September 2, 2020 • 55 mins
Samara chats with the groundbreaking psychologist and author of the new book How You Say It: Why You Talk The Way You Do—and What It Says About You, about what Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s changing accent tells us about human nature, how Hugh Laurie betrayed us, and the accent YOU have. As Katherine says, the language you use and the sounds you make are “so critical to feelings of identity, when you speak, you let a little bit of yourself out, for the world to interpret.” And sometimes, all hell breaks loose. From what went down at the trial of Trayvon Martin’s killer to how you yourself may very well judge a foreign accent, this conversation is about what the studies reveal about ourselves, and about what we can do about it. Enjoy this final episode for a while!
Host: Samara Bay
Executive producers: Catherine Burt Cantin & Mark Cantin, Double Vision doublevisionprojects.com
Producers: Samara Bay, Sophie Lichterman and the iHeart team
Theme music: Mark Cantin
Samara on IG: @samarabay
Cat on IG: @catburt & @doublevisionprojects
To sign up your kids for a study or learn more about Katherine’s work, visit: dsclab.uchicago.edu
For Katherine’s book: indiebound.org/book/9780544986558
For Adrienne Maree Brown’s book: indiebound.org/book/9781849353267
For the full clip with Rachel Maddow: youtube.com/watch?v=yjP2k3dyq48
How RBG found her voice: time.com/ruth-bader-ginsburg-supreme-court/
The linguistics of Rachel Jeantel: ideas.time.com/2013/06/28/r
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Today's quote is from Adrian Marie Brown, who wrote an
amazing book called Pleasure Activism. She says, quote, Ultimately, pleasure
activism is us learning to make justice and liberation the
most pleasurable experience as we can have on this planet.
I mean, and I would like to make public speaking
an active pleasure activism. Welcome to Permission to Speak. The
(00:32):
podcast about how we talk and how we get ourselves
heard with me samar Abe. Today's guest is Catherine Kinsler.
She's a professor of psychology at University of Chicago who
was also the chair of the psychology department at Cornell
for a few years and a Fulbright scholar in Paris.
(00:55):
And she's the author of a new book called How
You Say It, Why you talk the way you do,
and What it Says about You. I obviously wanted to
have her on as soon as I heard about the book,
and then I read it, and it is fantastic. She
manages to give an overview of every major study at
(01:17):
the intersection of linguistics and psychology about how we speak
and how we listen without in any way sounding academic
or like it's a bunch of studies um and really
instead the book has this really compelling, I think argument
that each of us A has an accent hello and
(01:40):
b that actually our own unique way of pronouncing sounds,
and all the subtle markers of where we've been and
where we're going is, as she says, a window into
who we are. We also take this opportunity to talk
about accent bias, which is real, real, and we talk
(02:04):
about some really wildly distressing data and stories like Trayvon
Martin's friend who he was on the phone with at
the time of his murder, who testified at his killer's
trial and was just not heard. And we talk about
our options, We talk about our way out. We talked
(02:26):
about what we should be teaching our kids and why
kids are so cool to study, which is what Katherine
Kindler actually does in the lab and online. And you know,
if you're listening and you have a kid, we even
have info on how to enroll your kid if you're interested.
This is Katie Kindler. Welcome, Katie. UM are you teaching
(02:57):
these days? I'm doing a little bit of teaching, but remotely.
Um And then I work a lot with graduate students,
and I have a lab, so I you know, I
run a psychology lab and we test kids, and so
we've actually moved it all online um, and it's been
fascinating because we have all these families signing up to
join our studies and it's all virtual, um, and it's
(03:21):
working in a way that it wouldn't have worked a
year ago. I think that, you know, prior to now,
parents would be kind of freaked out with this idea
of my kids gonna go online and you're not questions
that we're going to record it, you know. Now they're
kind of like, please entering my child for thirty minutes. Yeah.
I mean, it's literally safer to go online and participate
(03:44):
in a study than like use a playground. And I
think for the kids, they're getting so remarkably talented at
any virtual form of communication in a way that's, you know,
I think, mind boggling to adults, at least to me.
You know, I have a six year old who was
on a Zoom call with two friends and then she
(04:05):
manages to take a screenshot of the three of them
talking and drawing it to make it more beautiful and
uploaded as her virtual Zoom background. And I didn't teach
her that, And I'm just you know, thinking oh, she's
native and zoom technology so and they all are right.
Has it actually has this new you know, virtual way
(04:28):
of doing things actually affected the studies themselves that you're
working on, or have you had to adapt? Yeah, so
there's certainly some constraints and some things we could do
in person that are harder online. But looking to the future,
you know, in many ways it actually opens up I
think a lot of possibilities and that it's so important
(04:49):
to think about getting a more diverse sample of people
participating in research. And so when it's online, it doesn't
have to just be people who are you know, local
in Chicago or who are comfortable coming into a university community. Um,
of course there's going to be some equity issues and
who has access to internet or you know, the space
(05:09):
and time to talk with you. But I think it
actually might be a way to increase the diversity of
our participant base, which is you know, exciting. Is something
I think that's really important your book. I want to
start with a quote, Um, you said, Uh, linguistic bias
is completely culturally acceptable in a way that racial bias
is not. Many parents feel uncomfortable with any expression of
(05:32):
race based preference but when their children express a preference
based on the way someone speaks, they are not as concerned.
I want to know how you came to write this book,
and even more so why it didn't already exist. So,
you know, when we look out in the world, there's
(05:54):
so many social group divisions were also aware of this
um race, gender, nationality, political affiliation. We could go on
and on, but one thing that we use to you know,
as you know, well, to connect with people in a
good way, but then also to really divide ourselves and
(06:16):
to judge people and to be judged by others, is
about our speech. And I just think we're so unaware
of this um as a society, about the way that
our speech works to structure our social lives and how
much bias and prejudice can exist against people based on
how they sound. And so I just think it's so
(06:36):
important for people to think about and why do you
think this book didn't already exist or something you know
that covers this topic. Partly, I think the answer is
in how interdisciplinary you are, and it requires one to be.
But I wonder if you know, did you see that
there was a real void and then you were like, wait,
(06:57):
how is it possible or does it make sense. I
guess that this is sort of always flown under the radar,
you know. So I think part of it is this
cultural flying under the radar, and I think that's a
real thing, and I do hope that that will change,
that people become aware of linguistic prejudice in society. Now,
I could give you somewhat of the academics response, which
(07:18):
is that I'm trained as a psychologist, and I study
developmental and social psychology, and at least within the field
of psychology, which is often the field that you know,
we have a lot of studies about bias and implicit
biases and people's conscious and less conscious thinking about racism,
and you know, the kinds of studies that are really informative,
(07:39):
and we're thinking about intergroup bias. A lot of that
is in social psychology, but all the more language stuff
in psychology tends to be in other areas. So there's
you know, language is such a fundamental part of psychology,
of course, but it's often about language processing and language
acquisition and more this cognitive language for language's sake, as
(08:01):
opposed to language and social psychology. And so it's almost
this weird gap in the field. And then I so
I was thinking about this, and I was working on
this problem, and then I started reading more and more
neighboring fields, and then you get into different aspects of linguistics, psycholinguistics,
socio linguistics, you see, linguistic anthropology. There's a lot of
(08:23):
relevant research in economics and education, you know, in other
policy oriented fields, and so it it felt to me
like one book that tried to draw in all these
different fields might be the best way to tackle this problem.
I mean, you know, as somebody who's a dialect coach,
to have to find a book that basically says that
(08:46):
accent a is something every single person has and b
is so foundational to how we are treated in the
world or how we are perceived that we all miss
it is a very satisfying book to a found you know.
And then you know, I have to say also as
(09:08):
a lay person, I I really just want to like
shout out there isn't even a question attached to this,
although you're welcome to pick up whatever you want from it,
but I really want to shout out that I believe
you just gave everyone who read this book a survey
on all of the important studies in socio linguistics and
(09:29):
in these related, um you know, intersecting fields. But in
no way made it sound like that, like you weren't
like in another important study. You really just like held
our hand and said, here's what we know, and here's
what people have been wondering. Well. Thanks, that's lovely to hear. Uh.
And you know, I'm so excited to be talking to
(09:49):
a dialectic so now, because I mean, people are always
asking me questions about this field, and though it feels
so related to the questions that I study, but yet
it's not a field that I'm very familiar with myself.
You know, it's really different from my academic exercises. So
I feel like this connection is so excited, it's super cool.
(10:09):
I mean, there's definitely just a few moments in your
book where you talk about, like, you know, a changing
up your accent, especially when English is your second language,
is wildly difficult to do, which I want to talk
more about. But be you know, some of the people
who do it are actors and actually see that there
is this there's this sort of two sided reaction that
(10:30):
people have when they hear for example, Hugh Laurie speaking
in his actual British accent. If you've seen the TV
show House and the two the two different feelings are
one like, I'm so impressed, and too, I feel a
little like he betrayed me. Yeah, exactly. It feels like
it's the superhuman feat because it's not what we typically do.
And then you start recategorizing and saying, wait, you know,
(10:51):
I thought he was this guy I knew, and now
I don't know him anymore, right, well, okay, so it
is about linguistic bias. But even before that, it's there
is such a lovely argument in this book that how
we talk or language is so crazy. There's this quote
here I have it's so critical to feelings of identity
(11:14):
that when you speak, you let a little bit of
yourself out for the world to interpret. And I think
it's so important and it's so hard to talk. I mean,
part of what's been fascinating about having this podcast is
that I do sometimes feel like I have to sort
of shine a light on the fact that we can
even talk about the voice before we can then also
talk about the voice, because it's so invisible because it
(11:37):
flies under the radar. And yet you know, as you say,
the way you talk is a window into who you are.
There's so there's so much research, and there's so much
about how much our identity comes out and how we sound.
And I actually would love to talk about Ruth Bader
Ginsburg as an example of what I'm talking about. Yeah, absolutely,
(11:58):
would you tell us about this and what we learned.
It's so it's so it's a bit counterintuitive, I think. Yeah.
