October 3, 2023 • 32 mins
In the next episode of Communicate Like You Give a Damn, host Kim Clark sits down with a true trailblazer in the field of workplace linguistics, Suzanne Wertheim, a national expert on inclusive language and author of the new book, The Inclusive Language Field Guide. Together, they have an enlightening conversation surrounding linguistic anthropology, language bias and how it relates to communicating in today’s workplace. Not only do they unpack how to deal with problematic language, but they also explore the evolution of language and understanding how semantics have changed over time, both for the better and worse.
About The Guest:
Dr. Suzanne Wertheim is a national expert on inclusive language and the author of The Inclusive Language Field Guide (2023). After getting her Ph.D. in Linguistics from Berkeley, she held faculty positions at Northwestern, University of Maryland, and UCLA. In 2011, she left the university system in order to apply her expertise to real-world problems. Dr. Wertheim has been an invited speaker around the US and in Europe, presenting research on language and bias, language and gender, and anthropology and artificial intelligence. As head of Worthwhile Research & Consulting, Dr. Wertheim now specializes in analyzing and addressing bias at work.
Find Suzanne Here:
About Kim:
Kim Clark (she/her) focuses her work on the communicator and content creator's role in diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). She is the co-author of The Conscious Communicator: The fine art of not saying stupid sh*t, an Amazon #1 bestseller and the leading voice for DEI communications and social justice messaging for brands.
She speaks at conferences, writes custom workshops, writes inclusive communications guides, and consults with companies on all things related to diversity, equity, and inclusion communications. Kim is a member of the LGBTQ+ community, a cisgender woman, Native American (Muscogee Nation) and a mom of two kids with disabilities. These marginalized identities and the privileges that come with society seeing her as White motivate her daily for social change.
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Episode Transcript
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Kim Clark (00:00):
Welcome back everybody. Well, I have the
honor of bringing in a guestthat her work, my work, our work
is quite complimentary. Soyou're gonna find that pretty
much everything you need for deicommunications and applying it
(00:21):
to your work on a daily basis isgoing to be wrapped up in this
conversation right here. Solet's get into it. Please, Dr.
Susan Wirthlin, please introduceyourself, and then we'll get
into the questions.
Suzanne Wertheim (00:34):
Sure. My name is Suzanne worth time, I am
currently sitting in Oakland,California. I am the CEO of
worthwhile research andconsulting, where I apply social
science and My academicbackground to real world
problems in the workplace, inparticular problems of bias, but
not always.
Kim Clark (00:55):
You have a very particular expertise in language
as a linguist. So how did youget into that work, and you also
have a new book coming out. Sotell us about the book as well.
Unknown (01:10):
So it's a little bit roundabout how I got into the
work, but people find itinteresting. So I'm gonna go a
little deeper than you mighthave expected. When I graduated
college, I had student debt,like many people, and I
graduated into a recession, andI ended up with my English
degree, as a technical writer intech. And I was so disrespected,
and my mind and abilities wereso disrespected. I felt like so
(01:32):
much of the time, men in techwere like, boop, boop, boop,
boop, boop, and just ignoringme, then I became filled with
fear. And I was like, How can Iget men to listen to me and I
literally got a PhD. I'm like,if I'm their professor, they
have to listen. So that was howI got into linguistics was
actually addressing bias intech, which is very funny,
because I'm like, Oh, I'm fullcircle, like the 12 years I was
(01:52):
away from Jack, things actuallygot worse and a lot of respects.
So I come in now with insideknowledge. So in grad school, I
ended up specializing in a fewkinds of linguistics, but I was
really much more grammaticallyfocused. And I was very
interested in endangeredlanguages. So I lived in Russia
for a year studying how peoplewere speaking. And I was so
curious about why when you havetwo languages in contact, does
(02:16):
the dominant fancy languagealmost never change its
structure. But the minoritylanguage that's maybe
stigmatized, maybe contracting,ends up changing its grammar a
lot. And I didn't expect theanswer to be what it was, which
was context, human context,human interactions. So in order
to write my dissertation, I hadto teach myself so much about
(02:37):
the social meaning of language,what goes on in the
conversation? How does it relateto power structures? How does it
relate to the larger context? Ithought I was writing a grammar
dissertation, and it ended upwith me in my field of
linguistic anthropology. So Itaught Linguistic anthropology
at various places. I was atNorthwestern, I was at
University of Maryland doingresearch for the government,
(02:58):
where I had top secretclearance, which is not as
exciting as you would think.It's cool. I was at I was. Yeah,
it's pretty cool. It was, it wasweird. They didn't ask the right
questions for my, they didn'task the right questions for my
getting that security clearance.So for example, they didn't find
(03:19):
out that I was one person awayfrom a whole bunch of Chechen
warlords, that was much moreinteresting than I thought then,
what kind of public transit Itook when I was in cities that I
visited. So yeah, okay. So I wasat UCLA, and I started
consulting, again, for tech,because I wanted enough money to
buy a house and Professor ingwasn't going to do it. And then
(03:43):
I got so frustrated with howmuch useful knowledge was locked
behind academic doors, and howusefully it could be applied to
so many different situations tohelp people who shouldn't have
to take a college course to getaccess to really useful stuff
that I left, and I started myown company in 2011. And so
that's how I ended up working onbias in the workplace, which is
(04:07):
a great application for my fieldof linguistic anthropology makes
a lot of things transparent tome that are very opaque to other
people. Because I got a toolkitthat gives me X ray vision.
Kim Clark (04:19):
Excellent, excellent. And, and all of this led to your
up and coming book.
