i figured out what the american version of brit-picking should be called: yanking. (this thought may or may not be brought to you by a brit-written supernatural fic. they were doing real good til they got to bobby singer...)
Oh lord, what'd they do to Bobby? (I'm reminded that I ought to, one of these days, get around to writing the fic I have in mind where the boys get dropped off with Bobby and then their dad fucks off for the rest of Forever, because they deserved a stable childhood.)
I needed to know what American Truck Simulator was for Reasons, so I was watching some LP. The name should maybe have clued me in because an American company would probably have not thought to specify the country, but the lovingly rendered highway was so clearly American that I didn’t think too much about it beyond that it sounded amusing. But the very second the game sent the player business emails, I knew it wasn’t an American game. I’ve been fretting mildly about good names for the U.S. version of britpicking for years. “Yanking” is pure genius. I have absolutely no issue with accepting an AU where everything is the same except more British. It only trips me up when it was pretty obviously unintentional because it’s inconsistent or An Attempt Was Made but it didn’t quiiiiite work out. If everything is looking American until suddenly someone was sat on the pavement, that’s pretty jarring. And it’s just unrealistic to expect some poor author to be able to research that all away unaided. Let there be yanking!
lord please write it, i wanna see how badass they can be when they’re capable of expressing fraternal devotion in ways other than selling their souls for each other. (i mean, @Kodachi youre the coolest little brother anyone ever had and i’d def take a bullet for you but selling my soul is not on the table, so don’t make any crossroads deals.) bobby sounded like remus lupin, is the only way i can put it. educated but not posh, but definitely english. the occasional “ain’t” stuck out awkwardly.
for the record, brit bros, bobby is like me: working class at the bone, no matter how much education he heaps on, and no desire to change that. unashamedly rural. and so american that if he’d met the queen of england, the only reason he would’ve been careful not to cuss is because you don’t talk like that to nice old ladies. he would not have tried to code switch at all; i’m pretty sure he never did in his life.
I've seen and loved intentional Britstuck and desperately want more (Cronus as the reluctant son of a London mob boss and Signless as his college counsellor, woo!), but unintentionally doing so... I can't remember any specific instances but it's annoying when it happens.
my inability to write codeswitching (aka 'english is my second language how the fuck does this even work???) is one of the things that keeps me from writing certain characters
i mean it depends on how much brit is introduced and where. sticking with spn, i find it easier to accept the brothers renting a flat than stopping for petrol, because some americans do say flat rather than apartment, and i don’t think the characters discuss renting much at all except for the ep with jo and the haunted condo, but they put gas in the impala all the time. flat is just habits showing through. petrol is not paying attention to canon. edit: what i mean is, petrol breaks immersion more because we know what the phrase should be, having heard it many times. so when the wrong word comes out of dean’s mouth, it jerks us back. but we don’t have a mental recording of sam talking about apartments, so when he says flat it’s just a little speed bump.
Considering the array of phones (all labelled so that he knew which lines were the "pretend you're with the FBI" ones and which ones were the "pretend you're some other legal authority" ones), I'm pretty sure he knew how to code switch and did do it well and habitually. (Since the hunters wouldn't have been using those lines if it didn't work.) But you're also right that he would not have code switched for the Queen, and that I'm pretty sure he only did it as part of work. There's a difference between code switching so you're using your customer service voice, and code switching so your conversational partner is more comfortable.
this author did a series that looked interesting so i open the first fic It's just one chapter of like. An author's note style foreword type thing explaining the premise of the AU, posted as its own individual work instead of the first chapter of an actual story Ok not great let's go to the first real story ....the first chapter is More Foreword Explaining fjjfjejxjnfjf 0kay
code switching isn’t the same as acting. consider how me pretending to be a straight guy named bob from west virginia to pull off a heist... is not the same as me being closeted at work because i’m afraid i’ll get fired. it’s like that.
'In linguistics, code-switching or language alternation occurs when a speaker alternates between two or more languages, or language varieties, in the context of a single conversation.' I bolded the important bit.
So using a customer service voice is not by itself code switching. Using your customer service voice and then breaking into a more casual and less formal register during that same conversation, however, is. As would be switching from English customer service voice to Spanish customer service voice during that same conversation.
i am now wondering where the hell i got my definition of code switching as altering your speech patterns to fit in or be more acceptable, eg when aave speakers “talk white” in a job interview. did i... dream that?
https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2013/04/13/177126294/five-reasons-why-people-code-switch i didn’t dream it, wikipedia is just reporting a strict technical definition and ignoring other usage for some reason. the bit in the npr article about how servers get more tips if they have a southern accent is more what i mean. changing how you present yourself to get some kind of benefit or approval or something like that.
It's a common misunderstanding due to conflating the two related situations. This is perhaps most easily shown with like how Spanish speakers feel about swapping between English and Spanish in singular conversations. Many Mexicans in California who speak fluent Spanish and English will code switch around others they deem safe. These are usually fellow Latinos. Because they are comfortable doing it. It's safe. However, that same Mexican will go to great and sometimes painful lengths to NOT codeswitch during job interviews. Especially if the interviewer is white or, at least, assumed to be white. Hell, even in casual conversations with friends many won't do it with white people or people they just aren't comfortable with. Because code switching has this air of being...lesser language. Like you're too fucking stupid to speak 'proper English', so you have to resort to whatever broken language variety you have natively. Codeswitching with whites can lose you job opportunities very easily here. This is the case with a lot of linguistic terminology that people pick up in common parlance.