So on your broader point about your speech letting out
a bit about who you are, I think it does
so in two ways. So one is that, as I'm
sure we can talk about more, it's so hard to
learn a non native language or a non native accent
(12:21):
into adulthood. So in that sense, when we speak, we're
often showing people who the voices were who were talking
to us when we were children. But then the other
thing it does is it your language does shift to
some extent across your life. And as you know, right,
you know, you're teaching people and helping people work on changes,
and so your voice also shows your aspirations and who
(12:44):
you want to be and who you're with now, not
just who you're with then. And so it's really kind
of these two facets I think about it. So when
we think about the Ruth Bader Ginsburg example, linguists charted
her speech over time and find some real interesting aspects
of her speech coming through. So you know, she grew
up and had some you know, New York or Brooklyn
(13:08):
features in her language, such as dropping the r at
the end of a word, so you know, mother, mother,
something like that, leaving the r at the end um,
leaving off the art. We can think of Bernie Sanders
as like a extreme example of some of the yes.
And so the interesting thing was that she'd been in
(13:29):
d C for a while and so first of all,
she wasn't immersed in this Brooklyn speech. And also the
dialect itself is shifting a little bit in New York,
so that was more true a generation ago than it
is today. The are dropping and then also some they
call it some vowel raising, so um, that exactly right.
(13:55):
So those two features you can hear that those are
really stereotypical, you know, stereotypically thought of as this New
York accent. Now, what's interesting about with Vader Ginsburg is
that she grew up in that community, but then for
a long time, when you look at when the linguists
listened to recordings of her arguing prior in court, prior
(14:15):
to becoming a Supreme Court justice, they don't hear those
New York features. It's as if she's hyper correcting her speech.
She's really trying to sound more, you know, more what
people might see of think of as proper. And then
it's only in the later years when she's a justice
that you start to see this voice from her childhood
(14:36):
coming out again. And so in some ways, I really
think it's a sign that she feels like she's made it.
She's comfortable with herself and with her voice, and so
she doesn't need to correct in the same way. There's
such a lesson there for all of us, right, and
and it's also complicated. I mean, one thing that I
(14:57):
think is so useful about that story is that sometimes
I think about formal versus informal speech and formal versus
in formal situations, but that what I learned from that
is there's actually this much more important lens than just
looking at the context, which is, are do you have
something to prove? Yeah? Are you being evaluated in that moment?
(15:20):
And then you know, to bring it into all of
our lives. There is this element of if we're being
evaluated and our natural instinct is to overcorrect, as you say, um,
when can we not do that? Is that is that
you know, at what point is it is? It? Is
it about like when in our own lives do we
(15:41):
feel like we don't have anything to prove anymore? Or
is there something about like there being a kind of
a revolutionary act in um just teaching people that like
you can sound you know, non standard and still be
taken seriously. But you know, then the problem is sometimes
you aren't right. And I think both of those things
so are true. So a lot of it is that
(16:02):
probably you know, your relationship with your voice is a
lot about self acceptance. You know, there's all these linguistic
studies about people who speak in a way that other
people feels nonstandard, and they can feel very insecure about
the way they speak. At the same time, the flip
side of that is, I hope we're approaching some education
(16:24):
where we can actually realize this hidden source of prejudice
and bias and become more aware of it, and then
in that sense, more people, you know, as you're trying
to do, can feel comfortable in their voices. Well, yeah,
and especially because it makes me think about like, um,
you know, when we don't have anything to prove anymore, sure,
when when does that happen exactly? And if we're you know, ambitious,
(16:48):
or if we're always moving forward or upward or whatever
metaphor you want to use, then like, in a way,
maybe we're always finding ourselves in new positions where we
have to prove ourselves and we can't just always be
sort of chasing like someday I'll be myself, especially because
there's this added complicating thread, which is that often people
who really create these magical moments to capture a society.
(17:10):
I mean I'm talking I'm thinking specifically of of AOC's
speech the other week in Congress. But you know, there
are these there are these moments when people sound more
like themselves than you're than you expect given the formality
of the context, and then it becomes really poignant and
often they become leaders. Right. Part of I think what's
(17:31):
valuable about the conversation you're having in the book and
that I'm having on the podcast is this idea of
we can't all just fall back on these safe tropes
of um, the room makes me scared, so I will
hide myself or you know, we won't find our own
leadership and we won't find we won't have like you
(17:51):
know this, our society won't move forward the way we
actually all want it to. Yeah, I mean that. Yeah,
that definitely resonates and finding this authentic self which is
very vulnerable. In fact, actually i'd love you to talk
about you very honestly reference your feeling of being conflicted
about up speak sure and vocal for I mean, they're
(18:16):
both mentioned, and actually they're both really relevant really as
practical sort of examples of what we're talking about. Would
you do you want to talk about Yeah, I'll talk
about so. Um. So this is where I talk about
how often, you know, language changes over time, and often
it's adolescence and in particular even adolescent women who are
(18:38):
changing the language. And so you know, new features come out,
and adolescents are kind of fighting against the old guard,
and so you know, another facet of that is that
old people always don't like the way that young people speak.
But when they were young, someone didn't like the way
that they spoke, and so that's kind of a recurring
cycle of human nature. So up speak or up talk
(19:00):
is ending sentences in a question, and so you know,
kind of some people might call it a valley girl
kind of speak. Um. You know, I was a teenager
in the nineties, and so I think of the movie
Clueless is one reference point that I get. We're definitely
a temporarius by the way, Okay, you know, I find
(19:23):
myself slipping into that sometimes and I hear it and
my students in the complexity is that there's no good
or bad way of speaking. It doesn't it's not you know,
there's nothing that has to be good or bad about
a particular intonation, and so I don't want to judge
it because I because I know that. At the same time,
(19:43):
if I find myself slipping into it, it gets really
complicated because it originated you know, often it's women doing it.
It sort of gets mixed into this notion of maybe
a sexist notion that a woman doesn't know what she's
saying something like that, and so it's really you know,
it's a tough one that I struggle with in my
own voice. And then you point out beautifully, Um in
(20:05):
the book that uh, that it's complicated by the fact
that not only did you grow up with this, but
also as a result, a lot of role models, a
lot of the icons that we all grew up with
also speak this way. Yeah, and I think, you know,
vocal fries interesting. I think that that tends to out
tends to be a little bit younger or you know,
not so much to say when we were in high school. Um,
(20:25):
so this is kind of ending, you know, adding this
kind of uh, like a growlly sort of feature to
the end of your words or to some vowels. And
what's interesting is that adults really don't like it. But
one paper pulled a bunch of college students somewhat recently
a few years ago, and I've tried this too with
my students, and you know, you play them a clip
(20:46):
and they say, oh, yeah, no, that that doesn't sound
bad to me. That sounds like somebody who's you know,
kind of going somewhere. And so I think, yeah, that
you get these generational differences, and so which makes sense
because if that's the way you you know, if that's
the way that people of your generation speak, it can
(21:08):
sound positive. And then you know, here I'm like, now
I'm feeling like an old person thinking, Yah, the kids
are speaking in this way, that you know, I don't.
Well also you said adults don't like it, but there
is some cut off, right of like kind of adults
we're talking about totally, and these are not you know,
it's not usually like, well, if you're born you know after,
if you're born before, hate it. You know, it's not
(21:29):
usually that clear cut. It's complicated, and it's complicated by
the fact that, as you say in the book, less
so with upspeak perhaps, But but vocal fry is a
great example that I have this quote here where you said,
once a way of rebelling against the linguistic establishment, vocal
fry seems to have joined its ranks because obviously at
(21:50):
some point the people who are speaking in vocal fry
as their you know, rebellious streak. I'll share in clueless um,
then get a little hour, then become the boss. And
if they have, if they haven't lost that you know,
whatever linguistic marker that is revealing of their character, then
suddenly that's what bosses sound like. And then probably young
(22:11):
people will do something different. Right, It is kind of
freeing and ridiculous that we grab onto these ideas just
knowing that like there's gonna be another train of them
coming up, which leads me to one other philosophical question
which doesn't have an answer, but but perhaps it's worth
thinking about, which is that sometimes we feel an obligation
(22:32):
in the coaching world leadership coaching and with corporate clients
who have, you know, a sort of a sense of
what a strong voice sounds like, what they're going for.
We're often in a position of having to tell people
to you know, learn how to speak without up speaking
vocal fry. And then the question is because as you say,
(22:53):
and I love the way you put it, Uh, this
is where the complexity comes in. Is there and ours
elves quote unquote that is more us than the social
markers that we've picked up, Like are we more ourselves
if we let go of some of those markers because
we pick them up as ways to minimize ourselves in
certain spaces, or are they part of our story and
(23:16):
so letting go of them, you know? And obviously there
is not a one way answer, right, There's not a
one way answer. And I think for me, the bigger
picture truth is just how much our language, how much
the way we speak, reflects the social complexity of our lives.
And so a big part of that is our childhood
(23:38):
and the languages we learned in childhood when our brains
were still you know, malleable and ready to learn languages.
And then a large part reflects our social ambition and
our social changes in our new social worlds. And so
I think it's really hard to turn any of that off.
We're going to take a quick break and then we're
gonna come back and talk about some of the specific
(23:58):
things we can turn off and that we're doing without
even knowing it. We're back, and actually i'd love to
step back for a second and ask how all of
this work that you've been doing for you know, over
a decade now, but specifically um, for this book has
(24:22):
made you think about your own voice. So one important
thing that we can all think about. But I think,
you know, I grew up in New York a little bit,
but a lot of mostly in Connecticut, which is part
of the region where people often say that they don't
have an accent and other people have an accent. So
(24:44):
you see this like which doesn't make logical sense. So
everybody has an accent. I mean, it's so it's so beautiful, right,
So it's such a it's such a human thing. To do. Yeah,
And so even people who speak a sign language have
a manner have a have an accent. Um, So you know,
everybody has an accent. Well you actually define in this
(25:06):
case what you mean by an accent, sure, so a
manner of pronounced you know, pronunciation, so the way that
you say your words, the sound of your words. Um.
And of course for for signs, they don't have a sound,
but they do have a manner of pronunciation in a
way that feels very like the same idea. And then
(25:28):
I see this in you know, in my colleagues and
friends and you know, people from childhood, just that it's
so easy to think about accents as a gradation from
the self. So like somebody who has oh but somebody
you know who really has an accent. Well, but what
(25:48):
does that mean again, you know, because everybody has an accent.
