Language in the Workforce Cont.

https://digitalcommons.northgeorgia.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1827&context=ngresearchconf

I have included the link to a pdf that I found that was exactly what I seemed to be experiencing in the workforce in regard to gendered language. The article follows a woman named Hettie, listening to her speak and watching how she conducts herself within the work force.

The article talks about how Hettie "constructs herself as a competent professional, managing a difficult situation well and with dignity through a variety of strategic discursive, lexical and grammatical choices. These choices also present her as a vulnerable, warm-blooded person with strong feelings, and a story-teller who is responsive to her audience". She tries to relate to the person she is assisting and makes her work persona very personable and approachable, while at the same time alluding a ray of authority and professionalism. 

This article then went on to talk about how men and women differ in the fact that women tend to use more "rapport-talk", or rather where more personal information is used in the act of conversation, but I tend to disagree slightly. I disagree in that I do believe a lot of men participate in rapport talk as well. Within my own job the men around me are often telling stories of their past. Mostly because that past consists of serving in the United States Military, and military men are different than normal men - in my opinion, which is a whole other discussion - telling militia tales. 

Differences in Gender Language in the Workforce

For the last couple of weeks I have been working at a technology center for Northwest Savings Bank in Warren, PA. Due to the fact that technology and help support such as this are predominately male dominated, I was able to observe and record the differences in language between male and female coworkers and within different help desk calls received by the desk.

I suppose I should start by explaining what we do: I am one of four interns currently working at the Tech Support Center, with an additional employee-band of ten or less. From that work pool of people there were three girls total, myself included. To me, this was more than I thought there would be when I started working for tech support. During a normal work day we answer close to one-hundred calls each; each call with a different technological issue that needs solving. Now while that sounds impressive, it's merely unlocking user accounts and logging back in.

From performing these calls myself, and also listening into many calls made by others, I was able to observe many different styles of speaking between male and female.

Some of these observations are that, like in school, women tend to tag themselves before speaking. By this I mean, they begin asking their question(s) by saying things such as "I don't know if you'll be able to fix this..." or "hopefully his isn't too tricky...". They never want to outright ask for something to be fixed. And the same goes on my end. After I solved some issues for people I would go to email them back and find myself belittling my own accomplishment of fixing their issue by saying something along the lines of: "everything SHOULD be fixed by now" and "Hopefully it works for you".

But this fact is not the same when it comes to my male coworkers. In observation I decided men are very matter-of-fact. They state what needs to be said, and hardly elaborate more. If the account is unlocked thats all the information they give you. Whereas women tend to add more information than needed. For example I would always add in the note: "If you have any more issues please do not hesitate to call the help desk and someone will take care of it". The men at work hardly ever did a follow up on someone's account or issues that were previously recorded; while women remember the names of frequent callers and have chats about life in between fixing the problem.

There were so many different part about speech and gender in the workforce and I will continue to write and observe more.

Digging into Family Root Similarities

As my last blog post I wanted to bring attention to my family roots, the dialects of the Polish and Ukrainian language.  My father’s side is Polish and my mother’s side is Ukrainian. Both have made comments here and there, mentioning that both languages are quite similar.  But in what ways? I began to dig, asking my very Ukrainian grandmother and doing some research on my own.  This is what I found, both Polish and Ukrainian are Slavic languages from the Indo-European family.  And during the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Ukraine came under the domination of Poland this resulted in cultural Polonization.  Gradually, the official language of Ukrainian provinces under Poland was changed to Polish.  As a result, many Ukrainian nobles learned the Polish language.  This could explain why the west of the modern day Ukraine has much closer vocabulary and dialect use of the Polish language.  To get technical, both Ukrainian and Polish orthography is largely phonetic. There is a consistent correspondence between their spelling system of language, sounds, and letters.  As for grammar, both languages have a relatively free word order, and are considered a highly inflected language.  This meanings a language that changes the form or ending of some words due to the way they are used in a sentence.  There are no articles, and often subject pronouns are dropped.  Adding to that, nouns, pronouns, adjectives, and numerals are inclined by numbers, cases, and gender. 

I watched an interesting video of a man who spoke Polish and a women who spoke Ukrainian, trying to have a simple conversation.  It was interesting the way the women picked up on a few common spoken words.  I recommend watching about 5 or so minutes since the video is so long.  Let me know what you thought and if you know any other slavic languages who are also similar.  Or feel free to express your family’s roots if they have any correspondence to one another. 