Unknown (04:26):
Yes. Up and coming very soon. It's out October 3. So,
um, yes. So there were a lot ofreasons why I wrote the book. So
many people like why did youwrite the book I'm like, my
clients kept on asking me tolike, it's kind of basic, but I
really wanted people. Peoplecame to me for two reasons. The
(04:48):
first was that there wereproblems in their workplace
because people were sayingproblematic things. Right. So
they were just saying Thingsthat were problematic in
different ways that I ended updelineating in the book. But
then also people would come tome because they would say, I
want to do better, especially in2020. Right? Suddenly, there was
(05:11):
this great awakening where a lotof people were like, Oh, I think
there's stuff happening in theworld that I don't know about.
And my good intentions might notbe good enough. This is when
there started to be a lot oftalk about ally work, how can I
do ally work? How can I make theworld better? How can I make my
good intentions have goodimpact, and people realize that
language is so complicated, andthe resources out there were so
(05:34):
confusing, and they couldn'tunderstand how to take this list
of words and apply them toanother list of words that they
said, alright, what can you doto help? And so I was like, I'll
come to the rescue. And I put onmy author, cape, and I wrote a
book that I think will solve alot of problems for a lot of
different kinds of people. It'sreverse engineered for the
(05:54):
biggest problems that I see. Thebook was designed, not what I
think is interesting, but likepeople needed the most the
people who come to
Kim Clark (06:02):
me, I hear that, I hear that. And so you're well
known on LinkedIn, for talkingabout language and inclusive
language. So the title of yourbook is the inclusive language
Field Guide. Correct. And so, soit's, it's, it's going to be
(06:24):
practical in nature is what I'mgathering by that title. And so
please help us understand whatinclusive language is, how do
you define it?
Unknown (06:36):
Sure. Actually, I want it. Let me just talk about Field
Guide for a minute. There. Theywere, it took a long time, I'm
sure you had the same problemtakes a long time to find a
title of a book, right? Yeah.And for me, inclusive language
is related to why I called it afield guide. Because a field
guide sets up a scenario and inthe book, I talk about the
(06:56):
scenarios that are invoked bywords, right, I get scientific
about it, inclusive language,and a field guide sets up a
scenario where the world iscomplicated and diverse. So I
hike, I have a field ofwildflower guide, I've got a
birding guide, I know that theworld out there is complicated.
And there are principles andpatterns and behaviors that are
(07:17):
interesting to me that withoutan expert's guidance, I can't
figure it out on my own. Butit's a positive thing that I
want to learn. And that's howI'm setting up this book, right?
It's not a blame and shame. It'snot a viewer a bad person. It's
saying the world is reallycomplicated and really diverse.
And there are patterns andbehaviors that are linked that
(07:39):
you might not recognize. But letme give you this guide. Right.
And so that leads me into theidea of inclusive language,
because many people think thatit's just choosing a correct
word. And I am using linguisticscience to go deeper and say,
Actually, we really have to findwhat those patterns are those
skeletal under structures, thosebehaviors that link them, and
(08:02):
then we can do a good job. Solet me tell you that I'm going
to be a little bit negative andsay, inclusive language is not
problematic language. So there'slots of names that people give,
they'll say, oh, it's racist, orhomophobic or transphobic.
Honestly, they might be right.But in my experience, that kind
of language is not productive.If you want people to really
(08:22):
assess what they're doing, andchange it. When people feel
shamed. When people feel blamed,they'll often shut down and
it'll feel like touching a hotstove or something unpleasant.
So the book is really designedto be like, Hey, we're all
coming into this bias. Most ofyou haven't had the benefit of
the incredible training that Igot, and the luxury of all the
time to do all the research thatI've done. Let me give you
(08:44):
information to benefit you. Soyou can avoid language that
makes people feel like theyhaven't been seen that they
haven't been heard that they'renot valued, that they haven't
been taken into consideration.That's what problematic
languages and inclusive languageis the flip side, inclusive
language is word choice andbeyond that makes people feel
(09:07):
seen, heard, valued, understood,taken into consideration.
Kim Clark (09:12):
And so how do you handle that pushback of people
who want to use the terminclusive language as a
weaponization to createpolarization by or it's just
their misunderstanding of it andthey feel defensive and lashing
out and saying things like ohyour tone policing or you know
you and your politicalcorrectness and and identity
(09:35):
politics, etc. So how do youhandle when especially for us
communicators when we arerolling out inclusive language,
we're trying to role model itmaybe we have an inclusive
language guide, you know, thatwe want to put out there then we
get this kind of feedback kindof RMS on how to handle those
conversations.
Unknown (09:56):
So I've got two things in the book that come directly
From conversations with peoplewho were having exactly that
problem, and let me brieflysummarize them for you. The
first was from a deipractitioner. I used to be on a
listserv that then converted tonot a listserv. So now I don't
get as many good questions as Iused to. But this person was
(10:17):
having a problem because she wasdiversifying the calendar for
her company, which has multiplelocations, some of which were in
the Bay Area, which has acceptedcertain things more than some
other areas. Although, here inthe Bay Area, we're not nearly
as perfect as many people thinkI gazillion stories of terrible
things that have been said anddone here. So. But anyway, so
(10:39):
she was diversifying thecalendar and putting in things
like Diwali, and Women's HistoryMonth and Hispanic Heritage
Month and all of these things.And she got pushback from
people. And so she wrote to thelistserv, and she said, How do I
respond, I feel really stumped.And so I wrote back a thing. And
it was my first time publiclytalking about this concept
outside of the client base,which is called masking
(11:00):
language. I said, the problem ispeople are using what I call
masking language, to pretendthat their particular
perspective, their particularviewpoint, is objective is
neutral is universal. They'resaying, things are just fine.
And I'm thinking, your maskinglanguage is hiding that things
are just fine for some of thepeople, but they're not fine for
(11:22):
all of the people. So people whoread my book, if there's masking
language being used, they canuse they can identify it, and
then push back. And so here'sthe problem. You're using this
term. So for this particularexample, it was the idea of an
objective calendar. And I'mlike, dude, a calendars.