And so I think when you're thinking about, um, mastering
a language that's not your own, that might be you know,
you could think about whether or not you sound like
a native speaker, so you might use accent in that way.
But I think when I think about, you know, how
(26:09):
I grew up speaking, or the amount of linguistic diversity
that I heard which was somewhat little. And that's something
that I reflect on too, that I think that it's
so important where possible to expose kids to different languages,
and so I think about that, you know, living in
a city or having two little kids. Um, everybody has
(26:30):
an accent. And also, as I talk about some in
the book, even the way of hearing an accent, when
you hear somebody and you think, oh, a strong accent
or oh a week accent, A lot of that is
entirely subjective and about the listener, not about the speaker,
And so much happens. I didn't realize until I read
your book. So much happens when we perceive an accent
(26:51):
that's psychological. It's just not about the sounds. It's not
like I hear that accent, but okay, I can tell
that sound is actually usually that other sound. Okay, cool,
I've solved it. But instead all these like new things
come into play of I can't understand this person. Yeah,
And so you know, there's just these elegant studies about
how elegant for the science, not like elegant about humanity,
(27:16):
possibly the opposite about humanity. So you know, people here
often what they want to hear, you know, so there
can be studies of somebody listening to speech and thinking
that because the person speaking looks Asian, that they're more
likely to be a non native speaker of English because
(27:39):
a lot of people have this bias about kind of
attaching whiteness to being American, and then that's not at
all present in the person's speech. It's like you're bringing
this bias or you're bringing this prejudice. And then you
could hear speech in a way that's just so laden
with bias and not actually about what the person is saying.
(28:00):
And then it also leads us into the credibility issue.
So either we just literally shut down and we don't
think we're hearing somebody like you're like you just described,
or I mean, the Trayvon Martin story, Yeah, so you
know the story. This is a really I mean I
find it just so poignant and heartbreaking that this is
(28:21):
the story of Trayvon Martin, who was who was murdered
as an unarmed African American teenager and um, you know
in the trial, uh he was right before he died,
he'd been speaking on the phone with a friend of
(28:44):
his and um, Rachel jon Tell and she was in
the courtroom, and she was speaking a dialect of African
American English, and you know, she testified to the fact
that you know, Trayvon was trying to you know, get
away from the shooter and so forth, which would really
go against a claim of self defense. And evidence from
(29:08):
linguists have gone and UM analyzed, you know, what happened
in the trial and what the juror said after the fact,
and there's a lot of evidence that they either didn't
understand her or just felt like she She was basically discredited,
UM because of the way she spoke and her truth
(29:31):
just wasn't heard in that trial, UM, in the trial
against George Zimmerman, the shooter. And it should be noted
that the jury was basically all white. Yes, correct. So
now these issues are really complicated, and you know, even
linguists debate over how to think of them. It's not
like there's a one size fits all answer because in
(29:56):
some ways, thinking about a courtroom, you want to offer
for a way to translate speech so that everybody understands.
At the same time, a lot of bias against language
is not just this idea of oh, was the speech
comprehensible or not? In this really neutral way, but you
can see racism being so central to judgments against speech,
(30:21):
and I think in some ways it can just be
this really insidious part of bias where somebody can say, oh,
I'm not being racist, I just don't understand this person,
but they're bringing so much baggage to how they think
about the person's voice. Well, and it really is I
mean that story specifically as a real counter argument to
(30:42):
um my kind of you know, sometimes pollyanna Ish instincts
of like can't we all just be ourselves? You know?
And I'm well aware of it. I mean, whenever I'm
coaching people, I'm not just saying like, you know, however
you sound with your favorite people when you're the most
comfortable will work in every context. I wish it did.
(31:02):
I think that there's a social justice element to that,
um but you know, the reality is when we are
learning different ways to speak in different contexts, it is
often because there are like power structures in play, and
like do you, you know, help your friend who has
been brutally murdered, uh, you know, find justice posthumously or
(31:26):
don't you as all of the nation watches, I mean,
you know, when the stakes are that high, Like, I
don't know, would it have been useful for her to
have been coached by someone on how to speak differently?
Is that even possible? You know? I mean obviously the
greater answer is just that, like, people need to hear better,
but we can't always assume that they will. And I
(31:47):
think that, you know, I'm I would say that I'm
pro language learning, and that can mean a lot of
different things, and so I'm not I think the people
who only speak English at home should learn in schools,
and we should have this benefit for our children to
teach them different languages at the same time, you know,
(32:12):
learning as a child, Um, you know, being bilingual in
different dialects that you use in different contexts, being bilingual
in different languages that you use in different settings. This
can be really positive and the more languages that people
are able to master can be really wonderful in my view.
But I think you have to do so in a
(32:33):
way that's sensitive, and that isn't teaching people languages because
the one that they have is being devalued, but rather
seeing an advantage of having multiple ways of speaking in
multiple contexts. Yeah, there's this concept that you talked about
that I really I think it's a useful label of
of like linguistic status that we don't you know that
(32:56):
we all often have. The Americans have this sense of like,
we like British accents. Why is that? You know? And
we also obviously don't have to cross the pond before
we realize that we have certain you know, inherent biases
towards as well as against certain accents. The British English
example is so fun because, um, you're right, we have
(33:17):
this like British English status loose stereotype going on in
the US. Absolutely, But what I find fascinating is that
we also have often a close to home advantage in
accent detection, and so telling apart different varieties of English
in the UK to an American ear is very difficult, right,
(33:40):
And so you might be able to hear, you know, Minnesota,
from California from New York, but you're not going to
be able to pick out different regions of the UK
unless maybe you could because you're trained professional. But I couldn't.
But the editor exactly right, so I couldn't. Um. And
(34:00):
what's fascinating though, I think is that as an American
you could hear a British accent, think oh this person sounds,
you know, so so amazingly I don't know, British and
educated or something, but it doesn't have to be one
of the fancier British accents. So then if you're in
the UK, somebody might categorize that accent as being not
at all posh, right, And so I think that that
(34:23):
shows how much of this is about the stereotypes who
bring to the table and nothing actually about the actual
signal value from the voice. So two other things. One
is I want to call out that we move very
quickly away from what you think about your own accent.
But I wonder if you think about, um, what version
of you comes out when you teach, what version of
(34:45):
you comes out in conferences? I mean, on on some
really practical level. This podcast is about public speaking, and
so not only are you somebody who studies all of this,
but also you are somebody who is, you know, in
a sort of leadership position where you get in front
of lots of people in speech. And I wonder how
you think about your own sort of style of teaching,
maybe even dare I say, before the pandemic, right, I mean,
(35:09):
although teaching on zoom or talk, giving a talk on zoom.
I think actually raises so many other issues about how
we present ourselves and feel comfortable on video. And you
know all the time that's because that it's completely but
I think it's really you know, I think there's all
these fascinating questions about who feels comfortable in this new
(35:29):
medium and who doesn't. So I don't, you know, in
some ways, probably like a lot of people, I find
hearing myself talk to be so embarrassing and terrible and um, well,
by the way, as an expert, what is that? Because
(35:51):
it's true and it's so culturally acceptable that if somebody
said they liked the way they spoke, we would be shocked. Probably.
I mean, I don't know, I could imagine it, but
and it's not so, you know, I've been talking to
a lot of people about the book, and you know,
my mom asked me what I thought about some interview
(36:13):
and I was like, what do you mean. She's like, well,
did you think you know he sounded like this and
you said this? And I was like, Mom, I definitely
didn't watch that. Are you crazy? I have no idea,
and please don't tell me. It feels embarrassing right now
to even just like think about that. So probably, like
(36:33):
a lot of people, you know, I haven't listened to
myself on any interviews about the book. Um. I know
though it's really good practice. So you know, I've heard
from people that even you know, really famous orders you know,
often listen to tapes of themselves and you think about
how they could do better. So it's not to say
(36:55):
that at a cognitive level, I a hundred percent think
that I could do better and with learn a tremendous
amount by listening to uh to my speech, But yet
I haven't taken up that learning opportunity. I will say
recently I listened, I just read a transcript of myself
on a podcast, and even that was horrifying because well,
(37:16):
if you look, if you actually look at a written transcript,
we speak in all sorts of weird ways, completely completely.
No transcripts are literally the worst, and we all say,
you know, and um, way too many you know. But
when I had Amanda montell On, who has written at
this great book called word Slut, a feminist guy to
taking back English language about linguistics, uh, she pointed out that, um,
(37:40):
if we take our arms in our you know, is out,
we actually come across as much less human. Interesting. Okay,
so I was very human on the transcript that I read.
So I like your brand. I like what you did there.
Um tell us a little bit though about because partly
what you're saying that this with this idea of like
listening back to oneself and and and improving whatever that means, right, uh,
(38:05):
is is I would love to touch on what we
are actually all changing all the time. You know. On
the one hand, learning a new accent really hard, uh,
without a without a training professional like a plug. I
did not mean to do. But you know that there's
a reason why it's hard to learn languages when you're older,
and also that um that when English isn't your first language,
(38:28):
it's very hard to pass as native. But then on
the other hand, there are these small changes we make
all the time when we are around people we like.
Will you tell us about this? Yeah? So you know,
I think you said it really well that there's this
bigger picture it's so hard to change, and yet in
(38:49):
subtle ways, work cobstantly changing. And so if you're interacting
with somebody and you like each other, your voices start
to come together a little bit, and so you might
not notice it as a a listener. It might take
a linguist to go in and you know, measure exactly
how long your vowels are and how things are spaced. Um.
But you can see these subtle differences and they actually
(39:09):
happen moment to moment, and so you're getting this you know,
kind of vocal accommodation and togetherness with the person you're
talking to. So that's just the one on one interaction. UM.
Now you can imagine you move to a new place,
or you join a new social community, or you take
on some new social identity and that comes with a
(39:32):
new social group and a new social world, and then
your voice is going to change to match that social
world that you're in. Because fundamentally, the reason we all
sound different from each other is about wanting to fit
in or is about belonging and that thing. Yeah, it's
about connecting and it can be really positive. It's about
(39:52):
this feeling of identity and culture with your group, and
language is so tied up in that. So this idea
of well, why don't we just all speak exactly the
same way, and then there'd be just no more, you know,
no problems in the world. But it's just not how
humans what a racial right, and so it's like it's
(40:13):
you know, it just doesn't it's just not how humans work.
