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.
I've noticed racial significance in language. My one friend is African-American, and at one point last year I noticed that he changed his speech when meeting an older woman he knew to be racist. I noted that when he was speaking to her, he was very composed and carefully worded everything he said. Normally, he's super silly, outgoing, and sometimes vulgar, saying things as they pop into his head, with little filter. However, with this woman, he felt a great pressure to give off the "right" kind of impression; he knew that he was going to be more significantly scrutinized than he normally would be. My friend didn't want unfair or untrue impressions to be made about him, and seemed to believe that they would be if he spoke in his normal manner. This may imply that prejudices about language can feed into the socioeconomic and educational assumptions made about minorities.
ReplyDeleteI think you're absolutely right. I think that many, many people pass judgement on people based solely on the way the talk. Whether it's right or wrong, it happens and I think it says a lot about us as a society as well as how prominent unfair stereotypes have become in our society.
DeletePrior to this course, I have never taken a linguistic class so this chapter was the first time that I have ever been introduced to sociolinguistics. I agree that it is fascinating! Socio-economic status is discussed a lot in my political science classes, I just had never thought to look at it from a language perspective. Now that I know about this discipline, I am sure I will be more conscious of it.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the response above that people pass judgment on the way that people talk. People have the tendency to judge before they know someone -- and speech plays a big part in it. It is disheartening but true.
Growing up in Arizona, I heard lots of people speak with thick Spanish accents. There are a lot of Arizonians who would look down on those who didn't speak what they considered to be "proper English"-- and they often associated poor English skills with being financially poor as well. Arizona has a long history of judging people based on how they speak which is very upsetting to me.
That is why I think studying sociolinguistics is so vital -- linguists can learn how SES impacts speech and perhaps help to alleviate stigma associated with certain speech patterns.
I agree and disagree with your method of sociolinguistic profiling. My one boss is fairly intelligent, but her speech pattern (heavily influenced by her pittsburgese background) makes me want to beat my head off a wall. I have an Aunt who is has a master's degree and speaks properly, but she also believes in every conspiracy theory that rolls across her Facebook feed. I think speech pattern has more to do with upbringing and lifestyle than it does intelligence. Intelligence is knowing when to code switch and use "proper" language. If someone speaks to you in slang they may be either comfortable enough with you to do so, or they consider you to unimportant to speak to properly.
ReplyDeleteInteresting idea there, Morganne, linking "linguistic intelligence" to facility with register code-switching.
DeleteThis post reminded me of the part of the Labov article where he talks about working as an inkmaker. Here, he gets to know a variety of people from different kinds of occupations, and he finds, "working with pressmen and millhands and truck drivers every day, [...] that there were a lot of people in the world who know what they were doing, but that salesmen earned most of the money." This reminded me of my job over the summer; I worked at a place that manufactures precision belts for printers and atm machines, and there were many different kinds of employees. I worked with several people who knew very little English (or their English was heavily accented) and others, most of whom had been working in the manufacturing business their whole lives. They all sounded much different from what I was used to hearing in college and even high school. All that to say, I think Labov is saying that these people - no matter the prestige of their occupation or education, really know what they are doing. I learned this over the summer. I met so many employees who knew the ins-and-outs of their job at a level I wouldn't have imagined. They were good at what they did and it definitely earned my respect. I suppose you could still use their speech to judge how much education they have had, but like Morganne said, I think it really depends on the individual.
ReplyDeleteNice reflection, Alice...
DeleteGreat post, Nic! Interesting observations, too. You triggered some very thoughtful commentary--the hallmark of a good post...
ReplyDeleteIn many ways, that deepest (i.e., most vernacular) stratum of speech in any particular area is actually the PUREST form of that dialect, because it is the least admixed with outside influences (travel) and the least ameliorated by education and conformist pressure from the standardized language. Those "deep" households are the true hearth, where the fires of dialect are banked...