This week's readings covered topics on stereotype bias and semantic association. Meghan Sumner and Ed King researched "voice-specific" effects in comprehension and semantic connotations. They concluded that listeners respond to spoken language in speaker-specific ways. Upon hearing the voice of the speaker, the listener makes certain (subconscious) assumptions (usually adhering to stereotypes) about the speaker and attempts to tailor the words/meaning heard to these assumptions. Any difficulty in doing so impedes the understanding of the speaker by the listener. For example, speakers generally have a more difficult time comprehending a man saying "I always do my makeup" versus a woman saying it. Robert Podesva focused on a specific person, Condoleezza Rice, who has a very diverse background, and analyzed one of her speeches. He concludes that she does not adhere to the linguistic tendencies of solely one element of her background; rather, her speech draws from all her past life experiences -- where she's lived, gone to school, etc. Podesva concludes that Rice's background, combined with her education and status as a major political figure, combines to form her "professional African American identity."
This series of readings prompted me to think about the innateness of our tendency to form social biases. From an evolutionary standpoint, it would make sense for this ability to be innate -- back in the day of our ancestors, the presence of a foreign accent was a dead giveaway that someone was a foreigner (and thus could not be trusted). However, with modern globalization, stereotypes and foreign accents can no longer be the dividers between the human race. In many parts of the world, it still is -- people succumb to the more primitive parts of their biology and in fact do discriminate and persecute others. However, in parts of the world where we are achieving equality and mixing of cultures, it is remarkable that we have overcome our evolution that encourages exclusion and distrust of new people and cultures, and instead formed a melting pot of cultures, of people tied together by their humanity, not their background.
Hi Eva, your point about the potential evolutionary reasons for our innate biases is interesting. Following that logic, do you therefore think that future generations will develop less of an innate phonetic biases, due to the increasing globalization of our societies? But then on the other hand, does the Condoleezza Rice example provide evidence for less phonetic variation in the future? Podesva explained how the lack of some characteristic phonetic traits that other individuals with some of her backgrounds have is explained by the fact that Rice's background was not homogenous. So with globalization, are some specific phonetic variants potentially "dying"? I don't know the answers to these questions, but I'm just thinking.
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ReplyDeleteHi Eva,
ReplyDeleteI liked your point about "overcoming our evolution." I was wondering, what do you think is the best way to overcome it? I was thinking about a specific example myself lately. A common stereotype is that people from the south are less intelligent, and heavy southern accents are stigmatized. I think at a place at Stanford, it's great that we have such a diverse set of students that come from a variety of places because it's not so difficult to come across someone from the south who is brilliant. I personally know someone who has a southern accent and is a computer science whiz. I think maybe the best way of overcoming our evolution is having examples in our own lives who defy social biases.
Eva,
ReplyDeleteI really liked that you brought these readings into the context of evolution, and commented on how within-accent biases could help you identify people who were part of your "group" and those with accents could be labeled as "other." I hasn't thought about any potential benefits of these sociolinguistic biases, but I suppose this antiquated example is a great one.
I think that the potential evolutionary reasons for our innate biases is interesting, but I don't think it's possible. I think accents form far quicker than we evolve, and humans spent the majority of time evolving isolated from each other and constantly hearing the same speech and accent. Moreover, it wouldn't make sense to me that GE speakers would identify more closely with BE speakers than GE speakers. It's still thought provoking though.
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