We're never going to all speak exactly the same way.
And so the solution if we want to head towards
a more perfect union, Um, I think of I think
his name is Mike from chapter one, this idea of
linguistic diversity. Yeah, right, this idea, like, yeah, will you
(40:34):
tell me about him? Yeah? So you know, this is
the idea of somebody who you know, has all this
diversity in his life and you know, his friends are
from different racial groups, and he feels like, you know,
he's just really progressive and that's great. You know, I'm
not saying that he's not progressive or not trying to
live you know, his ideal life. Um. But he notices
(40:58):
then that all of his friends sound the same and
you actually wouldn't be able to guess who was who,
like match the friend to the photo, because they all
have really similar educational backgrounds. Um. You know, just so
many similarities among them, including the way that they spoke.
And so you know, in terms of these kind of
(41:20):
real world solutions, well, one thing is to reflect on
linguistic diversity and think of it as an advantage to
be exposed to different ways of speaking as another. And
I think there's lots of advantages to different forms of diversity,
so it's not to say it's the only one. But also,
if you have kids, think about exposing kids to situations
where people speak different languages, and I think that is
(41:43):
a really good thing for children. Do you feel like
there's sort of one social cognition study that everyone should
know about, like that you wish were part of education,
or not even one necessarily, but do you feel like
it would be so helpful if this stuff was introduced
early there my I have a researcher who works with
me who graduated with a social linguistics degree, and they said, um,
(42:06):
quote unquote, linguistics has really bad pr People don't know
you know that, like everybody thinks they're an expert in
language because like they talk. Yeah. Yeah. So this is
parents where parents, you know, particularly say white parents who
come into the lab and their kids express some sort
(42:27):
of a racial attitude or bias, like liking the other
white kids. Now they're very uncomfortable, which I think is
a good thing in a sign of progress and wanting
to understand you know, how these structurally racist societies are
seeping into these five year old minds, right, Where is
that coming from? And what we can do to address that.
That's really important and it's good that parents are uncomfortable
(42:49):
and want to change it. However, it's a serious contrast
when a kid comes into my lab and you know,
I had this study where they were white kids and
they were um evaluating people who looked white or looked
black and spoke in a native or a foreign accent
of English. And when they expressed a preference for the
(43:10):
white people, parents were just deeply uncomfortable, which again, you know,
is something that that as a society we need to
be deeply uncomfortable with. But when say they liked people
who were black and spoke in a native accent over
people who were white and spoken a foreign accent, parents
(43:30):
are just so relieved and say, oh, look, you know,
few my kids not racist. My kids, you know, just
loves people who speak in English like I do. And
so it's really reassuring to parents, and it doesn't usually
occur to people that kids might be expressing two biases,
(43:54):
one that's about race and one that's about speech. And
that what people's accents are is the more our salient one,
but that that's also a problem. Yeah, right, But you
know it's also this like deeply primal thing apparently that
we feel like we connect with people who sound like us. Yeah,
and I think there's a way that that kid. You know,
(44:15):
first of all, I'll say that five year old is
not prejudiced in the way an adult is. And I
really believe that. Um, you know, they're still learning what
society has to teach them, and unfortunately a lot of
that is negative based on race and speech. But they're
still learning. But the idea that when a parent sees
a kid expressing a preference for one kind of speech
(44:38):
over another, and it's just kind of like few my
kids just learning languages, there's absolutely no problem with it.
That's the kind of them teaching that's going to facilitate
linguistic prejudices growing with time, right, right, Because that is
not I mean, it seems like what you're saying is
that that is a stereotype that is completely culturally permissible. Still,
(44:58):
exactly why do you study kids to teach us about adults? So, um,
I mean that's that's why in many ways, to teach
us about adults. So I mean, kids are important for
their own sake. Um, and we can agree that. But
a lot of why I study kids is because if
(45:19):
we want to understand our social thinking, and we want
to understand our our cognition about the world, children can
give us so much insight into how we think about things,
sort of where our cognitive system starts out, and then
how experience layers on top of that. And so I
like to think about it as we study kids to
(45:40):
think about the building blocks of later thinking. And you
know what we could do to change ourselves. Yeah, let's
change ourselves. Okay, we're gonna take another quick break and
then we're going to come back and find out who
you brought in for us. Okay, so who have you
(46:04):
brought in? I brought in Rachel Maddow and tell me
about why. So I've loved her show for a really
long time. And I feel like when I'm thinking about
who's credible, I find her credible. And I think she's
(46:25):
really angry in a way that feels righteous and correct
to me. And I think it's really hard to pull
off angry, and I think she does so really successfully.
And so you know, i'd love to learn how can
you be you know, how can you be angry in
(46:47):
a real and meaningful way and not turn people off?
Because I think, yeah, so i'd love to know how
she does. Yeah, well, yeah, we're gonna we're gonna listen
to a short clip of hers. I feel like an
answer to that question, although it's not necessarily like, um, so,
here's what to do with your mouth kind of a thing.
(47:07):
But in terms of sort of mindset, I find that
women tend to be heard when angry more dot dot
dot when um it's very clear in both the content
and in the style that it's on behalf of others,
which just feels like there's all kinds of psychological data
(47:27):
to back that up to. Yeah, no, that makes a
lot of sense to me. But whenever we're mad, if
we can take a moment and figure out how we
can speak on behalf of if how it's actually about
something larger than ourselves in a way, it's the righteousness
thing that you talk about that that ignites a sense
of righteousness, because you know, there's certainly I mean, I'm
(47:48):
thinking of Rebecca Tracer's book Good and Mad, there's certainly
a history of like when any of us is sort
of mad in our own lives. If we just dig
a little deeper, it's probably because of some injustice that thus,
you know, we can say, maybe this is something that
isn't just happening to me. So here you go having
a patchwork policy here, having some states where it's stay
(48:09):
at home in some places where it not. It's like
having a pool where there's one section in the pool
where it's okay to pee. It's like having an airplane
where there's one section that where it's okay to smoke,
but everything else you're gonna call non smoking, despite what
all those people are gonna smell like when they get
off that plane. I mean, Dr Fauci at least is saying,
let's have a national stay at home order? Why don't
(48:30):
we have one yet? The Surgeon General is going on
the Today Show and saying, I think we should have
a national stay at home order? Can I just tell
people that we do even if we don't. Yeah, she's
so satisfied. Good right. I Mean I was once told
I coached a man who is running for the US Senate. Uh,
(48:52):
sort of did a one day consultancy coaching with him,
and he said, at the end, I know who you
remind me of Rachel at out and I was like,
at once deeply flattered and also like, wow, I am
actually kind of nothing like Rachel Maddow. And I feel
like he just has no other strong women, like he
has one archetype. But it is useful to think of Rachel.
(49:15):
I think it is a bit of an archetype for
a lot of us, because it's you're absolutely right, and
in fact I chose that bit because you're you're right.
I mean, she's furious, but she also has the sort
of presence of mind and of spirit to be able
to joke within that. But the joking is very pointed.
It's not like to diffuse the tension. It's so spot on.
(49:37):
And then I also listened and I have the feeling
how much somebody who is not like me in many
ways would be really would not like her right, and
you you know, and that feels so unfair, and it's
like I I feel this, I feel a political divide
(49:59):
to you know, but that everything she says feels like
it's so spot on and well reasoned, and you know,
just that was a great example that she gets it
and she explains it, and there's craziness in this world,
and she cuts through that, do you feel like in
(50:21):
your career that you have ever had issues with being
taken seriously? So, I think I've been fortunate in so
many ways in my career, UM and I've had the
benefit of having really strong female mentors, and that's been
(50:41):
really meaningful to me. I kind of sensed that from
your acknowledgements in your book. I was wondering if that
it seemed like. And also that the people that you
have coming up behind you, who you've you've hired as um,
you know, post docs or research assistance for women. So
I feel like I've had kind of a It's not
(51:03):
you know, not to say that every step of the
way has been perfect, for sure, but I feel like
when there has been a misstep or when there has
been a time where I felt not, you know, not valued,
or something was unfair, that I've had these really strong
(51:23):
female mentors that I've been able to go to and
that I feel like, are you know, mentoring me and
championing me? And yeah, I do want to try to
do that for the next generation of scholars coming up.
For sure. It also feels like there's an element tell
me if this is true that that whether it's socio
linguistics or this sort of more complicated interdisciplinary that, Um,
(51:48):
there's sort of a inherent reason why there might be
more women in that in that field, or that we
might be drawn to it because there is this long
history of having to sort of understand and these these
nuances of social interactions in order to get ahead. I
think that's possible, and I think that language is so
(52:10):
personal to people and so um, you know, I do.
I do feel like it's it's a field where, um,
people can really connect with it and it can connect
with their own lives. Yeah, I love that. Thanks for
doing that work for us, Catherine. Thank you for speaking
(52:33):
with me today. I really appreciate it. Thank you so much.
It was such a pleasure to meet you and you know,
talk about all these questions with you. And I should say,
if anyone wants to enroll their kids in your studies,
what's the best way to find out more? If anybody
listening wants to participate in research at home with their kids,
(52:54):
you know, you can absolutely sign up. So my lab
is d SC Lab dot U Chicago, dot E DU
though a lot of different developmental psychology labs just like mine,
are online now and so there might be other opportunities too.
But you know, if you want to read about my
book How You Say It and my research with my
(53:15):
graduate students, you can find it there. Thank you to
Katherine Kindler for coming in and we will have all
of the info that she just shared about her lab
and her research and her book in our show notes
of course, and on our website Permission to Speak Pod
dot calm and join me tomorrow on Instagram at Permission
(53:37):
to Speak Pod at ten am for an ig live
with very special guest, Hadar Shamash. She is a accent
and English language coach for people all around the world.
She has a massive and robust and loving and really
exciting platform, the Accents Way, and we found each other
(53:58):
across the world. She's based in Israel, and um, you know,
it's a real meeting of the minds and meeting of
the hearts because both of us help people with like
you know, the logistics of the sounds that come out
of our mouths, but also and equally, if not more importantly,
with a sense of power and freedom and joy around
(54:18):
you know, the sounds that come out and with you know,
finding peace with sounding different than the quote unquote standard.
