HOW YOU SAY IT – Katherine D Kinzler

The way we speak is shaped by subtle social forces.

Documentary filmmaker David Thorpe grew up deep in the heart of Bible

Belt Texas. As a child, he was taught that homosexuality was a sin, so it
took until college for him to come out as gay. This new sexual identity
shocked his friends and family. But, they also noticed another change.

After coming out, David spoke differently. His s’s were sharper and his
vowels were longer. There was a lilt to his sentences. He had, in his own
view, begun to “sound gay.” But, why? After all, coming out didn’t
physically alter his vocal cords.

Yet, the change happened just as it did for many other gay men. That’s
because the way we speak isn’t always down to biology. In fact, our vocal
inflections are more than just sounds, they’re part of our identity.

The key message here is: The way we speak is shaped by subtle social
forces.

Humans naturally divide society into different social groups. We

categorize each other by nationality, race, religion, sex, even by which
sports team we support. Some of these qualities have huge social
significance while others are more trivial. One category which is
extremely important, but often overlooked, is something called linguistic
groupings. That is, our different styles of speaking.
The way we speak has a serious influence on our social lives. Of course,
we tend to socialize with people who share the same language. But, it
goes deeper. We also favor others with the same accent, inflection, or
tone in their speech. And, when we join a social group, we often alter
our way of talking to fit in.

Throughout the 1980s, sociolinguist Penelope Eckert studied this

phenomenon. She found that teenagers changed their pronunciation
according to their social group. At one high school, she identified two
social categories: jocks and burnouts. While each group came from the
same background they nonetheless had different ways of speaking. Jocks
would pronounce the meal we have at midday as lunch while burnouts
would say it more like launch.

These divisions appear across time as well. In the 1990s, American teens
adopted upspeak, the typical Valley girl style in which every statement
sounds like a question. Today, young people are more likely to have vocal
fry, a low-pitched, gravely tone. In each case, older generations tend to
look down on these speech patterns as annoying or unprofessional. But
this habit just reflects people’s unconscious bias towards their own social
groups.
The younger you are, the easier it is to learn a language.

Consider the famous writers Joseph Conrad and Vladimir Nabokov.

Conrad was born in Poland and grew up speaking Polish and French.
Nabokov hailed from Russia and mostly spoke Russian as a child. Yet,
both men earned literary acclaim for novels written in English.

Clearly, these men of letters must have managed to master English later
in life. Yet, when Conrad spoke, his words had a thick Polish accent, while
Nabokov spoke with just a hint of Russian.

The reason is that Nabokov was raised by an English-speaking governess.

He was exposed to the words and sounds of English at a much younger
age and that made all the difference.

The key message here is: The younger you are, the easier it is to learn a
language.

If you’ve ever tried to learn a language as an adult, you’ll know it’s not
easy. You may also know a few bilingual children who seem to have
learned multiple languages with ease. It may seem unfair, but the
difference is hardwired: young brains are more malleable – they’re
simply better at picking up new languages.

Of course, learning a language later in life is possible, it’s just harder to

reach fluency. A study into adult speakers of American Sign Language –
or ASL – looked at just this phenomenon. The skills of three groups were
assessed: the first had learned ASL as infants, the second as toddlers, and
the third as adolescents. Unsurprisingly, the first two groups were fluent,
while the latter group still made many mistakes even after decades of
signing.
This study, and others like it, have consistently found that our ability to
master a new tongue starts to diminish at around the age of seven. By
20, the decline has leveled out, meaning a young adult and a senior
citizen have about the same language-learning ability. With sustained
effort, any adult can acquire a new language, but because the brain is
less flexible, most will never grasp all the nuances of grammar and
pronunciation.

Importantly, this means your native tongue will always feel more natural.
Studies even show that adults who learn new languages feel less
emotionally attached to them. For a bilingual adult listening to curse
words in both languages, the naughty words in their native tongue
provoked a much stronger physical response. It seems that even if you
understand the meaning of new words, your brain still feels them
differently.
Language can bring people together, or drive them apart.

Let’s take a quick trip back in time to June 16, 1976 and the streets of
Soweto, a poor township in Johannesburg, South Africa. Around you, the
streets are filled with furious students. They’re marching, chanting, and
waving signs in protest. What do they want? Simply, the right to speak
their own language.

You see, it's the era of apartheid, and just a few weeks ago, the ruling
National Party passed the Afrikaans Medium Decree. This new law has
made Afrikaans, the language of the country’s white ruling minority, the
only acceptable language in schools. Local languages like Zulu, Sotho,
and Tswana, have been banned.

