasons for why I might have started to code switch are far more benign.

I just happened to encounter one too many people in New Zealand who were surprised by my language ability when I first arrived here nine or so years ago.

I have lost count of the number of times people would say ‘How come your English is this good?’ which was code for ‘Your English is good for someone who grew up in India’. As ‘othering’ as that experience was, my old response would be to put on a plain smile and shrug off such remarks.

My spicier reply now, still served with a smile, is “Yeah, 150 years of colonisation will do that to a country.”

So, yes, for a brown person navigating a dominantly white culture, code switching made things easier. It saved me the trouble of having to underline and re-underline my language ability with a 2B pencil. It has served me well in the way that it helped me connect with people, made me somewhat relatable, and helped me belong even.

But the more I grow aware of when and how I code switch, the less I care for it. This is particularly the case as New Zealand grows on me with each passing year. And I find myself embracing my Kiwi ways alongside my Indian ways.

Mumbai-style batata wadas, sabudana wadas, and misal pao are a hit with Kiwis.

My new mantra is to unapologetically unleash my Indianness on Kiwis who are open to new influences and it almost always yields more connection. That includes not adhering to a Western style of dressing at work and celebrating Indian festivals like Diwali with non-Indian friends by feeding them delicious food that I grew up eating.

This has as much to do with how much New Zealand has changed me, as much as how the country is changing itself. This is now beginning to look like a country that is getting comfortable (somewhat) with its bicultural foundations and multicultural flavours.

It’s more than okay if yours is the only house in the street lit up for Diwali

Our language - although still English - is peppered with more te reo Māori phrases, words and greetings. Our food culture is truly global. Sushi and Turkish kebabs could well earn ‘offical NZ work lunch’ status alongside meat pies and sandwiches.

We have multiple New Year’s celebrations - Matariki (Māori New Year) and Lunar New Year (a nod to our many Asian Kiwis) alongside the usual one.

With diversity assured, I harbour hope that inclusion will follow.

Maybe we won’t need to switch code when our myriad cultures learn to jostle joyfully along side each other.