Across the Pond

I thought with all the unsettling news going on in the world for the past couple months, I would make my last blog post about something fun.  We talked a lot about different accents locally and in the US.  I want to talk about the accents across the pond in the UK.  I did some research on some of the more recognizable accents.  RP is Received Pronunciation which is “the Queen’s English”, or close to it.  RP is the posh British accent that can be heard from Tom Hiddleston.  The Geordie accent is very distinctive, but the debate is whether that is a good or bad thing.  On the plus side it is viewed as a very friendly accent, on the negative many people cannot understand it.  Two members, Jade and Perrie, of the girl band Little Mix are particularly known for their Geordie accent.   There are other distinctive accents such as Welsh, Brummie, Scouse, and Essex, but the one that really caught my eye is Cockney.

Cockney is an accent particular to East London and is generally looked upon as a mark of lower class.  One of the most recognizable British accents, Cockney is the accent of the stereotypical British hitman in movies and TV shows.  They do not use "h" and th as in think is pronounced "fink", these are just a few examples of the defining characteristics of Cockney.  https://youtu.be/1WvIwkL8oLc This video demonstrates and explains the Cockney accent very well.  The thing about the Cockney accent that really caught my attention was its Rhyming Slang.  I speak English, but if someone was to come up to me speaking Cockney Rhyming Slang I would understand most of the individual words being spoken and still have no idea what they were trying to say.  From what I can tell the rhyming slang involves replacing certain words with other words.  The replacement words are a pare of words in which the final word rhymes with the original word.  For instance, “I went up the apple and pears” or “I went up the stairs”.  But wait, it gets even more confusing as most of the time the second half of the rhyme is removed.  So, you would say “I went up the apples” instead of “I went up the stairs”.  This was a trend started in the mid-1800’s that continues to this day.  This video explains it better than I ever could  https://youtu.be/La7Tg5e547g.     

As If Online Learning Isn't Hard Enough

I am sure I am not alone in finding distance learning to be difficult. Transitioning to everything being an online this or an online that has both depersonalized the learning experience as well as caused many students to feel like we have to teach ourselves the content. This is something thankfully most of us have been able to adapt to as college students -- but what about younger students?

Imagine being five years old and suddenly your school is now online only. Parents are having to take up the role of at-home teacher in order to achieve distance learning objectives. This presents its own unique host of challenges in general but now add into the equation that your parent is not a fluent English speaker -- what then? How do they help their young children do the schoolwork they themselves have trouble reading and understanding? Which is where my title for this blog post comes into play -- as if online learning isn't hard enough, let's contend with language barriers. 

We have been learning a lot these past few weeks in class about dialects across the United States but for my last post I wanted to travel back to some of our discussions from earlier in the semester (a simpler time when I got to see you all in person instead of through my laptop screen). We had spent time talking about the different languages spoken across the United States and the differing experiences of those whose native language is not English.

In this new, online based world, life for these non-native speakers is becoming even more challenging. An article published by a Floridian news outlet titled "Language Barrier Makes Distance Learning Hard for Some ParentsLanguage Barrier Makes Distance Learning Hard for Some Parents" explains the specific problems they are facing. 

The article focuses on an Hispanic mother named Martin del Campo who has four children who are now learning online at home. She explained that she had been having difficulty understanding the assignments she is trying to teach her youngest children since they are in English and as such has had to have her older kids become her unofficial teaching assistants -- something that detracts from their own studies. 

Paired with the already difficult work of trying to navigate unknown online programs -- which del Campo admitted "I struggle a lot because I also don’t know how to use a computer...I couldn’t understand when it says go to this link, log in to this website, so it gets really complicated.” these language barrier issues are making the transition to distance learning extra hard for families. 

The problem of language barriers in the world of distance learning is something that I had not even considered when we all switched to an online based education in the midst of this COVID-19 pandemic but it is truly a serious concern. What do you all think of the problems presented by language barriers in regards to online learning? What do you think are the best ways to try and help these families who are struggling? 

