Audrey Chang - Chameleonic Candidate
Audrey Chang
Advisor: Prof. Katherine Arnold-Murray
Class: LING 1000: Language in US Society
Semester: Fall 2025
The Chameleonic Candidate: Code-Switching, Critique, and the Construction of "Authenticity"
Kamala Harris’s systematic code-switching was weaponized during the 2024 election to undermine her competency, illustrating the persistent power of Standard Language Ideology to frame strategic linguistic adaptation as political artifice.
Figure 1: Kamala Harris in Detroit, MI, on September 2, 2024
During the 2024 presidential campaign, Vice President Kamala Harris faced significant scrutiny from both media outlets and the public. As the 49th Vice President of the United States – and the first woman, first Black American, and first South Asian American to hold the office – Harris’s identity has played a visible role in shaping how she is perceived. To dissect the critiques, it is helpful to understand two key linguistic concepts: African-American English (AAE) and code-switching.
African-American English is a specific systematic variety of English that is spoken by many African Americans in the United States. Despite being equally valid as other dialects, it carries a significant social stigma and has often been described as nonsensical, illogical, incomplete, etc., which is not just a judgment about a way of speaking but was seen as a racist reflection of the speakers themselves. This perception of AAE often pressures speakers to adjust their speech across different settings, a phenomenon known as code-switching. Code-switching is the ability on the part of bilinguals to alternate effortlessly between their two languages.
On Labor Day in 2024, Kamala Harris gave speeches at two rallies: one in Detroit, Michigan, and one in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
In Detroit, she said:
"Everywhere I go, I tell people, look, you may not be a union member, you betta thank a union member for the five-day workweek. You betta thank a union member for sick leave. You betta thank a union member for paid leave. You betta thank a union member for vacation time” (CBS, 2024).
In Pittsburgh, she said:
“You may not be a union member, but you better thank unions for that five-day work week. Thank unions for sick leave. Thank unions for paid family leave. Thank unions for your vacation time" (The American Presidency Project, 2024).
Harris’s use of AAE in the Detroit speech features a phonological feature of the reduction of the /r/ sound, which is seen when she pronounces “better” as “betta.” In this case, Harris may have intentionally used code-switching to better resonate with her audience. Detroit’s Black or African-American (non-Hispanic) population was 77.4% in 2022, compared to 22.3% in Pittsburgh (Data USA, 2023). Code-switching can occur unconsciously, but can also be a deliberate way to foster connection with an audience – in politics, it is both common and effective.
Following the speeches, conservative and central media news outlets have used Harris’s code-switching and use of AAE as a talking point against her character, often arguing that her accent is inauthentic and fake. Fox News host Sean Hannity asked why Democratic candidates “always seem to shift their tone, their pitch, their cadence,” calling Harris’s speech in Detroit an “embarrassingly fake accent” (Hannity, 2024). The framing misrepresents code-switching as a performance rather than recognizing it as a natural linguistic behavior and specifically targets Harris’s use of AAE, mislabeling it as a “Southern accent.”
Figure 2: Jesse Watters Primetime comparison of Kamala Harris’s speeches
The attacks went further, and Republican Representative Tim Burchett took to X and used the term “DEI vice president” as an insult, pairing it with the word “incompetency”, using diversity, equity, and inclusion language as a dog whistle to undermine Harris’s qualifications (Figure 3).
Figure 3: Rep. Tim Burchett’s X post
Linguist Rosina Lippi-Green’s concept of Standard Language Ideology (SLI) helps explain the backlash. Lippi-Green describes SLI as a bias towards an idealized, homogenous spoken language that is imposed and maintained by institutions and drawn from the spoken language of the middle class (2023). Harris’s use of AAE deviates from this standard, and the media construes that deviation as “fake,” purposefully weaponizing speech to attack her credibility.
This criticism is also gendered. Research shows that female politicians are held to higher standards than male politicians because of the persistent societal perception that women possess less expertise, even when equally qualified (Ozer, 2023). Harris’s identity as a Black and South Asian American woman was compounded as a target for this kind of scrutiny.
The media’s vilified framing of code-switching and the racialized use of DEI both stem from systemic racism and reflect the broader societal views of race, identity, and language. Ultimately, while linguists have long deconstructed the myth of SLI, its influence persists through political discourse. Understanding the intersectionality of identity and linguistics is necessary to identify and combat harmful rhetoric and dissect the nuance in political framing.
References:
The American Presidency Project. (2024, September 2). Remarks at a campaign event in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Remarks at a Campaign Event in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania | The American Presidency Project. https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/remarks-campaign-event-pittsburgh-pennsylvania
CBS. (2024). Kamala Harris speaks with union leaders in Detroit on Labor Day. CBS News. https://www.cbsnews.com/detroit/news/watch-live-kamala-harris-detroit-labor-day/
Detroit, MI. Data USA. (2023a). https://datausa.io/profile/geo/detroit-mi/?compare=united-states
Hannity, S. (2024). Sean Hannity: Kamala Harris Showed off an Embarrassingly Fake Accent. YouTube. https://youtu.be/AsuguQ3YizQ?si=-fdehYdou4uXP7oi
Lippi-Green, R., Barrett, R., Cramer, J., & McGowan, K. B. (2023). English with an accent language, ideology and discrimination in the United States Rosina Lippi-Green, Rusty Barrett, Jennifer Cramer, Kevin B. McGowan. Routledge.
Long, C., & Weissert, W. (2024, September 2). Watch: Harris speaks with union members at Labor Day Campaign event in Detroit. PBS. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/watch-live-harris-speaks-with-union-members-at-labor-day-campaign-event-in-detroit
Ozer, A. L. (2023, May 11). Women experts and gender bias in political media. Public opinion quarterly. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10408780/
Pittsburgh, PA. Data USA. (2023b). https://datausa.io/profile/geo/pittsburgh-pa?redirect=true
Watters, J. (2024). How Kamala Harris suddenly developed a “southern accent” | fox news video. Fox News. https://www.foxnews.com/video/6361468403112
Audrey Chang is an Integrative Physiology and Public Health double major with a certificate in STEM Education. As a pre-health student, she is driven by a commitment to learning and a passion for expanding her academic experiences.