What speech can reveal about your identity

Besides the Trends in Cognitive Sciences article, I also read the study on Condoleezza Rice's speech patterns and the article on semantic association.

First of all, I found Professor Sumner's article on several of the social functions of language through phonetics to be very interesting and a good reminder of many things we've been told or discussed throughout the quarter thus far. The most important point of that article, I found, is that our perceptions of the speaker are formed basically as soon as we hear them; our biases are invoked completely subconsciously. I feel that this idea is very important to be aware of not only linguistically but also in our personal lives. If nothing else it will definitely make me try to listen harder to people when I speak to them. This finding is also hugely important socially and especially when taken into context with the other research that has been done. For example, in the article examining Rice's speech, it was made clear how closely linked our identity is to our way of speaking. I found this paper especially interesting because I was able to hear Condoleezza Rice speak just last week and so was able to consider the research in comparison with my own opinion of her speech. She did indeed speak very eloquently and appeared very educated, and this, along with the analysis and conclusions of the research led me to think about the role of accents and phonetics in politics. I wonder if when politicians speak in places they are not from that they consider altering their speech patterns at all to appeal to their audience. Or perhaps just a generally educated way of speaking would be best. I'd be interested to see what kinds of research has been done on the speech of politicians in general. However, that strays from the real point of the article which is that your way of speaking can largely correlate to parts of your identity. Which is very cool, but if we remember that certain phonetic variations produce different stereotypes and biases unconsciously, then it may put certain groups of individuals that share an identity at a disadvantage. Anyone who speaks in a non-standard form is simply harder to comprehend, and there's really no one to blame but our own brains.