To the protesting students, this is an insult. They feel a deep personal

connection to their native tongues and know that banning language is
just another tool of government oppression.

The key message here is: Language can bring people together, or drive
them apart.

Language is crucial to identity, and sharing a language is essential for

forming social bonds. This means that differences in language can also
drive people apart. Someone speaking a foreign language, or merely
having a foreign accent, instantly marks them as an outsider. Humans are
so attuned to language differences, that even a toddler can spot a non-
native speaker.

Because sharing a language is so connected to community, linguistic

differences are sometimes seen as a threat to a group’s cohesion. When
one group wants to dominate another, suppressing their language is a
common tactic. When the Spanish dictator Francisco Franco wanted to
quash the independent spirit of the Basque and Catalan regions, he
outlawed their languages. A move that, thankfully, proved unsuccessful.

Problems also arise when societies assign different values to different

languages or dialects – sometimes called accent attitudes. Such attitudes
often fuel stereotypes. Sometimes this is harmless, like when Americans
think speakers with southern accents are kinder. Other times, it’s more
pernicious, for example, when African American speakers are judged to
be less intelligent or competent.

Negative accent attitudes can also be internalized in a phenomenon

called linguistic insecurity, which can lead to added stress or other social
barriers. For instance, a non-native English speaker may avoid speaking
up in class or at work, even if they have complete command of the
language.

In the next blink, we’ll dive even further into this connection between
language, identity, and prejudice.
Speech may be the most important category in determining our biases.

Imagine it’s 40,000 years ago and you’re an early human wandering the
forests of Europe. Suddenly, there’s a rustle in the bushes and an
unfamiliar figure steps onto the path in front of you. You must make a
quick judgment: are they friend or foe?

It’s hard to know just by looking. After all, many of the distinguishing
qualities you use to categorize people are completely irrelevant. At this
point in time, there’s no such thing as nationality. And, the different skin
tones which will one day be used to differentiate races won’t emerge for
thousands of years.
So, the easiest way for you to check if this stranger is an ally is to talk to
them. If their vocalizations are similar to yours, they’re probably a
neighbor and potential friend.

The key message here is: Speech may be the most important category in
determining our biases.

According to evolutionary psychologists, humans have an innate drive to

categorize others as either us or them. This tendency to see people as
friends to collaborate with, or outsiders to compete with, likely evolved
to help us survive the harsh realities of nature. In today’s world, it’s a
habit that appears in modern forms of social segregation, like racism.

But evidence suggests that biases around language and speech may be
more ancient and deeply rooted than any other divide. Certain animal
behaviors seem to back this up. Many other species use vocalizations as
a means to identify friends and foe. For instance, baboons use their calls
to distinguish close relationships and social status. And, orcas have
distinct “accents” to their whistles that set them apart from other pods.

Recent research has examined whether race or language takes

precedence in people’s unconscious biases. One study asked people to
label faces as either German or Italian. At first, participants sorted the
faces according to their skin tone, labeling the lighter faces German, and
the darker ones Italian.
Next, the researchers paired the faces with voice samples. Some faces
spoke perfect German while others spoke German with a distinct Italian
accent. This drastically changed the outcome. Participants ignored the
look of each face. Instead, they categorized those that spoke German
perfectly as German regardless of their skin tone. The way someone
spoke was seen as more essential to their identity than how they looked.
Linguistic biases emerge at a very young age.

No doubt you’ve heard of, if not seen, Aladdin, The Lion King, and The
Jungle Book. These fun, family-friendly movies entertain children all over
the world with their magical genies, rousing songs, and heartwarming
tales of interspecies friendship. But, just below the surface, they may
unintentionally present a more disturbing message: don’t trust foreign
accents.

The sad truth is that in many mainstream films, the good guys usually
speak perfect American English, while the bad guys and funny characters
talk with heavy non-standard accents. Just compare Simba’s plainspoken
English to the growly British voice of his evil uncle, Scar.

While it may seem trivial, these depictions can color a child’s

understanding of the world. This is especially true considering that
humans are attuned to language differences from the moment they’re
born.

The key message here is: Linguistic biases emerge at a very young age.
Linguistic bias is the tendency to value one way of speaking over another.
In humans, this habit begins at birth. Consider that a baby can hear her
mother’s voice while in the womb. So, when she’s born, she’s already
primed to pay more attention to her mother’s native tongue than the
sounds of other languages.

Researchers have studied this by tracking how infants respond to various

speakers. In one experiment, a baby from English speaking parents was
shown videos of two adults talking, one in English and one in French.
Then, each speaker offered the baby a toy. Every time, the baby would
demonstrate a clear preference by reaching for the object offered by the
English speaker.

