Code Switching in the Funny Papers

a comic called This morning on National Public Radio, there was a story on a cross-cultural comic book superhero….

an article about superheros and their identitySo, is Superman a code switcher, let alone every (and any) immigrant? And if so, then just how far can we stretch that technical term before it is of little analytic use, seeing as it ends up being just a synonym for “culture” or perhaps “situation”?

Listen to the story:

2 Replies to “Code Switching in the Funny Papers”

  1. Yang has written the graphic novel American Born Chinese in which he uses the story of the Monkey King’s Journey to the West, but Yang switches the object of the journey from Buddhist texts in India to the manger in Bethlehem. Taking his explanation of “switching from one mode of expectation to another,” shouldn’t that count as a code switch? So any adaptation of a story is code switching, adding to that analytical obsolescence.

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