It's gonna be great. We're going to have a lovely
media conversation about accent bias in honor of Katherine ken
Fler's episode. Thank you to Sophie Lichterman and the team
(54:41):
at I Heart Radio and all of you. We're recording
this podcast at various locations around Los Angeles on land
that is the historic gathering place for the Tongva indigenous tribe,
and you can visit us d a C dot us
to learn more about honoring Native land. Permission to Speak
is a production of I Radio and Double Vision, executive
(55:02):
produced by Katherine Burke Canton and Mark Canton. For more
podcasts from my Heart Radio, listen on the I heart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your favorite shows.
Today's quote is from Adrian Marie Brown, who wrote an
amazing book called Pleasure Activism. She says, quote, Ultimately, pleasure
activism is us learning to make justice and liberation the
most pleasurable experience as we can have on this planet.
I mean, and I would like to make public speaking
an active pleasure activism. Welcome to Permission to Speak. The
(00:32):
podcast about how we talk and how we get ourselves
heard with me samar Abe. Today's guest is Catherine Kinsler.
She's a professor of psychology at University of Chicago who
was also the chair of the psychology department at Cornell
for a few years and a Fulbright scholar in Paris.
(00:55):
And she's the author of a new book called How
You Say It, Why you talk the way you do,
and What it Says about You. I obviously wanted to
have her on as soon as I heard about the book,
and then I read it, and it is fantastic. She
manages to give an overview of every major study at
(01:17):
the intersection of linguistics and psychology about how we speak
and how we listen without in any way sounding academic
or like it's a bunch of studies um and really
instead the book has this really compelling, I think argument
that each of us A has an accent hello and
(01:40):
b that actually our own unique way of pronouncing sounds,
and all the subtle markers of where we've been and
where we're going is, as she says, a window into
who we are. We also take this opportunity to talk
about accent bias, which is real, real, and we talk
(02:04):
about some really wildly distressing data and stories like Trayvon
Martin's friend who he was on the phone with at
the time of his murder, who testified at his killer's
trial and was just not heard. And we talk about
our options, We talk about our way out. We talked
(02:26):
about what we should be teaching our kids and why
kids are so cool to study, which is what Katherine
Kindler actually does in the lab and online. And you know,
if you're listening and you have a kid, we even
have info on how to enroll your kid if you're interested.
This is Katie Kindler. Welcome, Katie. UM are you teaching
(02:57):
these days? I'm doing a little bit of teaching, but remotely.
Um And then I work a lot with graduate students,
and I have a lab, so I you know, I
run a psychology lab and we test kids, and so
we've actually moved it all online um, and it's been
fascinating because we have all these families signing up to
join our studies and it's all virtual, um, and it's
(03:21):
working in a way that it wouldn't have worked a
year ago. I think that, you know, prior to now,
parents would be kind of freaked out with this idea
of my kids gonna go online and you're not questions
that we're going to record it, you know. Now they're
kind of like, please entering my child for thirty minutes. Yeah.
I mean, it's literally safer to go online and participate
(03:44):
in a study than like use a playground. And I
think for the kids, they're getting so remarkably talented at
any virtual form of communication in a way that's, you know,
I think, mind boggling to adults, at least to me.
You know, I have a six year old who was
on a Zoom call with two friends and then she
(04:05):
manages to take a screenshot of the three of them
talking and drawing it to make it more beautiful and
uploaded as her virtual Zoom background. And I didn't teach
her that, And I'm just you know, thinking oh, she's
native and zoom technology so and they all are right.
Has it actually has this new you know, virtual way
(04:28):
of doing things actually affected the studies themselves that you're
working on, or have you had to adapt? Yeah, so
there's certainly some constraints and some things we could do
in person that are harder online. But looking to the future,
you know, in many ways it actually opens up I
think a lot of possibilities and that it's so important
(04:49):
to think about getting a more diverse sample of people
participating in research. And so when it's online, it doesn't
have to just be people who are you know, local
in Chicago or who are comfortable coming into a university community. Um,
of course there's going to be some equity issues and
who has access to internet or you know, the space
(05:09):
and time to talk with you. But I think it
actually might be a way to increase the diversity of
our participant base, which is you know, exciting. Is something
I think that's really important your book. I want to
start with a quote, Um, you said, Uh, linguistic bias
is completely culturally acceptable in a way that racial bias
is not. Many parents feel uncomfortable with any expression of
(05:32):
race based preference but when their children express a preference
based on the way someone speaks, they are not as concerned.
I want to know how you came to write this book,
and even more so why it didn't already exist. So,
you know, when we look out in the world, there's
(05:54):
so many social group divisions were also aware of this
um race, gender, nationality, political affiliation. We could go on
and on, but one thing that we use to you know,
as you know, well, to connect with people in a
good way, but then also to really divide ourselves and
(06:16):
to judge people and to be judged by others, is
about our speech. And I just think we're so unaware
of this um as a society, about the way that
our speech works to structure our social lives and how
much bias and prejudice can exist against people based on
how they sound. And so I just think it's so
(06:36):
important for people to think about and why do you
think this book didn't already exist or something you know
that covers this topic. Partly, I think the answer is
in how interdisciplinary you are, and it requires one to be.
But I wonder if you know, did you see that
there was a real void and then you were like, wait,
(06:57):
how is it possible or does it make sense. I
guess that this is sort of always flown under the radar,
you know. So I think part of it is this
cultural flying under the radar, and I think that's a
real thing, and I do hope that that will change,
that people become aware of linguistic prejudice in society. Now,
I could give you somewhat of the academics response, which
(07:18):
is that I'm trained as a psychologist, and I study
developmental and social psychology, and at least within the field
of psychology, which is often the field that you know,
we have a lot of studies about bias and implicit
biases and people's conscious and less conscious thinking about racism,
and you know, the kinds of studies that are really informative,
(07:39):
and we're thinking about intergroup bias. A lot of that
is in social psychology, but all the more language stuff
in psychology tends to be in other areas. So there's
you know, language is such a fundamental part of psychology,
of course, but it's often about language processing and language
acquisition and more this cognitive language for language's sake, as
(08:01):
opposed to language and social psychology. And so it's almost
this weird gap in the field. And then I so
I was thinking about this, and I was working on
this problem, and then I started reading more and more
neighboring fields, and then you get into different aspects of linguistics, psycholinguistics,
socio linguistics, you see, linguistic anthropology. There's a lot of
(08:23):
relevant research in economics and education, you know, in other
policy oriented fields, and so it it felt to me
like one book that tried to draw in all these
different fields might be the best way to tackle this problem.
I mean, you know, as somebody who's a dialect coach,
to have to find a book that basically says that
(08:46):
accent a is something every single person has and b
is so foundational to how we are treated in the
world or how we are perceived that we all miss
it is a very satisfying book to a found you know.
And then you know, I have to say also as
(09:08):
a lay person, I I really just want to like
shout out there isn't even a question attached to this,
although you're welcome to pick up whatever you want from it,
but I really want to shout out that I believe
you just gave everyone who read this book a survey
on all of the important studies in socio linguistics and
(09:29):
in these related, um you know, intersecting fields. But in
no way made it sound like that, like you weren't
like in another important study. You really just like held
our hand and said, here's what we know, and here's
what people have been wondering. Well. Thanks, that's lovely to hear. Uh.
And you know, I'm so excited to be talking to
(09:49):
a dialectic so now, because I mean, people are always
asking me questions about this field, and though it feels
so related to the questions that I study, but yet
it's not a field that I'm very familiar with myself.
You know, it's really different from my academic exercises. So
I feel like this connection is so excited, it's super cool.
(10:09):
I mean, there's definitely just a few moments in your
book where you talk about, like, you know, a changing
up your accent, especially when English is your second language,
is wildly difficult to do, which I want to talk
more about. But be you know, some of the people
who do it are actors and actually see that there
is this there's this sort of two sided reaction that
(10:30):
people have when they hear for example, Hugh Laurie speaking
in his actual British accent. If you've seen the TV
show House and the two the two different feelings are
one like, I'm so impressed, and too, I feel a
little like he betrayed me. Yeah, exactly. It feels like
it's the superhuman feat because it's not what we typically do.
And then you start recategorizing and saying, wait, you know,
(10:51):
I thought he was this guy I knew, and now
I don't know him anymore, right, well, okay, so it
is about linguistic bias. But even before that, it's there
is such a lovely argument in this book that how
we talk or language is so crazy. There's this quote
here I have it's so critical to feelings of identity
(11:14):
that when you speak, you let a little bit of
yourself out for the world to interpret. And I think
it's so important and it's so hard to talk. I mean,
part of what's been fascinating about having this podcast is
that I do sometimes feel like I have to sort
of shine a light on the fact that we can
even talk about the voice before we can then also
talk about the voice, because it's so invisible because it
(11:37):
flies under the radar. And yet you know, as you say,
the way you talk is a window into who you are.
There's so there's so much research, and there's so much
about how much our identity comes out and how we sound.
And I actually would love to talk about Ruth Bader
Ginsburg as an example of what I'm talking about. Yeah, absolutely,
(11:58):
would you tell us about this and what we learned.
It's so it's so it's a bit counterintuitive, I think. Yeah.
So on your broader point about your speech letting out
a bit about who you are, I think it does
so in two ways. So one is that, as I'm
sure we can talk about more, it's so hard to
learn a non native language or a non native accent
(12:21):
into adulthood. So in that sense, when we speak, we're
often showing people who the voices were who were talking
to us when we were children. But then the other
thing it does is it your language does shift to
some extent across your life. And as you know, right,
you know, you're teaching people and helping people work on changes,
and so your voice also shows your aspirations and who
(12:44):
you want to be and who you're with now, not
just who you're with then. And so it's really kind
of these two facets I think about it. So when
we think about the Ruth Bader Ginsburg example, linguists charted
her speech over time and find some real interesting aspects
of her speech coming through. So you know, she grew
up and had some you know, New York or Brooklyn
(13:08):
features in her language, such as dropping the r at
the end of a word, so you know, mother, mother,
something like that, leaving the r at the end um,
leaving off the art. We can think of Bernie Sanders
as like a extreme example of some of the yes.