Amateur Hour

This week, we looked at William Labov’s article “How I Got Into Linguistics, and What I Got Out of It." Labov explains how, on the basis of linguistics alone, he saved a man from a prison sentence. Paul Prinzivalli was thought to be behind bomb threats made to the LA airport. The police had tape recordings of calls made by the suspect, and they claimed that the voice on the recordings sounded like Prinzivalli. However, Prinzivalli had a New York City accent, and Labov recognized that the voice on the recording had a Boston accent. Labov presented linguistic evidence in court, and thereafter it was ruled that Prinzivalli was innocent.
I found this case study to be fascinating. Something as seemingly simple as an accent made the difference between this man keeping his freedom and being wrongfully imprisoned. I looked up videos on YouTube of people speaking in NYC and Boston accents. Having done this, I can vouch for the fact that, to the untrained ear, these two accents do sound somewhat similar. To a linguist, it's probably quite simple to distinguish between the two. Indeed, Labov said “the moment I heard the recordings I was sure that he was innocent.” Labov picked up on this immediately. However, I was much less certain, and apparently I am not alone in this. According to Labov, prior to his testimony, the judge heard "no difference" between NYC and Boston accents.
This case is definitely interesting, but it’s also thought-provoking. Do you pick up on any major differences between the two accents? What might account for the two sounding similar to "regular" people, yet being so distinct to Labov? Interested to hear your thoughts! :)

Good ol' Bill, linguistic royalty.

Image courtesy of Alchetron.

Boston British

Hey everyone! Last week when I went to respond to blog posts I noticed there was not as many as normal. I kept wondering why but just responded to the ones that were there. Then I remembered today that we were supposed to post TWICE! I went back and looked at the schedule and would you believe it, I was the one that was missing! So my apologies for that, but hopefully posting now will make up for it...
Anyways, this past Wednesday we read and discussed Dennis Preston's, "They Speak Really Bad English Down South and in New York City". In the reading there's multiple maps made of data from multiple groups of people illustrating where they think proper English is spoken and who they think speaks the most pleasantly (whatever that means). Amongst these maps is a map of the US with sections made by someone from Michigan (who probably thinks very highly of himself as apparently all people from Michigan do...) that illustrate where they think the dialect areas are in the US. Most of it is what you'd expect with Texans being singled out as hillbillies and of course people from Michigan being labeled as normal. One thing specifically caught my eye however, and that is that New England was circled and labeled as simply, "British". In a historical context, British would make sense, but when I think of the modern New England accent the LAST thing I think of is British. I asked about this in class and Professor Luthin mentioned an accent that I had never heard of before called Boston Brahmin. After listening to a video to a conversation between two men with the accent I can confidently say that it does in fact sound like British. ALOT like British. So, I'm not sure if that is actually what that person from Michigan was talking about in the map, but honestly I don't care anymore. This whole post was a McGuffin to get all of you to look up the Boston Brahmin accent and have your mind blown...
If you happen to listen to it let me know what you think! this isn't really a discussion that can lead to a deep discussion but it is incredibly interesting (at least to me).

"Talking the Tawk"

In the midst of doing some Google searches, I came across an interesting article by The New Yorker that talks of William Labov and his explanations of Brooklynese.  I found it quite interesting, and I thought I would share some of the most interesting facts from the article.  (I also think that bullet points are more logical for this type of thing, so I will do that instead of paragraphs.)

1.) The dropping of the "r" lost its imperial status after WW2.  "'Before the war,' Labov said, 'the judges in the gangster pictures dropped their ‘r’s, but after the war only the hoodlums did it.'"
2.) Apart from the adenoidal "oi" (like saying "boid" instead of "bird"), Brooklynese has remained unchanged for the past fifty years.
3.) You can hear it in parts of New Orleans and Cincinnati because of the "bankers who moved to those cities in the nineteenth century to finance the cotton trade."
4.) "'Brooklynese is exactly the same whether it’s spoken in the Bronx, Queens, and Staten Island or in Brooklyn. Or the Lower East Side.' The city’s dialect, [Labov] said, 'is much more indicative of one’s social status than of one’s neighborhood.  Although no one wants to admit this,' he added, 'because we’re supposed to live in a classless society.'”
5.) "What causes dialects to change? Not television, Labov said. The people he calls 'extreme speakers'—those who have the greatest linguistic influence on others—tend to be visible local people: 'politicians, Realtors, bank clerks.'”

So I have to ask--what fact/opinion did you find most interesting?  I thought it was insane how the dialect hasn't really changed in 50 years.  It is hard to imagine, but fascinating nonetheless.

The Social Stigma of Using Words: Like Specifically the Word “Like”

I found an article discussing the different ways we use the word “like.” Normal uses of “like,” as a verb, noun, quotative, or as a word for comparison, are diverse as it is. But outside of those, the uses of “like” are normally looked down upon as socially unacceptable, much in the same way that uptalk is. Some people say that this is just another way to fill space, or another word for “um.” However, using “like” is not always associated with pauses in speech; its use is often intentional. Sometimes, we use it at the beginning of a sentence to emphasize or clarify a previous statement (e.g. The cheesecake was awesome! Like the raspberry sauce was so rich!). Other times, we use it in the middle of the sentence to highlight the importance of a specific phrase (e.g. I didn’t get to bed until like 3 in the morning). Here, we’re emphasizing the fact that it was so late to be going to sleep.