Christian, right? This is aChristian calendar, you get
(11:42):
Christmas off, you get Easteroff, you get Sunday off. So what
if you're not Christian? What ifyou want to? What if you want to
take a Friday morning to go tomosque? What if you want to take
off early Friday evening, tomake your Shabbos? Dinner? What
if you need to take off forDiwali? To go home to your
parents? You know, why do youhave to take personal days and
somebody else doesn't. AD and BCare Christian. So there's so
(12:04):
many ways that this objectiveAmerican calendar is actually a
dominant group calendar. So thatwas the first one. I don't know
if you've got any questions youwant to I don't want to get only
Oh,
Kim Clark (12:15):
yeah, I'll add to your example that, you know,
whenever I, you know, often getthe question of like, you know,
sometimes, you know, people wantto challenge me, like, where do
you find bias in communications?Like, well just look at your
company calendar. You know, it'slike, what are we operating
from? You know, this is? Let'sstart there. Right? You know, to
(12:38):
your point. Okay, let's go tothe next example you have?
Unknown (12:41):
Well, and I'll say from that, that's one of the gifts of
the anthropology side oflinguistic anthropology is one
of the four branches ofanthropology. And it really is
focusing on the relationshipbetween language and culture,
and how language is culture. Butthere's a thing where, once you
start studying what's calledcultural variability, right, or
cross compare cross culturaldata, you start to see that a
(13:03):
lot of people, there's a lot ofthings in somebody's world that
they think are normal, ornatural, or just the way how it
is, like a, like a naturalprinciple, like gravity or water
flows downhill, but they're notthey're culturally constructed,
and water is going to flowdownhill across the globe. But
your calendar is not everybody'scalendar, right? You know, and
(13:23):
so there are a lot of thingsthat feel very normal or natural
right now we're interrogating asa society in the US the idea
that gender is a binary, whichother cultures have known for a
very long time, gender is not abinary, they've gotten
terminology, you know, and thenthe Nazis burned down some
important research centers inVienna. So we got set back,
(13:43):
European and American researchgot set back a long time. So
we're finally come to coming toterms with that. Okay, so
there's masking language, andthen I'll say a second thing in
the book is, my first principleis reflect reality. So we're
actually going to reflectreality as much as possible. And
sometimes it's going to soundharsher than what people think
(14:05):
is tough stuff. But well, we canget back to that later. The
second example I have is, aclient of mine was VP of Dei, at
a rather conservative company,that in fact, they ended up
leaving because that company,kept on being obstructionist,
with the construct ofcommunications and other things.
They were trying to roll out theperson they reported to stop,
(14:26):
stop, stop blocked all the time.But at the time, this was early
in that person's tenure. Andthey said to me, hmm, I'm
getting pushed back. And thisperson has a disabled person in
their family. So they've gotlived experience. That's not
just academic experience, wherethey've learned about
disability, but they'vewitnessed things that their
sibling has been called and seenvarious struggles, etc. So
(14:49):
they're like, I'm trying to getas better and roll out better
disability terminology, and I'mgetting a lot of pushback.
People are like, it's just PC.It's just work. What can I tell
them and I'm like, Ah, I got ananswer. Let's drop some science
on them. So, in linguistics,when you study Historical
Linguistics and how languagechanges over time, one of the
(15:10):
things that you look at hispitch duration, a word becoming
more negative than it was andpeople might know the word in
English pejorative, which meansan insult, right just in itself.
So what happens is, in variouscultures, there's always going
to be stigmatized identities,identities that have our lower
status that aren't seen asstigmatized in some way. Words
(15:34):
that are neutral, originally ortechnical that are used to
describe people in those groupsstart to get used negatively,
that pick up that taste of thestigma, they get very bad
tasting, and and they end upundergoing what we call semantic
change. So a word that startedout as a descriptor becomes an
insult. Disability language isfilled to the brim with well not
(16:00):
disability language, but formerdisability language is filled
with words that are just insultsnow, that people I think, don't
recognize come from a place thatwas meant to be a descriptor of
a particular kind of person.Dumb, moron, imbecile, lame.
Spam as for spastic, even justfast tick is used as a
(16:23):
pejorative and now I'm gonna saya word that a lot of people
don't like to say, but I'm gonnasay it anyway. And that is
retarded. Right? So retarded.For my book, I looked up how
recently my mom used to teachspecial ed in New York State,
and I was pretty sure herclassroom had the word retarded
in it, EMR. educable mentallyretarded, because it was a
(16:44):
neutral or a technical term thatNew York State was using how do
we get our students intoclassrooms that are appropriate
for them? Oh, people who test inthis kind of IQ range are gonna
go to the EMR classroom. So Isaid, All right, my mom retired
in 99. When did New York Statestop using retarded because it
was already a pejorative when Iwas a kid on the schoolyard.
(17:05):
Right, it was definitelynegative, but it was still being
used as a technical word. Now,it's such a taboo word that
people will call it the R word.People will sometimes not spell
it out. And you'll see r andthen a bunch of asterisks, and
then a D. So this shows youparallel to the N word, how
stigmatize how insulting howtaboo, the word has become. New
(17:25):
York State 2022 2022, theyfinally signed legislation
saying, Alright, we have to moveaway from this term, and we're
going to move towardsintellectual disabilities. Even
the federal government is notthat long ago, I can't remember,
I'm gonna say five years, eightyears, like not that long ago.