This makes sense as the baby is more familiar with the sound of English
and her survival instinct interprets these sounds as more important to
understand. It’s a tendency that continues throughout childhood.
Children asked to choose playmates from a selection of pictures will
often pick children of the same race. But, when voices are added to the
mix, they tend to choose kids with the same accent as theirs, completely
ignoring race as a factor.

These studies show that voice is a critically important category for

children trying to understand the world. At first, this linguistic bias is
more about instinct and survival. But, when movies and TV shows
consistently pair certain voices with certain characters, it can create
lasting stereotypes that are hard to erase.
Discrimination based on someone’s accent is pervasive and accepted.
Manuel Fragante had all the right qualifications for his dream job at the
Department of Motor Vehicles. He was a veteran, a high school
valedictorian, and even had a law degree. What’s more, out of all the
applicants, he scored the highest on the civil service exam. He was a
shoo-in.

Yet, after a brief interview, he didn't get the job. You see, Fragante was
Filipino, and the hiring team didn’t like his accent. They said it made him
a bad communicator, even though he spoke grammatically perfect
English. So, Fragante sued for discrimination. After many appeals, he still
lost the case.

The court decided that denying someone a job based on their accent
wasn’t a problem. Unfortunately, many people share this opinion.

The key message here is: Discrimination based on someone’s accent is

pervasive and accepted.

Everyone has an accent, but not all accents are treated equally. And
often, how we respond to someone’s accent has more to do with our
perceptions of their speech than any actual acoustic reality. People tend
to act as if accents are a huge barrier to understanding. But, science
shows that this isn’t usually the case.
In the United States, it’s common for students to complain that foreign
teachers are too difficult to understand. Yet, in a series of studies,
researchers found that these students are perfectly capable of
transcribing accented speech if they’re told they’re listening to a native
speaker. It appears that much of their difficulty comes from expecting
not to understand, rather than any actual problem.

Further studies have examined how accents influence other realms of

life, like the housing market. One experiment sent pairs of Hispanic
participants to buy homes. On paper, these potential buyers were
completely identical in terms of income and other factors. The only
difference was that one spoke with a more pronounced accent.
Predictably, the accented speaker was turned down the vast majority of
the time.

Such discrimination also appears in the courtroom. Jurors often rate

testimonies from speakers of standard English as more credible than
testimonies from those with non-standard accents. This type of deep-
seated bias can put linguistic or racial minorities at a distinct
disadvantage when on trial. Paying more attention to this form of
discrimination would be one way to make society fairer.
Growing up bilingual can make you sharper and more perceptive.

What do you call that small, furry pet with whiskers, pointy ears, and a
tail? Pose this question to an English-speaking child and they’ll answer
right away – “Cat.” Ask a Spanish-speaking child the question in Spanish,
and they’ll tell you without hesitation – “Gato.”
Now, what happens if you present this same query to a child from a
bilingual English-Spanish household? Will they freeze up in confusion?
Will they clumsily combine cat and gato into a new hybrid? No, they’ll
simply consider what language you speak, and respond in kind.

There’s a common belief that growing up with two languages is too

complicated for children and will hinder their language learning. But this
so-called monolingual myth is far from the truth.

The key message is: Growing up bilingual can make you sharper and
more perceptive.

Before the 1960s, many linguists believed that raising bilingual children
would slow their development. This notion was based on faulty studies
that looked at bilingual households in places like rural Wales and
immigrant communities. These studies found development deficits, yet
improved research showed these shortfalls had more to do with
economic status than language.

More recent studies find that bilingual children actually suffer no such
cognitive impairment. Measure the vocabulary of bilingual children and,
when you account for both their languages, you’ll find they know exactly
as many words as monolingual children. Interestingly, these words are
sometimes unevenly distributed. Bilingual children use one of their
languages for some topics and the other language for others. This is
called the complementarity principle, and shows very skillful brain
functioning.

In fact, being bilingual may offer many mental benefits. For one, children
who speak two languages are often more flexible thinkers and better at
problem-solving. Experiments show that children raised in multi-
language homes can more easily imagine the mental states of others.
Additionally, there’s evidence that bilingualism protects against
symptoms of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease later in life.

So, what should we do with this knowledge? For one, we should

encourage linguistic diversity in all realms of life. Schools should teach
children a second language as soon as possible and education systems
shouldn’t discourage kids from speaking their native tongues. With
proper investment in early childhood programs, the next generation
could grow up speaking more languages and communicating better
across social divides.