From sociolinguistics: Jan-Petter Blom and John J. Gumperz gave code-switching its social meaning (1972), developed by Gumperz (1982) and Carol Myers-Scotton (1993).
Shifts vocabulary, register, depth, and references to suit each audience so the same substance is heard intact by engineers, executives, finance, or frontline staff.
When to reach for it
One message that must pass through several professional groups or cultures in a day, each of which tunes out an outsider's dialect.
How it runs
- Describe the audience's vocabulary, depth, evidence preferences, and trust signals.
- Mark where your default language departs from theirs.
- Rewrite in their code, matching level and evidence.
- Check that nothing of substance was softened or lost.
- Watch whether they engage the content or the delivery, and adjust.
Where it sits in SOLVE eX
Go to the source
- Social Meaning in Linguistic Structure: Code-Switching in Norway, Directions in Sociolinguistics, 1972
- Discourse Strategies, 1982
- Social Motivations for Codeswitching, 1993