And so the interesting thing was that she'd been in
(13:29):
d C for a while and so first of all,
she wasn't immersed in this Brooklyn speech. And also the
dialect itself is shifting a little bit in New York,
so that was more true a generation ago than it
is today. The are dropping and then also some they
call it some vowel raising, so um, that exactly right.
(13:55):
So those two features you can hear that those are
really stereotypical, you know, stereotypically thought of as this New
York accent. Now, what's interesting about with Vader Ginsburg is
that she grew up in that community, but then for
a long time, when you look at when the linguists
listened to recordings of her arguing prior in court, prior
(14:15):
to becoming a Supreme Court justice, they don't hear those
New York features. It's as if she's hyper correcting her speech.
She's really trying to sound more, you know, more what
people might see of think of as proper. And then
it's only in the later years when she's a justice
that you start to see this voice from her childhood
(14:36):
coming out again. And so in some ways, I really
think it's a sign that she feels like she's made it.
She's comfortable with herself and with her voice, and so
she doesn't need to correct in the same way. There's
such a lesson there for all of us, right, and
and it's also complicated. I mean, one thing that I
(14:57):
think is so useful about that story is that sometimes
I think about formal versus informal speech and formal versus
in formal situations, but that what I learned from that
is there's actually this much more important lens than just
looking at the context, which is, are do you have
something to prove? Yeah? Are you being evaluated in that moment?
(15:20):
And then you know, to bring it into all of
our lives. There is this element of if we're being
evaluated and our natural instinct is to overcorrect, as you say, um,
when can we not do that? Is that is that
you know, at what point is it is? It? Is
it about like when in our own lives do we
(15:41):
feel like we don't have anything to prove anymore? Or
is there something about like there being a kind of
a revolutionary act in um just teaching people that like
you can sound you know, non standard and still be
taken seriously. But you know, then the problem is sometimes
you aren't right. And I think both of those things
so are true. So a lot of it is that
(16:02):
probably you know, your relationship with your voice is a
lot about self acceptance. You know, there's all these linguistic
studies about people who speak in a way that other
people feels nonstandard, and they can feel very insecure about
the way they speak. At the same time, the flip
side of that is, I hope we're approaching some education
(16:24):
where we can actually realize this hidden source of prejudice
and bias and become more aware of it, and then
in that sense, more people, you know, as you're trying
to do, can feel comfortable in their voices. Well, yeah,
and especially because it makes me think about like, um,
you know, when we don't have anything to prove anymore, sure,
when when does that happen exactly? And if we're you know, ambitious,
(16:48):
or if we're always moving forward or upward or whatever
metaphor you want to use, then like, in a way,
maybe we're always finding ourselves in new positions where we
have to prove ourselves and we can't just always be
sort of chasing like someday I'll be myself, especially because
there's this added complicating thread, which is that often people
who really create these magical moments to capture a society.
(17:10):
I mean I'm talking I'm thinking specifically of of AOC's
speech the other week in Congress. But you know, there
are these there are these moments when people sound more
like themselves than you're than you expect given the formality
of the context, and then it becomes really poignant and
often they become leaders. Right. Part of I think what's
(17:31):
valuable about the conversation you're having in the book and
that I'm having on the podcast is this idea of
we can't all just fall back on these safe tropes
of um, the room makes me scared, so I will
hide myself or you know, we won't find our own
leadership and we won't find we won't have like you
(17:51):
know this, our society won't move forward the way we
actually all want it to. Yeah, I mean that. Yeah,
that definitely resonates and finding this authentic self which is
very vulnerable. In fact, actually i'd love you to talk
about you very honestly reference your feeling of being conflicted
about up speak sure and vocal for I mean, they're
(18:16):
both mentioned, and actually they're both really relevant really as
practical sort of examples of what we're talking about. Would
you do you want to talk about Yeah, I'll talk
about so. Um. So this is where I talk about
how often, you know, language changes over time, and often
it's adolescence and in particular even adolescent women who are
(18:38):
changing the language. And so you know, new features come out,
and adolescents are kind of fighting against the old guard,
and so you know, another facet of that is that
old people always don't like the way that young people speak.
But when they were young, someone didn't like the way
that they spoke, and so that's kind of a recurring
cycle of human nature. So up speak or up talk
(19:00):
is ending sentences in a question, and so you know,
kind of some people might call it a valley girl
kind of speak. Um. You know, I was a teenager
in the nineties, and so I think of the movie
Clueless is one reference point that I get. We're definitely
a temporarius by the way, Okay, you know, I find
(19:23):
myself slipping into that sometimes and I hear it and
my students in the complexity is that there's no good
or bad way of speaking. It doesn't it's not you know,
there's nothing that has to be good or bad about
a particular intonation, and so I don't want to judge
it because I because I know that. At the same time,
(19:43):
if I find myself slipping into it, it gets really
complicated because it originated you know, often it's women doing it.
It sort of gets mixed into this notion of maybe
a sexist notion that a woman doesn't know what she's
saying something like that, and so it's really you know,
it's a tough one that I struggle with in my
own voice. And then you point out beautifully, Um in
(20:05):
the book that uh, that it's complicated by the fact
that not only did you grow up with this, but
also as a result, a lot of role models, a
lot of the icons that we all grew up with
also speak this way. Yeah, and I think, you know,
vocal fries interesting. I think that that tends to out
tends to be a little bit younger or you know,
not so much to say when we were in high school. Um,
(20:25):
so this is kind of ending, you know, adding this
kind of uh, like a growlly sort of feature to
the end of your words or to some vowels. And
what's interesting is that adults really don't like it. But
one paper pulled a bunch of college students somewhat recently
a few years ago, and I've tried this too with
my students, and you know, you play them a clip
(20:46):
and they say, oh, yeah, no, that that doesn't sound
bad to me. That sounds like somebody who's you know,
kind of going somewhere. And so I think, yeah, that
you get these generational differences, and so which makes sense
because if that's the way you you know, if that's
the way that people of your generation speak, it can
(21:08):
sound positive. And then you know, here I'm like, now
I'm feeling like an old person thinking, Yah, the kids
are speaking in this way, that you know, I don't.
Well also you said adults don't like it, but there
is some cut off, right of like kind of adults
we're talking about totally, and these are not you know,
it's not usually like, well, if you're born you know after,
if you're born before, hate it. You know, it's not
(21:29):
usually that clear cut. It's complicated, and it's complicated by
the fact that, as you say in the book, less
so with upspeak perhaps, But but vocal fry is a
great example that I have this quote here where you said,
once a way of rebelling against the linguistic establishment, vocal
fry seems to have joined its ranks because obviously at
(21:50):
some point the people who are speaking in vocal fry
as their you know, rebellious streak. I'll share in clueless um,
then get a little hour, then become the boss. And
if they have, if they haven't lost that you know,
whatever linguistic marker that is revealing of their character, then
suddenly that's what bosses sound like. And then probably young
(22:11):
people will do something different. Right, It is kind of
freeing and ridiculous that we grab onto these ideas just
knowing that like there's gonna be another train of them
coming up, which leads me to one other philosophical question
which doesn't have an answer, but but perhaps it's worth
thinking about, which is that sometimes we feel an obligation
(22:32):
in the coaching world leadership coaching and with corporate clients
who have, you know, a sort of a sense of
what a strong voice sounds like, what they're going for.
We're often in a position of having to tell people
to you know, learn how to speak without up speaking
vocal fry. And then the question is because as you say,
(22:53):
and I love the way you put it, Uh, this
is where the complexity comes in. Is there and ours
elves quote unquote that is more us than the social
markers that we've picked up, Like are we more ourselves
if we let go of some of those markers because
we pick them up as ways to minimize ourselves in
certain spaces, or are they part of our story and
(23:16):
so letting go of them, you know? And obviously there
is not a one way answer, right, There's not a
one way answer. And I think for me, the bigger
picture truth is just how much our language, how much
the way we speak, reflects the social complexity of our lives.
And so a big part of that is our childhood
(23:38):
and the languages we learned in childhood when our brains
were still you know, malleable and ready to learn languages.
And then a large part reflects our social ambition and
our social changes in our new social worlds. And so
I think it's really hard to turn any of that off.
We're going to take a quick break and then we're
gonna come back and talk about some of the specific
(23:58):
things we can turn off and that we're doing without
even knowing it. We're back, and actually i'd love to
step back for a second and ask how all of
this work that you've been doing for you know, over
a decade now, but specifically um, for this book has
(24:22):
made you think about your own voice. So one important
thing that we can all think about. But I think,
you know, I grew up in New York a little bit,
but a lot of mostly in Connecticut, which is part
of the region where people often say that they don't
have an accent and other people have an accent. So
(24:44):
you see this like which doesn't make logical sense. So
everybody has an accent. I mean, it's so it's so beautiful, right,
So it's such a it's such a human thing. To do. Yeah,
And so even people who speak a sign language have
a manner have a have an accent. Um, So you know,
everybody has an accent. Well you actually define in this
(25:06):
case what you mean by an accent, sure, so a
manner of pronounced you know, pronunciation, so the way that
you say your words, the sound of your words. Um.
And of course for for signs, they don't have a sound,
but they do have a manner of pronunciation in a
way that feels very like the same idea. And then
(25:28):
I see this in you know, in my colleagues and
friends and you know, people from childhood, just that it's
so easy to think about accents as a gradation from
the self. So like somebody who has oh but somebody
you know who really has an accent. Well, but what
(25:48):
does that mean again, you know, because everybody has an accent.
And so I think when you're thinking about, um, mastering
a language that's not your own, that might be you know,
you could think about whether or not you sound like
a native speaker, so you might use accent in that way.