So my answer that I gave to thisclient of mine was semantic
(17:50):
change is real. You can documentit. And it is one of the reasons
why it may feel like oh my god,there's another term for these
people. I mean, let's talk aboutin this country, how often we've
changed terminology for blackpeople, black people themselves,
right? In my lifetime, therehave been a range of terms
because, unfortunately, blackpeople in this country suffer
(18:13):
from being a stigmatized groupin all kinds of ways. And so
when a word becomes just startsto sound like an insult, you
have to replace it. Let me endwith one thing. My students
didn't really love 30 Rock theway I did, but I love 30 Rock
episode where Alec Baldwin isbriefly dating Salma Hayek,
who's a nurse, and Salma Hayekis Lebanese Mexican, but she's
(18:34):
playing a Puerto Rican woman,right. And I grew up in New York
and was mistaken for PuertoRican my whole New York Life.
And now that I'm in California,everybody thinks I'm Mexican,
I'm neither. But Alec Baldwin'scharacter says to his
girlfriend, okay, so what do Icall you? And she says, whether
he can? He says, No, you can saythat, but what can I call you?
(18:55):
Right? And so this very, thesevery sensitive writers are
showing that they know that youcan use a very technical a
standard terminology, right, astandard term for people. And it
can still sound like an insultbecause of the ways that it's
being used. So that is one ofthe main reasons why we need to
have inclusive communicationsbecause we have to reflect the
(19:19):
reality of semantic change andstigma.
Kim Clark (19:24):
Would you mind kind of walking us through the
process of what you know aboutthe changing semantics around
the term woke? You know, it wasjust it wasn't it was just a
past tense of Wake, right? Itwas a net neutral term, you
know, just like your example.And then the black community
(19:45):
decades ago, started utilizingit and saying, You got to stay
woke, you got to stay work,which is alert, keep yourself
safe. Watch what's going onaround you. And then now it has
been co opted as a pejorative.So it's gone some route and in
other words in from othermarginalized groups like queer,
you know, has has been taken andthen retaken. And so, you know,
(20:09):
so kind of help us understandthis, this current context of
woke, anti woke, because if youjust look at the term woke, and
if you say anti woke, or I don'twant to work for a woke company,
you're basically saying you'rechoosing to be asleep, you're,
you're choosing to be unaware,uneducated, whatever it may be,
(20:31):
even though, you know, it seemsto be a statute kind of term and
an ideological alignment kind ofterm. But if you can you help us
understanding that term, andwhat will it take to take it
back?
Unknown (20:49):
Of course, you ask a linguist with a lot of
Historical Linguistics training.And I used to run the the
world's biggest nonprofitsstudying language and gender. So
I'm like, Oh, these editedvolumes. I'm like, in the 90s,
we were talking about this,where the language of feminism
was taken over by corporations,or by taken over by right wing
people like this is a trajectorythat is documented and is
(21:13):
common. I'm thinking of I wish Icould remember the term but when
I was young, there was aVirginia Slims ad, where it was
like taking the language offeminism to say, and you go
smoke, you know, like, there,there are these things that have
happened again, and again,again, and again. So the pattern
I'm sorry that I don't have alot of great examples for this.
But the pattern is again andagain, where there's an
(21:35):
appropriation of a term that'sbeing used in one sense, and
then it becomes twisted inanother sense. This is the
reverse of what you brought upwith queer, which is done by the
ingroup. And the term that weuse for that in linguistics is
reclamation, where there's aterm that's become a pejorative,
and then it becomes reclaimed bypeople who first use it in group
(21:56):
to I think defang it, right.Like if I say queer, it doesn't
have that flavor of Oh, my God,I'm about to get beaten up by
this dude on the corner yellingqueer at me, right. So there are
all of these ways that there arethese different terms that deich
is another one that's beingreclaimed. There are a bunch of
them that are being reclaimed.And that's in group work. That
(22:19):
usually isn't like languageengineering, but it's just
people doing a thing becausethey want to, because this is
how human beings joke and usehumor to make scary things less
scary. This is not that this isoften I would say, so liberate,
researched, people who are likespin doctors are paid to take
ideas and transform them. Sothey become agitating, angry
(22:43):
making talking points happen,and then they diffuse out to the
population. So I would say oneof them is sort of grassroots
and bottom up that in groupreclamation, and the other one
is very much, um, purposeful,for I want to say nefarious. But
I mean, it really is for thevarious reasons that people want
(23:04):
an angry, uneducated, fearfulpopulace where people don't
trust each other. So that's onething to separate out. So I
talked about X ray vision beforefor me, X ray vision is my
version of when I'm givingworkshops, saying woke to
people, right? So woke and X rayvision are the same thing.
(23:24):
There's a thing that in yourformer state, you couldn't see,
because your eyes were closed inyour unconscious, or because
things were obscured to youbecause of the fog of culture,
or you haven't been trained tosee through things. And I'm
like, let me give you asuperpower. Wilk is like, hey,
you've been asleep, wake up. Imean, the entirety of the movie
Get Out is about this, right?And they call it the sunken
(23:46):
place. So what I've seen is, andpeople on Black Twitter do a
great job of deconstructingthese things. It shows up now to
mean, I would say sort of asynonym when it's being used in
a way that's designed to agitateand denigrate, woke is used to
mean something like, whatpolitically correct used to mean
(24:08):
it's sort of like the new PC,which dismisses things and says,
it's to toe the line, it's tovirtue signal, it's to perform
that you care. It's um, itdoesn't really have a basis in
reality, it's only becausethere's a thing that you feel
you have to do because of rudesocial pressure. And so you're
going to do that thing. And sofor example, a thing that
(24:30):
happens is people will talkabout woke casting. I've
collected some examples of this.And so people will say, the
like, they're nice things on theinternet. Well, there'll be
like, political versus regular,and so everything that's like
white male straight isconsidered regular. And then
everything that isn't white malestraight is considered
political. And it's the samething with woke. What does it
(24:52):
mean are woke hiring practices?So someone on a What was I on
the other day someone put acomment on something? I get so
many interactions with peoplewho, through the internet or
through workshops, I forget whothis woman was. But it was a
black woman who said that at herbusiness school, one of her
professors had said, aboutdiversifying your pipeline when
(25:13):
recruiting, they said, Why areyou going to fish in the same
pond? That's so limited, thenyou're gonna, you know, if
everybody's going for the samepond, you're gonna have to go
lower and lower, like we'regoing lower in our food chain,
you know, stuff that used to betrash fish is now regular
restaurant fish, right? But ifyou expand what you're fishing
(25:34):
for, then you can get the bestfish from all the different
pawns, right? So that's a veryreasonable and logical way to
look at things. So that's thekind of argumentation that
people can be used to say, Well,what about this, I think the
thing you can say to people is,for good faith people, so I
think I've decided with my bookis that I don't have the energy
(25:58):
to try to convince people thatinclusive language has value. So
if I'm going to interact withyou, you have to already be at
the starting point. inclusivelanguage has value. It's not, I
don't care, I'm not going towaste my breath, time, emotional
labor, intellectual labor, andpeople who are coming in,
genuinely not caring, oraggressive, or very resistant.