The two sources I looked at agreed that the use of “like” in this second way was for emphasizing the importance of something in the middle of the sentence. However, I think I also use it as “around” or “about,” meaning that it’s an estimate of something inexact (e.g. She cut the paper into like 5 pieces). Here, it isn’t about emphasizing the fact that it was five pieces, it’s more about communicating that we’re not sure how many pieces she cut it into. Anyway, this was just another meaning that I thought of that the articles didn’t mention.

The use of “like” was far more diverse than I realized. Are there other uses/meanings of “like” that you use or have heard? If you have time, check out some of the examples in the first article below!

Do you think “like” has the stigma of being annoying or incorrect in the same way that uptalk does?

https://theconversation.com/like-isnt-a-lazy-linguistic-filler-the-english-language-snobs-need-to-like-pipe-down-122056

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/grammar/british-grammar/like

https://xkcd.com/1483/

When Chile's in tha haus!

For this week's post, I wanted to share with you this very interesting video that depicts (in a very hilarious way) Chilean culture and language , under the eyes of our Latin American neighbours .What would happen if Chile was invited to a kind of group therapy with other countries? The following video shows some of the Chilean culture features that maybe are a little bit annoying for others to understand, but somehow determine our language as well. "Chilean Intervention" deals with many of our characteristics as a country: we speak terribly fast,we have a very changeable weather, we experience earthquakes almost everyday and we are absolutely convinced that we are the inventors of Pisco ( a very popular alcoholic drink) which is a no ending debate with our Peruvian brothers.

I firmly believe that the way we speak , has a tremendous impact on how others see us and the image we project as speakers. In her article, Amy Tan talked about how people perceived her mother based on her level English.The same phenomenon can be seen in how we speak our own language .Chile is a paradigma, in the sense that from all the Spanish speaking countries, we are considered the most difficult to understand

What ar your perceptions about Chilean culture and especially its language?

Does this video  show some of your perceptions about Chile?

Do you have perceptions of your own that I could confirm or debunk?

Socioeconomic Language

I found this chapter to be very interesting because I find sociolinguistics absolutely riveting. I spend a lot of my free, everyday time listening to the way people talk and, essentially, "reading between the lines" of their speech. While it may not be polite, I think you can learn a lot about someone just by the way they speak. I'm sure some people will consider it unfair profiling, but, for me, it's just second nature. You can learn a lot just by listening to people. For instance, this past summer I spent a week in Old Orchard Beach, Maine and the New England accent was striking. Of course, to us here in Pennsylvania that accent is always striking, but what really made me stop and take note was how different people working different jobs had different strengths of the accent. To help you visualize this, let me give you some examples. One day, I was walking back from the beach and there was a garbage truck in the alley between our hotel and the beach and the man that was tossing the trash into the track had one of the thickest New England accents I have ever heard in my life. It was the prototypical that you hear in movies and hear in your head when someone talks about the New England accent. Conversely, the guy who owned the parking lots near the pier and attractions didn't have a thick accent like the garbage man did. Now, I don't know if the owner of the parking lots was from Maine or even the New England region, he did have a New England hint to his speech. Despite not knowing the owner's birthplace or origins, I was confident that he was a man of higher intelligence. There were a lot of other factors that went into this prediction like dress, hygiene, etc. As my travel companion and I traveled through Massachusetts on our way to and from Maine, I noticed thick and less than thick accents. It seemed like a lot of the difference lied in where I saw this people and what they were dong.

So, for this post, I really want to hear your stories about your experiences with sociolinguistic and if you ever do what I do and try and pin-point someone's SES based on their speech. 

Language Stratification

After reading the chapter, I have come to conclusion that language differences and class divisions are almost inevitable.  In recent decades, research has shown across low, middle, and high SES groups that your parent’s language input directly effects their children’s language output.  According to Hart and Risley’s study, the amount of language young children are exposed to correlates with SES.  Children who come from highly successful families, significantly speak more on average to those from working-class or poverty level families.  Depending on your SES, it is likely young children may lag behind or not communicate effectively due to the parent’s phonological variables.  Considering the social distribution of language in New York, there seems to be more prestige with the consonantal [r] in the word “car” compared to the word “car” with the absence of the [r].  This is a great example of how the normal working of society have produced systematic differences.  Socioeconomic scales have been subjected to scrutiny and seem to focus on superficial measures.  But, it’s hard not to admit that socioeconomic status has a strong correlation to language differences.  In order to better understand the features of “high-quality” input, examining words, sounds, sentences, and social contexts can influence an individual’s language learning, especially as a child.  Many people defy the odds and are exceptions to this link between socioeconomic status and language variation. 