But I think when I think about, you know, how
(26:09):
I grew up speaking, or the amount of linguistic diversity
that I heard which was somewhat little. And that's something
that I reflect on too, that I think that it's
so important where possible to expose kids to different languages,
and so I think about that, you know, living in
a city or having two little kids. Um, everybody has
(26:30):
an accent. And also, as I talk about some in
the book, even the way of hearing an accent, when
you hear somebody and you think, oh, a strong accent
or oh a week accent, A lot of that is
entirely subjective and about the listener, not about the speaker,
And so much happens. I didn't realize until I read
your book. So much happens when we perceive an accent
(26:51):
that's psychological. It's just not about the sounds. It's not
like I hear that accent, but okay, I can tell
that sound is actually usually that other sound. Okay, cool,
I've solved it. But instead all these like new things
come into play of I can't understand this person. Yeah,
And so you know, there's just these elegant studies about
how elegant for the science, not like elegant about humanity,
(27:16):
possibly the opposite about humanity. So you know, people here
often what they want to hear, you know, so there
can be studies of somebody listening to speech and thinking
that because the person speaking looks Asian, that they're more
likely to be a non native speaker of English because
(27:39):
a lot of people have this bias about kind of
attaching whiteness to being American, and then that's not at
all present in the person's speech. It's like you're bringing
this bias or you're bringing this prejudice. And then you
could hear speech in a way that's just so laden
with bias and not actually about what the person is saying.
(28:00):
And then it also leads us into the credibility issue.
So either we just literally shut down and we don't
think we're hearing somebody like you're like you just described,
or I mean, the Trayvon Martin story, Yeah, so you
know the story. This is a really I mean I
find it just so poignant and heartbreaking that this is
(28:21):
the story of Trayvon Martin, who was who was murdered
as an unarmed African American teenager and um, you know
in the trial, uh he was right before he died,
he'd been speaking on the phone with a friend of
(28:44):
his and um, Rachel jon Tell and she was in
the courtroom, and she was speaking a dialect of African
American English, and you know, she testified to the fact
that you know, Trayvon was trying to you know, get
away from the shooter and so forth, which would really
go against a claim of self defense. And evidence from
(29:08):
linguists have gone and UM analyzed, you know, what happened
in the trial and what the juror said after the fact,
and there's a lot of evidence that they either didn't
understand her or just felt like she She was basically discredited,
UM because of the way she spoke and her truth
(29:31):
just wasn't heard in that trial, UM, in the trial
against George Zimmerman, the shooter. And it should be noted
that the jury was basically all white. Yes, correct. So
now these issues are really complicated, and you know, even
linguists debate over how to think of them. It's not
like there's a one size fits all answer because in
(29:56):
some ways, thinking about a courtroom, you want to offer
for a way to translate speech so that everybody understands.
At the same time, a lot of bias against language
is not just this idea of oh, was the speech
comprehensible or not? In this really neutral way, but you
can see racism being so central to judgments against speech,
(30:21):
and I think in some ways it can just be
this really insidious part of bias where somebody can say, oh,
I'm not being racist, I just don't understand this person,
but they're bringing so much baggage to how they think
about the person's voice. Well, and it really is I
mean that story specifically as a real counter argument to
(30:42):
um my kind of you know, sometimes pollyanna Ish instincts
of like can't we all just be ourselves? You know?
And I'm well aware of it. I mean, whenever I'm
coaching people, I'm not just saying like, you know, however
you sound with your favorite people when you're the most
comfortable will work in every context. I wish it did.
(31:02):
I think that there's a social justice element to that,
um but you know, the reality is when we are
learning different ways to speak in different contexts, it is
often because there are like power structures in play, and
like do you, you know, help your friend who has
been brutally murdered, uh, you know, find justice posthumously or
(31:26):
don't you as all of the nation watches, I mean,
you know, when the stakes are that high, Like, I
don't know, would it have been useful for her to
have been coached by someone on how to speak differently?
Is that even possible? You know? I mean obviously the
greater answer is just that, like, people need to hear better,
but we can't always assume that they will. And I
(31:47):
think that, you know, I'm I would say that I'm
pro language learning, and that can mean a lot of
different things, and so I'm not I think the people
who only speak English at home should learn in schools,
and we should have this benefit for our children to
teach them different languages at the same time, you know,
(32:12):
learning as a child, Um, you know, being bilingual in
different dialects that you use in different contexts, being bilingual
in different languages that you use in different settings. This
can be really positive and the more languages that people
are able to master can be really wonderful in my view.
But I think you have to do so in a
(32:33):
way that's sensitive, and that isn't teaching people languages because
the one that they have is being devalued, but rather
seeing an advantage of having multiple ways of speaking in
multiple contexts. Yeah, there's this concept that you talked about
that I really I think it's a useful label of
of like linguistic status that we don't you know that
(32:56):
we all often have. The Americans have this sense of like,
we like British accents. Why is that? You know? And
we also obviously don't have to cross the pond before
we realize that we have certain you know, inherent biases
towards as well as against certain accents. The British English
example is so fun because, um, you're right, we have
(33:17):
this like British English status loose stereotype going on in
the US. Absolutely, But what I find fascinating is that
we also have often a close to home advantage in
accent detection, and so telling apart different varieties of English
in the UK to an American ear is very difficult, right,
(33:40):
And so you might be able to hear, you know, Minnesota,
from California from New York, but you're not going to
be able to pick out different regions of the UK
unless maybe you could because you're trained professional. But I couldn't.
But the editor exactly right, so I couldn't. Um. And
(34:00):
what's fascinating though, I think is that as an American
you could hear a British accent, think oh this person sounds,
you know, so so amazingly I don't know, British and
educated or something, but it doesn't have to be one
of the fancier British accents. So then if you're in
the UK, somebody might categorize that accent as being not
at all posh, right, And so I think that that
(34:23):
shows how much of this is about the stereotypes who
bring to the table and nothing actually about the actual
signal value from the voice. So two other things. One
is I want to call out that we move very
quickly away from what you think about your own accent.
But I wonder if you think about, um, what version
of you comes out when you teach, what version of
(34:45):
you comes out in conferences? I mean, on on some
really practical level. This podcast is about public speaking, and
so not only are you somebody who studies all of this,
but also you are somebody who is, you know, in
a sort of leadership position where you get in front
of lots of people in speech. And I wonder how
you think about your own sort of style of teaching,
maybe even dare I say, before the pandemic, right, I mean,
(35:09):
although teaching on zoom or talk, giving a talk on zoom.
I think actually raises so many other issues about how
we present ourselves and feel comfortable on video. And you
know all the time that's because that it's completely but
I think it's really you know, I think there's all
these fascinating questions about who feels comfortable in this new
(35:29):
medium and who doesn't. So I don't, you know, in
some ways, probably like a lot of people, I find
hearing myself talk to be so embarrassing and terrible and um, well,
by the way, as an expert, what is that? Because
(35:51):
it's true and it's so culturally acceptable that if somebody
said they liked the way they spoke, we would be shocked. Probably.
I mean, I don't know, I could imagine it, but
and it's not so, you know, I've been talking to
a lot of people about the book, and you know,
my mom asked me what I thought about some interview
(36:13):
and I was like, what do you mean. She's like, well,
did you think you know he sounded like this and
you said this? And I was like, Mom, I definitely
didn't watch that. Are you crazy? I have no idea,
and please don't tell me. It feels embarrassing right now
to even just like think about that. So probably, like
(36:33):
a lot of people, you know, I haven't listened to
myself on any interviews about the book. Um. I know
though it's really good practice. So you know, I've heard
from people that even you know, really famous orders you know,
often listen to tapes of themselves and you think about
how they could do better. So it's not to say
(36:55):
that at a cognitive level, I a hundred percent think
that I could do better and with learn a tremendous
amount by listening to uh to my speech, But yet
I haven't taken up that learning opportunity. I will say
recently I listened, I just read a transcript of myself
on a podcast, and even that was horrifying because well,
(37:16):
if you look, if you actually look at a written transcript,
we speak in all sorts of weird ways, completely completely.
No transcripts are literally the worst, and we all say,
you know, and um, way too many you know. But
when I had Amanda montell On, who has written at
this great book called word Slut, a feminist guy to
taking back English language about linguistics, uh, she pointed out that, um,
(37:40):
if we take our arms in our you know, is out,
we actually come across as much less human. Interesting. Okay,
so I was very human on the transcript that I read.
So I like your brand. I like what you did there.
Um tell us a little bit though about because partly
what you're saying that this with this idea of like
listening back to oneself and and and improving whatever that means, right, uh,
(38:05):
is is I would love to touch on what we
are actually all changing all the time. You know. On
the one hand, learning a new accent really hard, uh,
without a without a training professional like a plug. I
did not mean to do. But you know that there's
a reason why it's hard to learn languages when you're older,
and also that um that when English isn't your first language,
(38:28):
it's very hard to pass as native. But then on
the other hand, there are these small changes we make
all the time when we are around people we like.
Will you tell us about this? Yeah? So you know,
I think you said it really well that there's this
bigger picture it's so hard to change, and yet in
(38:49):
subtle ways, work cobstantly changing. And so if you're interacting
with somebody and you like each other, your voices start
to come together a little bit, and so you might
not notice it as a a listener. It might take
a linguist to go in and you know, measure exactly
how long your vowels are and how things are spaced. Um.
But you can see these subtle differences and they actually
(39:09):
happen moment to moment, and so you're getting this you know,
kind of vocal accommodation and togetherness with the person you're
talking to. So that's just the one on one interaction. UM.
Now you can imagine you move to a new place,
or you join a new social community, or you take
on some new social identity and that comes with a
(39:32):
new social group and a new social world, and then
your voice is going to change to match that social
world that you're in. Because fundamentally, the reason we all
sound different from each other is about wanting to fit
in or is about belonging and that thing. Yeah, it's
about connecting and it can be really positive. It's about
(39:52):
this feeling of identity and culture with your group, and
language is so tied up in that. So this idea
of well, why don't we just all speak exactly the
same way, and then there'd be just no more, you know,
no problems in the world. But it's just not how
humans what a racial right, and so it's like it's
(40:13):
you know, it just doesn't it's just not how humans work.
We're never going to all speak exactly the same way.
And so the solution if we want to head towards
a more perfect union, Um, I think of I think
his name is Mike from chapter one, this idea of
linguistic diversity. Yeah, right, this idea, like, yeah, will you
(40:34):
tell me about him? Yeah? So you know, this is
the idea of somebody who you know, has all this
diversity in his life and you know, his friends are
from different racial groups, and he feels like, you know,
he's just really progressive and that's great. You know, I'm
not saying that he's not progressive or not trying to
live you know, his ideal life. Um. But he notices
(40:58):
then that all of his friends sound the same and
you actually wouldn't be able to guess who was who,
like match the friend to the photo, because they all
have really similar educational backgrounds. Um. You know, just so
many similarities among them, including the way that they spoke.
