Code switching, as simple as sending a text or an email

"People see celebrities, they have money and fame, but I’m a human being. I cry, I get scared, I get nervous just like everyone else.” - Beyonce

Beyonce attempts to portray her life in the videos as an average person rather than a celebrity. However, we as the viewers may feel connected to her in that moment, but we realize this is not true as the video progresses. They start to show her posing with cameras on her, lights highlighting her best features, and the fans flowing her hair. This made me realize that this video wanted us to envy her rather than relate to her.  In the next video, Beyonce is shown laughing with her friends, swearing, being silly, acting, well what we would describe as "normal." This is shown in a parallel between "sending an e-mail to your boss," and "texting your best friend," with the differences in punctuation, capitalization, and grammar. 

The article goes on to explain that everyone does what Beyonce has done in this video, we "Code-switch." Very rarely does someone act the same way towards every single person. I can already relate to this statement because I know I act a certain way with different friends, family, and adults. This relates back to our original conversation in the difference between White ASL and Black ASL. For one, the quote at the end of this article showed the annoyance of a black ASL user towards another one when they were using white ASL. They stated, "you're signing like the white students, you think you're smart. You think you're better than us," which clearly isn't the case. This reminds me of our perception while watching the first Beyonce video where she is the center of attention. Sometimes we question whether or not celebrities think they are better than us based on their physical actions. Another comparison I made between the two was the perceptions between how we talk towards one group of people and another. In class we discussed slang, formal language, and diction, etc which directly relates back to the way Beyonce acts for her professional career and the way she would act with her friends. This idea of Code-switching makes us able to have different personalities with different people without being things such as "fake." Some of the black ASL users would talk to their white peers in the white ASL and then when they went home completely switched back to the way they learned.