Furthermore, what kind of factors contribute to these SES discrepancies? Stratification? Have you known someone who has defeated the odds against the link between language differences and SES?

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5901657/

Valley People Speak

Reading about gender and its roll in linguistics made me wonder about the stereotypical “Valley Girl” accent.  My main question about valley speak was do the men that live in that region speak the same way?  

According to an article I found, valley girl speak or uptalk is used by both men and women but women tend use it more frequently.  The stereotype for American southern California valley girl accent originates in the 1980’s.  Frank Zappa’s song “Valley Girl” was released during that decade along with movies like Valley Girl, Heathers, and later Clueless.  Uptalk is not limited to the Southern California region, it is however a staple of their dialect.  Sociologist Thomas J. Linneman found “Men use uptalk more when surrounded by women contestants, and when correcting a woman contestant after she makes an incorrect response. The more successful a man is, the less likely he is to use uptalk; the more successful a woman is, the more likely she is to use uptalk.”  One theory as to why uptalk is used is to prevent interruption. 

My personal theory is that women are used to having to work harder to be heard.  The more success they gain the more they expect people to listen to them, so they pitch their voice accordingly in preparation of being interrupted.  Men deepen their voices to sound authoritative, so they are not interrupted at all.  In answer to my original question men do speak valley girl, but it does not fit in with their natural language usage the way it does for women.  I had not connected valley girl speak with Kaylar's "Language Police" until I started looking into it.  Now that I have it makes sense that the two would go hand in hand.

Sources:  

https://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/12/23/overturning-the-myth-of-valley-girl-speak/
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2013/12/scienceshot-men-talk-valley-girls-too

The Language Police

I am incredibly conscious of the way that I speak.

I teach dance at a local studio to four year olds. I know that when I am with my students my voice gets extra loud and peppy to try and keep their attention -- and when a friend comes to pick me up from work and hears me teaching, I am self-conscious that they had to hear my "teacher voice". When I lead meetings for College Democrats, I try to speak calmly and at a lower volume so that my cohorts take me seriously -- and I am constantly stressed, hoping that I am doing a good job. When I meet with local political leaders, who are predominately male, I get worried that my voice is too high-pitched and as such, they won't care what I have to say. This is just a small sampling but I am sure you all can also think of times in your own life where you have changed how you speak to fit the situation.

I promise I have a point to these anecdotes! It relates to the article I found this week relating to gender and speech called "From Upspeak to Vocal Fry: Are We 'Policing' Young Women's Voices?" by NPR.

In the article, it focuses on a female journalist who, after venturing into the world of podcasts, was criticized for the way that she sounded. In particular, listeners disliked her "upspeak" tendencies. The complaints got so bad that she eventually went to a voice coach in order to change the way she spoke in an attempt to placate the audience.

This opened up broader concerns about how women's voices are particularly targeted by those who dislike "upspeak" and vocal fry -- while ignoring the fact that men also use the same sounds. The linguist interviewed for the article, Penny Eckert, was angered by the fact that people try to hypocritically police women's voices. She wrote that she was particularly angry because, "the biggest users of vocal fry traditionally have been men, and it still is; men in the U.K., for instance. And it's considered kind of a sign of hyper-masculinity." Therefore, is it surprising that in a male-dominated society women have attempted to use their speech patterns to be taken seriously? It is a disheartening reality that women have to try and speak in ways to please others instead of being able to speak how they wish.

The final point from the article that really stuck with me was in the conclusion. Our journalist from the beginning of this tale decided to stop going to a voice coach. She explained that "I have started thinking of voice almost as the way I think about outfits. If I'm going for a job interview I'm going to wear a different outfit than when I'm out with my friends...now I do think of it a little bit more as these two separate things, whereas before I had zero awareness of it. And I don't know if that's necessarily a bad thing. I think it's just about wanting to change for yourself instead of feeling like you're being forced to change by external forces." Her way to deal with the negativity surrounding her voice was not to change it in all situations but instead to use different voices depending on the situation.

This opens up a whole can of worms that I wanted to ask you all about. What do you think of the idea of changing your voice to fit situations? Do you think that it is useful? Bad?

Furthermore, what do you think of the idea that society polices women's voices? Why does this happen? Do you think there is a way to change this in the future?

If you haven't, I highly recommend taking a look at the article as well.