July 24, 2004
"Code-switching"
by Nancy Phear

"Vasas! Vasas!" the local kids of Ambodimanga (definition: Under the Mango Trees) call as I walk back from town on the only paved road with another Earthwatch volunteer. A word meaning "white person," "foreigner," or an equivalent of a racial slur no less stinging than "nigger", depending on the intonation, the children use it to get our attention, their curiosity bursting out of themselves.

We turn, wave, and say "Salama,' the local greeting in the area of Parc Nationale Ankarafantsika. "Salama!" "Bonjour!" "Hello!" they all call back- eyes shining, fingers curling. They run to the road to watch us walk by, calling out to us, and to each other to pass on this secret pleasure they have discovered. They know we are foreign, we wear that sign in our skin, and they soak up our moves, our behaviors, sponging information off of us delightfully.

At market on Wednesday, in the closest town of Andronofatsika, I buy bananas from three young local girls, the oldest of which is no more than seven. I speak no Malagasy. They speak no English. We communicate the deal in French, our common language. It is a language I learned while living in France; it is a language brought to this island also by the French. It is not easy for us, and accidentally I have purchased not one small bunch of bananas, but the entire crop placed out on the lambas (a sarong) for sale. We work out the miscommunication and I walk away giggling, with only one bunch of bananas and my change.

Although I am here on a biodiversity and conservation project with Earthwatch, I can't help but feel that I am learning just as much from the experience of being immersed in a different culture. I am interested in the conservation, the reforestation, the biodiversity, and yet, because of my background and profession, I am drawn to the people and culture and language of Ambodimanga. These Malagasy children are learning how to code-switch as early as they are learning to speak. I think of my own students and their need to code-switch as well. I work with students who are extremely expressive in everything they do, particularly their language. Yet the language they learn, and practice, and celebrate at home and in their community is deemed "deficient," or "deviant," from what is commonly called "Proper English," or "Academic English:" what I have come to know as Mainstream American English (MAE).

The home language of my students is rich with meaning, connotation, and expression. It is not deviant nor deficient. It is simply governed by a different set of rules than MAE. Linguistic studies show that the home language most common amongst my students (85% of whom are African American, 15% are Latino) is governed by the same set of language rules that govern the dialects found in the Niger-Congo area of Africa. This is referred to as African American Language (AAL).

One feature of AAL that differs from MAE is called multiple negation. An example of this might sound or read something like, "She can't go, she don't got no money." In MAE this is sentence contains a double negative, and, like in math, two negatives make a positive. This would be considered incorrect. In AAL the second negative in the second phrase adds emphasis to the point that she (whomever she is) is totally broke. More emphasis can be added by adding another negative word; "She can't go, she don't NEVER have no money." The use of multiple negation is used to show emphasis, and in AAL is not considered incorrect, but gives different meaning.

Many people, when they learn I teach in South Central, Los Angeles, ask if my students speak ebonics. "Yes," I tell them, and carefully go on to explain that the linguistic definition of ebonics simply means having linguistic features or characteristics of the Niger-Congo area of Africa. The negative connotation that the word ebonics now carries was created by the media, by spin doctors. The language spoken informally in my classroom could never be considered broken, or deficient. It is fraught with meaning.

Clearly, here, even in rural parts of Madagascar, both the home language (a dialect of Malagasy) and French (called the "language of business" here) are both validated. Young children are learning and using both languages, code-switching appropriately as the situation calls for.

I am humbled here, code-switching from English to French and to a couple of Malagasy phrases. I am reminded of how I stumbled through my six month stay in Paris, tripping on conjugations and pronunciations of my French as often as some of the cobblestoned roads. It is particularly diffifcult, I remember, to follow the rules of other languages. The vocabulary is not as difficult as the placement of adjectives, or subjunctive clauses, or the different sounds of another language. It is this, and not the vocabulary, that seperates Mainstream American English from African American Language.

Here, in rural Madagascar, there is no stigma attached with speaking one language or the other. In my experience people have been open and accepting of others, linguistically and culturally. I wonder how language is viewed in more urban areas, Mahajunga, Antananarivo, where any schooling past primary is done in French. Does Malagasy then carry the stigma that AAL carries in the US?

Because Madagascar is mostly rural, and holds about a 66% literacy rate, I am confident that the home language, the dialects of Malagasy, will remain. Groups of people are isolated and communication across the island is difficult and rare. For this reason the Malagasy dialects are likely more protected than their forests. I wonder if we, the US, can hold on to the different languages in our own country. Will we learn to appreciate the home languages in addition to Mainsteam American English? I wonder if some day soon someone's job will be conservation of these home languages in the US, not unlike how people are fighting here to conserve the forests and species endemic to Madagascar. How long will it be before we, as a country, realize we are depleting our lingustic resources at much the same rate?