(26:22):
I'm like, go educate yourself,like Best of luck. Best of luck.
But for other people who arecoming in, and really haven't
had the education that helpsthem see the world with the
clarity that you see, or I see,because we've had these years,
really rigorously examining howthe world works, seeing
patterns, seeing patterns, andthen and then fixing them, or
(26:45):
seeing how to address them.Somebody who comes in who just
is like, well, this feels workto me, I don't get it, then you
can work with that person andsay, Well, what about this
doesn't feel real, because forme, I'm trying to reflect
reality. And then you can have adiscussion that moves people to
a place where I'll say one otherthing. In a lot of my workshops,
(27:08):
I've developed vocabulary todescribe bias that is granular
and behavior based. It doesn'tuse identity as a reference. And
it's not high level label. It'svery specific. Woke is the kind
of thing that used to be a niceshorthand for an in group. Oh,
be woke might not have noticedthis thing, right? Now, it's a
(27:30):
label that gets people to kneejerk, dismiss something. But if
you can get people out of thehigh level label, and describing
in granular ways in a nonaccusatory way, help me
understand what this feel like,what this feels unreal to you.
Right? What in this feels like aperformance and not like a good
faith effort to improvesomething? That's, I think, a
(27:52):
way to shift people. But PS likethis has been going on forever.
I I wish I wish so badly. Forsome cranky person writing about
complaining that people areseeing you instead of Thao these
days. Right? I keep on lookinglike there's so many complaints
about using vai instead ofurushi. Right? So many
(28:16):
complaints. I'm like, we did it.We did it. We moved away for
like we started using plural youfor a single person hundreds of
years ago. And guess what?You're not complaining? Because
it happened a long time ago. ButI'm sure there are
contemporaneous people who arelike, yeah, people these days
are so influenced by the Frenchand their vous, you know, like,
(28:37):
I don't want to sound French, Iwant to sound English. You know,
I'm sure I'm desperate forsomebody be going through
archives for the time period andfind those complaints because
these kinds of complaints areongoing. People are resistant to
change. And they often thinkthat change isn't for the
reasons that are addressingproblems. They often think that
(28:58):
it's made up, and you got towork through a lot of people's
resistance with science.
Kim Clark (29:05):
Thank you. Thank you for that. Right here. I noticed
and it was really building upmomentum. You probably hate me
right now. But the conversationwe recorded was so good. We just
kept going and going. So we'regonna split it in the sake of
your time protecting your time.We're gonna split this
(29:27):
conversation into two differentepisodes. So keep a lookout and
find the other half. And theother part of this conversation
with this guest I know you'regonna love it.
Welcome back everybody. Well, I have the
honor of bringing in a guestthat her work, my work, our work
is quite complimentary. Soyou're gonna find that pretty
much everything you need for deicommunications and applying it
(00:21):
to your work on a daily basis isgoing to be wrapped up in this
conversation right here. Solet's get into it. Please, Dr.
Susan Wirthlin, please introduceyourself, and then we'll get
into the questions.
Suzanne Wertheim (00:34):
Sure. My name is Suzanne worth time, I am
currently sitting in Oakland,California. I am the CEO of
worthwhile research andconsulting, where I apply social
science and My academicbackground to real world
problems in the workplace, inparticular problems of bias, but
not always.
Kim Clark (00:55):
You have a very particular expertise in language
as a linguist. So how did youget into that work, and you also
have a new book coming out. Sotell us about the book as well.
Unknown (01:10):
So it's a little bit roundabout how I got into the
work, but people find itinteresting. So I'm gonna go a
little deeper than you mighthave expected. When I graduated
college, I had student debt,like many people, and I
graduated into a recession, andI ended up with my English
degree, as a technical writer intech. And I was so disrespected,
and my mind and abilities wereso disrespected. I felt like so
(01:32):
much of the time, men in techwere like, boop, boop, boop,
boop, boop, and just ignoringme, then I became filled with
fear. And I was like, How can Iget men to listen to me and I
literally got a PhD. I'm like,if I'm their professor, they
have to listen. So that was howI got into linguistics was
actually addressing bias intech, which is very funny,
because I'm like, Oh, I'm fullcircle, like the 12 years I was
(01:52):
away from Jack, things actuallygot worse and a lot of respects.
