How You Say It

Why We Judge Others by the Way They Talk—and the Costs of This Hidden Bias

Katherine D. Kinzler

• Publisher: Mariner Books
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9780358567103
• eBook ISBN:
  9780544987425
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Psychology

A groundbreaking examination of how speech causes some of our deepest social divides—and how it can help us overcome them.
 

"Katherine Kinzler is a phenomenon—one of the most brilliant young psychologists of her generation." —Paul Bloom, author of  Against Empathy  and  Just Babies

We gravitate toward people like us; it's human nature. Race, class, and gender shape our social identities, and thus who we perceive as "like us" or "not like us." But one overlooked factor can be even more powerful: the way we speak. 

As the pioneering psychologist Katherine Kinzler reveals in  How You Say It, the way we talk is central to our social identity because our speech largely reflects the voices we heard as children. We can change how we speak to some extent, whether by "code-switching" between dialects or by learning a new language; over time, our speech even changes to reflect our evolving social identity and aspirations. But for the most part, we are forever marked by our native tongue—and are hardwired to prejudge others by theirs, often with serious consequences. Someone's accent alone can determine the economic opportunity or discrimination they encounter in life, making speech one of the most urgent social-justice issues of our day. 

Our linguistic differences present challenges, Kinzler shows, but they also can be a force for good. Humans can benefit from being exposed to multiple languages—a paradox that should inspire us to master this ancient source of tribalism and rethink the role that speech plays in our society.

"A must read for any social scientist, and any concerned citizen." —Emily Oster, New York Times– bestselling author of Cribsheet and Expecting Better

"Kinzler explores in this revelatory and thought-provoking debut the social assumptions people attach to accents and speaking styles, to sometimes devastating effect. . . . Well-written and entertainingly told, Kinzler's persuasive exploration of linguistic-based differences will awaken readers to potentially unrecognized biases." — Publishers Weekly

Notes

Introduction: It’s Not What You Say

The Hebrew Bible contains: Judges 12:5–6, in The Holy Bible, New International Version. (1984). Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

“ear of corn”: Translation from Oxford English Dictionary. shibboleth, n. (2019). Oxford English Dictionary Online (2nd ed.). Oxford University Press. Retrieved from OED Online Database https://www.oed.com/view/Entry/178050?redirectedFrom=shibboleth&

Croatian or Serbian: For information on Croatian, Serbian, and Bosnian languages, see Browne, W. “Serbo-Croatian language,” Encyclopedia Britannica, retrieved at: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Serbo-Croatian-language; Vezenkov, A. (2013). Introduction to section two: Languages and language policies in the Balkans. In Daskalov, R. & Marinov, T. (Eds.), Entangled Histories of the Balkans, Volume One: National Ideologies and Language Policies, Koninkijke Brill Nv, Leiden, The Netherlands.

1. HOW YOU SPEAK IS WHO YOU ARE

David Thorpe: Thanks to David Thorpe for providing comments on this section of the book.

turned his camera on himself: Gertler, H., & Thorpe, D. (Producers) & Thorpe, D. (Director). (2014). Do I sound gay? [Motion picture]. United States: IFC Films/Sundance Selects.

as the linguists have shown: Pierrehumbert, J. B., Bent, T., Munson, B., Bradlow, A. R., & Bailey, J. M. (2004). The influence of sexual orientation on vowel production (L). Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 116(4), 1905–8. https://doi.org/10.1121/1.1788729; Smyth, R., & Rogers, H. (2002). Phonetics, gender, and sexual orientation. Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Canadian Linguistics Association, 299–311.

“sounding gay” to others: For additional insight into the vocal features that listeners use to guess whether someone’s voice sounds “gay” or “straight,” see Smyth, R., Jacobs, G., & Rogers, H. (2003). Male voices and perceived sexual orientation: An experimental and theoretical Approach. Language in Society, 32(3), 329–50.

continued scientific research: Ganna, A., Verweij, K. J. H., Nivard, M. G., Maier, R., Wedow, R., Busch, A. S., . . . & Zietsch, B. P. (2019). Large-scale GWAS reveals insights into the genetic architecture of same-sex sexual behavior. Science, 365(6456), eeat7693.

do not differ in overall pitch: Pierrehumbert et al., The influence of sexual orientation on vowel production (L); Smyth & Rogers, Phonetics, gender, and sexual orientation.

an explosion of research: Munson, D. (2011). Lavender lessons learned; Or, what sexuality can teach us about phonetic variation. American Speech, 86, 14–31.

social group membership: Fiske, S. T. (1998). Stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination. In D. T. Gilbert, S. T. Fiske, & G. Lindzey (Eds.), The handbook of social psychology (4th ed.) (vols. 1–2, pp. 357–411); Fiske, S. T., & Neuberg, S. L. (1990). A continuum of impression formation, from category-based to individuating processes: Influences of information and motivation on attention and interpretation. In M. P. Zanna (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (vol. 23, pp. 1–74). New York: Academic Press; Stangor, C., Lynch, L., Duan, C., & Glas, B. (1992). Categorization of individuals on the basis of multiple social features. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 62(2), 207–18; Messick, D. M., & Mackie, D. M. (1989). Intergroup relations. Annual Review of Psychology, 40, 45–81.

