One of the most obvious indicators of your background is your voice. Speech, cadence, and tone all are fundamental representations of who you are. When my cousin had come to America he was just 2 years old, not old enough to have his own “voice”. After living in New Jersey for 9 years, he adopted that manner of speech, reflecting his life there. He grew to fit himself into this community, making friends and connections which he dearly hoped to retain.
Moving to India:
He moved to Goa, a small, yet humble state in India in 2011. Not having much in common with his peers and family, he struggled to make new friends and connections. One of the first things that they pointed out was the strange manner of speech. Almost every single person that he ran into would point out this accent. It made him feel embarrassed, ashamed of this part of himself. Over time he found himself course correcting, changing his voice in order to become a part of this new culture.
Old friends drifting:
Though he stayed in contact with his old acquaintances, he found himself growing farther apart from them, since they had fewer and fewer moments to share together. As days, then weeks passed he had not noticed the changes he had gone through as he acclimatized to his new environment. The moment of realization only occurred when his friends, from all the way across the sea, pointed out to him that his voice had drastically changed. He quickly found himself isolated from both groups which he needed for connection.
The Resolution
In a study penned by Shakir and Deuber, they found that code-switching is usually used to make a sense of localness in English communication, be it in group chats or social media posts. As my cousin grew, moving through his life, he trained himself to change his mannerisms based on who he was talking to. He found himself subconsciously adjusting his accent, vocabulary, and tone without ever knowing the term “code-switching”. Unaware that this was normal, and something that many people go through, he felt self-conscious of this, and had to live with that for most of his life.
The Point
This demonstrates one point of reference of something much more prevalent within the South Asian sphere. Many of us are totally uninformed to common psychological phenomena and they bottle it up, just like the story you read above. This is a key example as to why the general population must know these terms so people like my cousin can truly understand themselves through every situation that they find themselves in. As Jawaharlal Nehru once said, “Only through right education can a better order of society be built up”.
Jigar is part of the 2025 Rcoz High School Changemaker Program, as an intern. He is a 1st generation citizen.