So I come in now with insideknowledge. So in grad school, I
ended up specializing in a fewkinds of linguistics, but I was
really much more grammaticallyfocused. And I was very
interested in endangeredlanguages. So I lived in Russia
for a year studying how peoplewere speaking. And I was so
curious about why when you havetwo languages in contact, does
(02:16):
the dominant fancy languagealmost never change its
structure. But the minoritylanguage that's maybe
stigmatized, maybe contracting,ends up changing its grammar a
lot. And I didn't expect theanswer to be what it was, which
was context, human context,human interactions. So in order
to write my dissertation, I hadto teach myself so much about
(02:37):
the social meaning of language,what goes on in the
conversation? How does it relateto power structures? How does it
relate to the larger context? Ithought I was writing a grammar
dissertation, and it ended upwith me in my field of
linguistic anthropology. So Itaught Linguistic anthropology
at various places. I was atNorthwestern, I was at
University of Maryland doingresearch for the government,
(02:58):
where I had top secretclearance, which is not as
exciting as you would think.It's cool. I was at I was. Yeah,
it's pretty cool. It was, it wasweird. They didn't ask the right
questions for my, they didn'task the right questions for my
getting that security clearance.So for example, they didn't find
(03:19):
out that I was one person awayfrom a whole bunch of Chechen
warlords, that was much moreinteresting than I thought then,
what kind of public transit Itook when I was in cities that I
visited. So yeah, okay. So I wasat UCLA, and I started
consulting, again, for tech,because I wanted enough money to
buy a house and Professor ingwasn't going to do it. And then
(03:43):
I got so frustrated with howmuch useful knowledge was locked
behind academic doors, and howusefully it could be applied to
so many different situations tohelp people who shouldn't have
to take a college course to getaccess to really useful stuff
that I left, and I started myown company in 2011. And so
that's how I ended up working onbias in the workplace, which is
(04:07):
a great application for my fieldof linguistic anthropology makes
a lot of things transparent tome that are very opaque to other
people. Because I got a toolkitthat gives me X ray vision.
Kim Clark (04:19):
Excellent, excellent. And, and all of this led to your
up and coming book.
Unknown (04:26):
Yes. Up and coming very soon. It's out October 3. So,
um, yes. So there were a lot ofreasons why I wrote the book. So
many people like why did youwrite the book I'm like, my
clients kept on asking me tolike, it's kind of basic, but I
really wanted people. Peoplecame to me for two reasons. The
(04:48):
first was that there wereproblems in their workplace
because people were sayingproblematic things. Right. So
they were just saying Thingsthat were problematic in
different ways that I ended updelineating in the book. But
then also people would come tome because they would say, I
want to do better, especially in2020. Right? Suddenly, there was
(05:11):
this great awakening where a lotof people were like, Oh, I think
there's stuff happening in theworld that I don't know about.
And my good intentions might notbe good enough. This is when
there started to be a lot oftalk about ally work, how can I
do ally work? How can I make theworld better? How can I make my
good intentions have goodimpact, and people realize that
language is so complicated, andthe resources out there were so
(05:34):
confusing, and they couldn'tunderstand how to take this list
of words and apply them toanother list of words that they
said, alright, what can you doto help? And so I was like, I'll
come to the rescue. And I put onmy author, cape, and I wrote a
book that I think will solve alot of problems for a lot of
different kinds of people. It'sreverse engineered for the
(05:54):
biggest problems that I see. Thebook was designed, not what I
think is interesting, but likepeople needed the most the
people who come to
Kim Clark (06:02):
me, I hear that, I hear that. And so you're well
known on LinkedIn, for talkingabout language and inclusive
language. So the title of yourbook is the inclusive language
Field Guide. Correct. And so, soit's, it's, it's going to be
(06:24):
practical in nature is what I'mgathering by that title. And so
please help us understand whatinclusive language is, how do
you define it?
Unknown (06:36):
Sure. Actually, I want it. Let me just talk about Field
Guide for a minute. There. Theywere, it took a long time, I'm
sure you had the same problemtakes a long time to find a
title of a book, right? Yeah.And for me, inclusive language
is related to why I called it afield guide. Because a field
guide sets up a scenario and inthe book, I talk about the
(06:56):
scenarios that are invoked bywords, right, I get scientific
about it, inclusive language,and a field guide sets up a
scenario where the world iscomplicated and diverse. So I
hike, I have a field ofwildflower guide, I've got a
birding guide, I know that theworld out there is complicated.
And there are principles andpatterns and behaviors that are
(07:17):
interesting to me that withoutan expert's guidance, I can't
figure it out on my own. Butit's a positive thing that I
want to learn. And that's howI'm setting up this book, right?
It's not a blame and shame. It'snot a viewer a bad person. It's
saying the world is reallycomplicated and really diverse.
And there are patterns andbehaviors that are linked that
(07:39):
you might not recognize. But letme give you this guide. Right.
And so that leads me into theidea of inclusive language,
because many people think thatit's just choosing a correct
word. And I am using linguisticscience to go deeper and say,
Actually, we really have to findwhat those patterns are those
skeletal under structures, thosebehaviors that link them, and
(08:02):
then we can do a good job. Solet me tell you that I'm going
to be a little bit negative andsay, inclusive language is not
problematic language. So there'slots of names that people give,
they'll say, oh, it's racist, orhomophobic or transphobic.
Honestly, they might be right.But in my experience, that kind
of language is not productive.If you want people to really
(08:22):
assess what they're doing, andchange it. When people feel
shamed. When people feel blamed,they'll often shut down and
it'll feel like touching a hotstove or something unpleasant.
So the book is really designedto be like, Hey, we're all
coming into this bias. Most ofyou haven't had the benefit of
the incredible training that Igot, and the luxury of all the
time to do all the research thatI've done. Let me give you
(08:44):
information to benefit you. Soyou can avoid language that
makes people feel like theyhaven't been seen that they
haven't been heard that they'renot valued, that they haven't
been taken into consideration.That's what problematic
languages and inclusive languageis the flip side, inclusive
language is word choice andbeyond that makes people feel
(09:07):
seen, heard, valued, understood,taken into consideration.