the prism of categories: Murphy, G. L., & Medin, D. L. (1985). The role of theories in conceptual coherence. Psychological Review, 92(3), 289–316; Medin, D., & Rips, L. J. (2005). Concepts and categories: Memory, meaning, and metaphysics. In K. Holyoak & B. Morrison (Eds.), The Cambridge handbook of thinking and reasoning (pp. 37–72). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

stereotypes and prejudices: Devine, P. G. (1989). Stereotypes and prejudice: Their automatic and controlled components. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 56(1), 5–18; Gelman, S. A. (2003). The essential child: Origins of essentialism in everyday thought. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press; Bodenhausen, G. V., Kang, S. K., & Peery, D. (2012). Social categorization and the perception of social groups. In S. Fiske & C. N. Macrae (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of social cognition (pp. 311–29). Los Angeles: SAGE.

indicator of social identity: For evidence that hearing someone’s voice triggers perceptions of them as more human and mentally capable, see Schroeder, J., Kardas, M., & Epley, N. (2017). The humanizing voice: Speech reveals, and text conceals, a more thoughtful mind in the midst of disagreement. Psychological Science, 28, 1745–62.

seminal linguistics studies: Deckert, S. K., & Vickers, C. H. (2011). An introduction to sociolinguistics: Society and identity. New York: Bloomsbury; Gordon, M. J. (2012). Labov: A guide for the perplexed. New York: Bloomsbury Publishing; Labov, W. (1963). The social motivation of a sound change. WORD, 19(3), 273–309. doi:10.1080/00437956.1963.11659799; Labov, W. (2001). Principles of linguistic change, Volume 2: Social factors. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers.

“linguistic movers and shakers”: Eckert, P. (2004). Adolescent language. In E. Finegan & J. Rickford (Eds.), Language in the USA: Themes for the twenty-first century (pp. 361–74). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511809880.021

“As people age”: Pinker, S. (2015). The sense of style: The thinking person’s guide to writing in the 21st century. New York: Penguin Books.

the way they spoke: Eckert, P. (1989). Jocks and burnouts: Social categories and identity in the high school. New York: Teachers College Press; Eckert, P. (2003). Language and adolescent peer groups. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 22(1), 112–18. doi:10.1177/0261927X02250063

leaders in these vocal transformations: Eckert, P. (2011). Language and power in the preadolescent heterosexual market. American Speech, 86, 85–97.

an expert on implicit attitudes: Banaji, M. R., & Greenwald, A. G. (2013). Blindspot: Hidden biases of good people. New York: Delacorte Press.

recognize it more when women do it: Davidson, L. (2017). Detection of creaky voice as a function of speaker pitch and gender. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 141, 3981.

undermine professional success: Anderson, R. C., Klofstad, C. A., Mayew, W. J., & Venkatachalam, M. (2014). Vocal fry may undermine the success of young women in the labor market. PLOS ONE, 9(5), e97506–e97506. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0097506

going somewhere: One linguistics paper presented some undergraduates from UC Berkeley and the University of Iowa with a typical vocal-y fry-y voice, and they didn’t find it negative. This raises the possibility that in the future, this feature of speech may catch on even more. Yuasa, I. P. (2010). Creaky voice: A new feminine voice quality for young urban-oriented upwardly mobile American women? American Speech, 85(3), 315–37. doi:10.1215/00031283-2010-018

sound like other kids: Harris, J. R. (1998). The nurture assumption: Why children turn out the way they do. New York: Simon & Schuster.

My former college roommate Joey: Thanks to Joey Lee for sharing this story.

native American accent: DeJesus, J., Dautel, J., Hwang, H. G., & Kinzler, K. D. (2017). Bilingual children’s social preferences hinge on accent. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 164, 178–91; for a related finding, see Souza, A., Byers-Heinlein, K., & Poulin-Dubois, D. (2013). Bilingual and monolingual children prefer native-accented speakers. Frontiers Psychology, 4(953).

sound like their peers: Harris, The nurture assumption.

speak the same way: Howard Giles’s communication accommodation theory describes how language shifts to signal social affiliation. Giles, H. (2016). Communication accommodation theory: Negotiating personal relationships and social identities across contexts. New York: Cambridge University Press.

follows suit: Chartrand, T. L., & Bargh, J. A. (1999). The chameleon effect: The perception-behavior link and social interaction. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 76(6), 893–910. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.76.6.893

this VOT feature: Yu, A. C. L., Abrego-Collier, C., & Sonderegger, M. (2013). Phonetic imitation from an individual-difference perspective: Subjective attitude, personality, and “autistic” traits. PLOS One, 8(9), e74746. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0074746; see also Abrego-Collier, C., Grove, J., Sonderegger, M., & Yu, A. C. L. (2011). Effects of speaker evaluation on phonetic convergence. Proceedings of the International Congress of the Phonetic Sciences, 17, 19–195.

language game: The linguist Molly Babel studied New Zealanders’ accommodation to Australian English. Babel, M. (2010). Dialect divergence and convergence in New Zealand English. Language in Society, 39(4), 437–56.

key personality traits: Yu, Abrego-Collier, & Sonderegger, Phonetic imitation from an individual-d...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Contents
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Introduction
• How You Speak Is Who You Are
• Native Tongues
• How Language Divides Us
• Deep Talk
• Little Bigots?
• On the Basis of Speech
• A Linguistics Revolution
• Afterword
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• Index
• About the Author
• Connect on Social Media
• Footnotes