And so you know, in terms of these kind of
(41:20):
real world solutions, well, one thing is to reflect on
linguistic diversity and think of it as an advantage to
be exposed to different ways of speaking as another. And
I think there's lots of advantages to different forms of diversity,
so it's not to say it's the only one. But also,
if you have kids, think about exposing kids to situations
where people speak different languages, and I think that is
(41:43):
a really good thing for children. Do you feel like
there's sort of one social cognition study that everyone should
know about, like that you wish were part of education,
or not even one necessarily, but do you feel like
it would be so helpful if this stuff was introduced
early there my I have a researcher who works with
me who graduated with a social linguistics degree, and they said, um,
(42:06):
quote unquote, linguistics has really bad pr People don't know
you know that, like everybody thinks they're an expert in
language because like they talk. Yeah. Yeah. So this is
parents where parents, you know, particularly say white parents who
come into the lab and their kids express some sort
(42:27):
of a racial attitude or bias, like liking the other
white kids. Now they're very uncomfortable, which I think is
a good thing in a sign of progress and wanting
to understand you know, how these structurally racist societies are
seeping into these five year old minds, right, Where is
that coming from? And what we can do to address that.
That's really important and it's good that parents are uncomfortable
(42:49):
and want to change it. However, it's a serious contrast
when a kid comes into my lab and you know,
I had this study where they were white kids and
they were um evaluating people who looked white or looked
black and spoke in a native or a foreign accent
of English. And when they expressed a preference for the
(43:10):
white people, parents were just deeply uncomfortable, which again, you know,
is something that that as a society we need to
be deeply uncomfortable with. But when say they liked people
who were black and spoke in a native accent over
people who were white and spoken a foreign accent, parents
(43:30):
are just so relieved and say, oh, look, you know,
few my kids not racist. My kids, you know, just
loves people who speak in English like I do. And
so it's really reassuring to parents, and it doesn't usually
occur to people that kids might be expressing two biases,
(43:54):
one that's about race and one that's about speech. And
that what people's accents are is the more our salient one,
but that that's also a problem. Yeah, right, But you
know it's also this like deeply primal thing apparently that
we feel like we connect with people who sound like us. Yeah,
and I think there's a way that that kid. You know,
(44:15):
first of all, I'll say that five year old is
not prejudiced in the way an adult is. And I
really believe that. Um, you know, they're still learning what
society has to teach them, and unfortunately a lot of
that is negative based on race and speech. But they're
still learning. But the idea that when a parent sees
a kid expressing a preference for one kind of speech
(44:38):
over another, and it's just kind of like few my
kids just learning languages, there's absolutely no problem with it.
That's the kind of them teaching that's going to facilitate
linguistic prejudices growing with time, right, right, Because that is
not I mean, it seems like what you're saying is
that that is a stereotype that is completely culturally permissible. Still,
(44:58):
exactly why do you study kids to teach us about adults? So, um,
I mean that's that's why in many ways, to teach
us about adults. So I mean, kids are important for
their own sake. Um, and we can agree that. But
a lot of why I study kids is because if
(45:19):
we want to understand our social thinking, and we want
to understand our our cognition about the world, children can
give us so much insight into how we think about things,
sort of where our cognitive system starts out, and then
how experience layers on top of that. And so I
like to think about it as we study kids to
(45:40):
think about the building blocks of later thinking. And you
know what we could do to change ourselves. Yeah, let's
change ourselves. Okay, we're gonna take another quick break and
then we're going to come back and find out who
you brought in for us. Okay, so who have you
(46:04):
brought in? I brought in Rachel Maddow and tell me
about why. So I've loved her show for a really
long time. And I feel like when I'm thinking about
who's credible, I find her credible. And I think she's
(46:25):
really angry in a way that feels righteous and correct
to me. And I think it's really hard to pull
off angry, and I think she does so really successfully.
And so you know, i'd love to learn how can
you be you know, how can you be angry in
(46:47):
a real and meaningful way and not turn people off?
Because I think, yeah, so i'd love to know how
she does. Yeah, well, yeah, we're gonna we're gonna listen
to a short clip of hers. I feel like an
answer to that question, although it's not necessarily like, um, so,
here's what to do with your mouth kind of a thing.
(47:07):
But in terms of sort of mindset, I find that
women tend to be heard when angry more dot dot
dot when um it's very clear in both the content
and in the style that it's on behalf of others,
which just feels like there's all kinds of psychological data
(47:27):
to back that up to. Yeah, no, that makes a
lot of sense to me. But whenever we're mad, if
we can take a moment and figure out how we
can speak on behalf of if how it's actually about
something larger than ourselves in a way, it's the righteousness
thing that you talk about that that ignites a sense
of righteousness, because you know, there's certainly I mean, I'm
(47:48):
thinking of Rebecca Tracer's book Good and Mad, there's certainly
a history of like when any of us is sort
of mad in our own lives. If we just dig
a little deeper, it's probably because of some injustice that thus,
you know, we can say, maybe this is something that
isn't just happening to me. So here you go having
a patchwork policy here, having some states where it's stay
(48:09):
at home in some places where it not. It's like
having a pool where there's one section in the pool
where it's okay to pee. It's like having an airplane
where there's one section that where it's okay to smoke,
but everything else you're gonna call non smoking, despite what
all those people are gonna smell like when they get
off that plane. I mean, Dr Fauci at least is saying,
let's have a national stay at home order? Why don't
(48:30):
we have one yet? The Surgeon General is going on
the Today Show and saying, I think we should have
a national stay at home order? Can I just tell
people that we do even if we don't. Yeah, she's
so satisfied. Good right. I Mean I was once told
I coached a man who is running for the US Senate. Uh,
(48:52):
sort of did a one day consultancy coaching with him,
and he said, at the end, I know who you
remind me of Rachel at out and I was like,
at once deeply flattered and also like, wow, I am
actually kind of nothing like Rachel Maddow. And I feel
like he just has no other strong women, like he
has one archetype. But it is useful to think of Rachel.
(49:15):
I think it is a bit of an archetype for
a lot of us, because it's you're absolutely right, and
in fact I chose that bit because you're you're right.
I mean, she's furious, but she also has the sort
of presence of mind and of spirit to be able
to joke within that. But the joking is very pointed.
It's not like to diffuse the tension. It's so spot on.
(49:37):
And then I also listened and I have the feeling
how much somebody who is not like me in many
ways would be really would not like her right, and
you you know, and that feels so unfair, and it's
like I I feel this, I feel a political divide
(49:59):
to you know, but that everything she says feels like
it's so spot on and well reasoned, and you know,
just that was a great example that she gets it
and she explains it, and there's craziness in this world,
and she cuts through that, do you feel like in
(50:21):
your career that you have ever had issues with being
taken seriously? So, I think I've been fortunate in so
many ways in my career, UM and I've had the
benefit of having really strong female mentors, and that's been
(50:41):
really meaningful to me. I kind of sensed that from
your acknowledgements in your book. I was wondering if that
it seemed like. And also that the people that you
have coming up behind you, who you've you've hired as um,
you know, post docs or research assistance for women. So
I feel like I've had kind of a It's not
(51:03):
you know, not to say that every step of the
way has been perfect, for sure, but I feel like
when there has been a misstep or when there has
been a time where I felt not, you know, not valued,
or something was unfair, that I've had these really strong
(51:23):
female mentors that I've been able to go to and
that I feel like, are you know, mentoring me and
championing me? And yeah, I do want to try to
do that for the next generation of scholars coming up.
For sure. It also feels like there's an element tell
me if this is true that that whether it's socio
linguistics or this sort of more complicated interdisciplinary that, Um,
(51:48):
there's sort of a inherent reason why there might be
more women in that in that field, or that we
might be drawn to it because there is this long
history of having to sort of understand and these these
nuances of social interactions in order to get ahead. I
think that's possible, and I think that language is so
(52:10):
personal to people and so um, you know, I do.
I do feel like it's it's a field where, um,
people can really connect with it and it can connect
with their own lives. Yeah, I love that. Thanks for
doing that work for us, Catherine. Thank you for speaking
(52:33):
with me today. I really appreciate it. Thank you so much.
It was such a pleasure to meet you and you know,
talk about all these questions with you. And I should say,
if anyone wants to enroll their kids in your studies,
what's the best way to find out more? If anybody
listening wants to participate in research at home with their kids,
(52:54):
you know, you can absolutely sign up. So my lab
is d SC Lab dot U Chicago, dot E DU
though a lot of different developmental psychology labs just like mine,
are online now and so there might be other opportunities too.
But you know, if you want to read about my
book How You Say It and my research with my
(53:15):
graduate students, you can find it there. Thank you to
Katherine Kindler for coming in and we will have all
of the info that she just shared about her lab
and her research and her book in our show notes
of course, and on our website Permission to Speak Pod
dot calm and join me tomorrow on Instagram at Permission
(53:37):
to Speak Pod at ten am for an ig live
with very special guest, Hadar Shamash. She is a accent
and English language coach for people all around the world.
She has a massive and robust and loving and really
exciting platform, the Accents Way, and we found each other
(53:58):
across the world. She's based in Israel, and um, you know,
it's a real meeting of the minds and meeting of
the hearts because both of us help people with like
you know, the logistics of the sounds that come out
of our mouths, but also and equally, if not more importantly,
with a sense of power and freedom and joy around
(54:18):
you know, the sounds that come out and with you know,
finding peace with sounding different than the quote unquote standard.
It's gonna be great. We're going to have a lovely
media conversation about accent bias in honor of Katherine ken
Fler's episode. Thank you to Sophie Lichterman and the team
(54:41):
at I Heart Radio and all of you. We're recording
this podcast at various locations around Los Angeles on land
that is the historic gathering place for the Tongva indigenous tribe,
and you can visit us d a C dot us
to learn more about honoring Native land. Permission to Speak
is a production of I Radio and Double Vision, executive
(55:02):
produced by Katherine Burke Canton and Mark Canton. For more
podcasts from my Heart Radio, listen on the I heart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your favorite shows.
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