Kim Clark (09:12):
And so how do you handle that pushback of people
who want to use the terminclusive language as a
weaponization to createpolarization by or it's just
their misunderstanding of it andthey feel defensive and lashing
out and saying things like ohyour tone policing or you know
you and your politicalcorrectness and and identity
(09:35):
politics, etc. So how do youhandle when especially for us
communicators when we arerolling out inclusive language,
we're trying to role model itmaybe we have an inclusive
language guide, you know, thatwe want to put out there then we
get this kind of feedback kindof RMS on how to handle those
conversations.
Unknown (09:56):
So I've got two things in the book that come directly
From conversations with peoplewho were having exactly that
problem, and let me brieflysummarize them for you. The
first was from a deipractitioner. I used to be on a
listserv that then converted tonot a listserv. So now I don't
get as many good questions as Iused to. But this person was
(10:17):
having a problem because she wasdiversifying the calendar for
her company, which has multiplelocations, some of which were in
the Bay Area, which has acceptedcertain things more than some
other areas. Although, here inthe Bay Area, we're not nearly
as perfect as many people thinkI gazillion stories of terrible
things that have been said anddone here. So. But anyway, so
(10:39):
she was diversifying thecalendar and putting in things
like Diwali, and Women's HistoryMonth and Hispanic Heritage
Month and all of these things.And she got pushback from
people. And so she wrote to thelistserv, and she said, How do I
respond, I feel really stumped.And so I wrote back a thing. And
it was my first time publiclytalking about this concept
outside of the client base,which is called masking
(11:00):
language. I said, the problem ispeople are using what I call
masking language, to pretendthat their particular
perspective, their particularviewpoint, is objective is
neutral is universal. They'resaying, things are just fine.
And I'm thinking, your maskinglanguage is hiding that things
are just fine for some of thepeople, but they're not fine for
(11:22):
all of the people. So people whoread my book, if there's masking
language being used, they canuse they can identify it, and
then push back. And so here'sthe problem. You're using this
term. So for this particularexample, it was the idea of an
objective calendar. And I'mlike, dude, a calendars.
Christian, right? This is aChristian calendar, you get
(11:42):
Christmas off, you get Easteroff, you get Sunday off. So what
if you're not Christian? What ifyou want to? What if you want to
take a Friday morning to go tomosque? What if you want to take
off early Friday evening, tomake your Shabbos? Dinner? What
if you need to take off forDiwali? To go home to your
parents? You know, why do youhave to take personal days and
somebody else doesn't. AD and BCare Christian. So there's so
(12:04):
many ways that this objectiveAmerican calendar is actually a
dominant group calendar. So thatwas the first one. I don't know
if you've got any questions youwant to I don't want to get only
Oh,
Kim Clark (12:15):
yeah, I'll add to your example that, you know,
whenever I, you know, often getthe question of like, you know,
sometimes, you know, people wantto challenge me, like, where do
you find bias in communications?Like, well just look at your
company calendar. You know, it'slike, what are we operating
from? You know, this is? Let'sstart there. Right? You know, to
(12:38):
your point. Okay, let's go tothe next example you have?
Unknown (12:41):
Well, and I'll say from that, that's one of the gifts of
the anthropology side oflinguistic anthropology is one
of the four branches ofanthropology. And it really is
focusing on the relationshipbetween language and culture,
and how language is culture. Butthere's a thing where, once you
start studying what's calledcultural variability, right, or
cross compare cross culturaldata, you start to see that a
(13:03):
lot of people, there's a lot ofthings in somebody's world that
they think are normal, ornatural, or just the way how it
is, like a, like a naturalprinciple, like gravity or water
flows downhill, but they're notthey're culturally constructed,
and water is going to flowdownhill across the globe. But
your calendar is not everybody'scalendar, right? You know, and
(13:23):
so there are a lot of thingsthat feel very normal or natural
right now we're interrogating asa society in the US the idea
that gender is a binary, whichother cultures have known for a
very long time, gender is not abinary, they've gotten
terminology, you know, and thenthe Nazis burned down some
important research centers inVienna. So we got set back,
(13:43):
European and American researchgot set back a long time. So
we're finally come to coming toterms with that. Okay, so
there's masking language, andthen I'll say a second thing in
the book is, my first principleis reflect reality. So we're
actually going to reflectreality as much as possible. And
sometimes it's going to soundharsher than what people think
(14:05):
is tough stuff. But well, we canget back to that later. The
second example I have is, aclient of mine was VP of Dei, at
a rather conservative company,that in fact, they ended up
leaving because that company,kept on being obstructionist,
with the construct ofcommunications and other things.
They were trying to roll out theperson they reported to stop,
(14:26):
stop, stop blocked all the time.But at the time, this was early
in that person's tenure. Andthey said to me, hmm, I'm
getting pushed back. And thisperson has a disabled person in
their family. So they've gotlived experience. That's not
just academic experience, wherethey've learned about
disability, but they'vewitnessed things that their
sibling has been called and seenvarious struggles, etc. So
(14:49):
they're like, I'm trying to getas better and roll out better
disability terminology, and I'mgetting a lot of pushback.
People are like, it's just PC.It's just work. What can I tell
them and I'm like, Ah, I got ananswer. Let's drop some science
on them. So, in linguistics,when you study Historical
Linguistics and how languagechanges over time, one of the
(15:10):
things that you look at hispitch duration, a word becoming
more negative than it was andpeople might know the word in
English pejorative, which meansan insult, right just in itself.
