Two things really struck me while doing this weeks readings. The first being how hard it is to conduct linguistics studies and the second being how speech is the greatest evidence we have for implicit bias. The first is kind of a shame, the second is a huge opportunity.
The first point came from Voice-specific effects in semantic association. At the end of the study, even after such well-planned methodology and multiple analyses, there were simply too many differences in the speakers to be able to make concrete claims about the results. Beyond discussion of the speakers' differences there was mention of backgrounds in the listener and I think this is an unavoidable point. Every is going to have grown up is a very distinct setting and around distinct talkers so what they bring to the study will differ in most regards from everybody else. This means that when you conduct a linguistics study you have to maintain a baseline broadness in scope otherwise you lose all ability to make conclusions because your test subjects will all have performed uniquely. I think the theory that prompted the study a good one and I don't think too many people would disagree with it but testing a theory about how people speak and listen is going to be altered based on who is speaking and who is listening and that's forever unavoidable.
The second point stemmed from a combination of all the readings together. From the first study we see that word association can will, to some degree, be based on who is speaking. The Condoleezza Rice study was interesting as a thought experiment more than anything. To attempt to use language as a way to know where people are from -- where people draw their identity from. The social weighting of words also keeps in line with the theme of "we learn you through the way you speak and you learn us in the way we listen". I don't think anyone would disagree that as you are being introduced to someone, you formulate a battle plan for how you're going to linguistically conduct yourself to this person. Whether that means being more formal than you've ever been before or using slang that you're not even sure you know the meaning to. And this is a tragically beautiful thing. What it means is that we so believe staunch differences exist based solely on appearance that we change the fundamental way in which we communicate and interact with people.
If we were all able to give the long-haired, beat-up clothes kid a chance to be eloquent or to allow the suit-and-tie professional a chance to subscribe to an entirely urban vernacular we could really learn something about each other. But we cant. As evidenced by these papers, we listen based on expectations of what we think we'll hear or how they'll say it. We speak based on how we think they have most commonly been spoken to. We ascribe them a background and a dialect and a vocabulary and if that's not the best example of implicit bias out there, we may just never find one.
At the end you speak about allowing people to speak in ways that are unexpected. You focus mainly on their clothes when you described them but also mentioned their ages. Perhaps this is why high school students who may know enough in their field do not get their voices heard. Our bias also comes into play when determining gender. Do you think, in time, our biases from speech will decline because of the increased amount of 'out' transgender people and others who go against what is "normal" in our culture?
ReplyDeleteHi - I liked your title. Nice bit of modern poetry there.
ReplyDeleteYour blog post reminds me of that blond, long-haired high school student who passionately protested against his teacher's approach to education (were you referencing him with "long-haired, beat-up clothes kid"?). People were surprised at how eloquent he was, as if they expected much less from him; as you said, it's interesting how our perceptions of people and our linguistic biases stem so much from a person's appearance.