So what happens is, in variouscultures, there's always going
to be stigmatized identities,identities that have our lower
status that aren't seen asstigmatized in some way. Words
(15:34):
that are neutral, originally ortechnical that are used to
describe people in those groupsstart to get used negatively,
that pick up that taste of thestigma, they get very bad
tasting, and and they end upundergoing what we call semantic
change. So a word that startedout as a descriptor becomes an
insult. Disability language isfilled to the brim with well not
(16:00):
disability language, but formerdisability language is filled
with words that are just insultsnow, that people I think, don't
recognize come from a place thatwas meant to be a descriptor of
a particular kind of person.Dumb, moron, imbecile, lame.
Spam as for spastic, even justfast tick is used as a
(16:23):
pejorative and now I'm gonna saya word that a lot of people
don't like to say, but I'm gonnasay it anyway. And that is
retarded. Right? So retarded.For my book, I looked up how
recently my mom used to teachspecial ed in New York State,
and I was pretty sure herclassroom had the word retarded
in it, EMR. educable mentallyretarded, because it was a
(16:44):
neutral or a technical term thatNew York State was using how do
we get our students intoclassrooms that are appropriate
for them? Oh, people who test inthis kind of IQ range are gonna
go to the EMR classroom. So Isaid, All right, my mom retired
in 99. When did New York Statestop using retarded because it
was already a pejorative when Iwas a kid on the schoolyard.
(17:05):
Right, it was definitelynegative, but it was still being
used as a technical word. Now,it's such a taboo word that
people will call it the R word.People will sometimes not spell
it out. And you'll see r andthen a bunch of asterisks, and
then a D. So this shows youparallel to the N word, how
stigmatize how insulting howtaboo, the word has become. New
(17:25):
York State 2022 2022, theyfinally signed legislation
saying, Alright, we have to moveaway from this term, and we're
going to move towardsintellectual disabilities. Even
the federal government is notthat long ago, I can't remember,
I'm gonna say five years, eightyears, like not that long ago.
So my answer that I gave to thisclient of mine was semantic
(17:50):
change is real. You can documentit. And it is one of the reasons
why it may feel like oh my god,there's another term for these
people. I mean, let's talk aboutin this country, how often we've
changed terminology for blackpeople, black people themselves,
right? In my lifetime, therehave been a range of terms
because, unfortunately, blackpeople in this country suffer
(18:13):
from being a stigmatized groupin all kinds of ways. And so
when a word becomes just startsto sound like an insult, you
have to replace it. Let me endwith one thing. My students
didn't really love 30 Rock theway I did, but I love 30 Rock
episode where Alec Baldwin isbriefly dating Salma Hayek,
who's a nurse, and Salma Hayekis Lebanese Mexican, but she's
(18:34):
playing a Puerto Rican woman,right. And I grew up in New York
and was mistaken for PuertoRican my whole New York Life.
And now that I'm in California,everybody thinks I'm Mexican,
I'm neither. But Alec Baldwin'scharacter says to his
girlfriend, okay, so what do Icall you? And she says, whether
he can? He says, No, you can saythat, but what can I call you?
(18:55):
Right? And so this very, thesevery sensitive writers are
showing that they know that youcan use a very technical a
standard terminology, right, astandard term for people. And it
can still sound like an insultbecause of the ways that it's
being used. So that is one ofthe main reasons why we need to
have inclusive communicationsbecause we have to reflect the
(19:19):
reality of semantic change andstigma.
Kim Clark (19:24):
Would you mind kind of walking us through the
process of what you know aboutthe changing semantics around
the term woke? You know, it wasjust it wasn't it was just a
past tense of Wake, right? Itwas a net neutral term, you
know, just like your example.And then the black community
(19:45):
decades ago, started utilizingit and saying, You got to stay
woke, you got to stay work,which is alert, keep yourself
safe. Watch what's going onaround you. And then now it has
been co opted as a pejorative.So it's gone some route and in
other words in from othermarginalized groups like queer,
you know, has has been taken andthen retaken. And so, you know,
(20:09):
so kind of help us understandthis, this current context of
woke, anti woke, because if youjust look at the term woke, and
if you say anti woke, or I don'twant to work for a woke company,
you're basically saying you'rechoosing to be asleep, you're,
you're choosing to be unaware,uneducated, whatever it may be,
(20:31):
even though, you know, it seemsto be a statute kind of term and
an ideological alignment kind ofterm. But if you can you help us
understanding that term, andwhat will it take to take it
back?
Unknown (20:49):
Of course, you ask a linguist with a lot of
Historical Linguistics training.And I used to run the the
world's biggest nonprofitsstudying language and gender. So
I'm like, Oh, these editedvolumes. I'm like, in the 90s,
we were talking about this,where the language of feminism
was taken over by corporations,or by taken over by right wing
people like this is a trajectorythat is documented and is
(21:13):
common. I'm thinking of I wish Icould remember the term but when
I was young, there was aVirginia Slims ad, where it was
like taking the language offeminism to say, and you go
smoke, you know, like, there,there are these things that have
happened again, and again,again, and again. So the pattern
I'm sorry that I don't have alot of great examples for this.
But the pattern is again andagain, where there's an
(21:35):
appropriation of a term that'sbeing used in one sense, and
then it becomes twisted inanother sense. This is the
reverse of what you brought upwith queer, which is done by the
ingroup. And the term that weuse for that in linguistics is
reclamation, where there's aterm that's become a pejorative,
and then it becomes reclaimed bypeople who first use it in group
(21:56):
to I think defang it, right.Like if I say queer, it doesn't
have that flavor of Oh, my God,I'm about to get beaten up by
this dude on the corner yellingqueer at me, right. So there are
all of these ways that there arethese different terms that deich
is another one that's beingreclaimed. There are a bunch of
them that are being reclaimed.And that's in group work. That
(22:19):
usually isn't like languageengineering, but it's just
people doing a thing becausethey want to, because this is
how human beings joke and usehumor to make scary things less
scary. This is not that this isoften I would say, so liberate,
researched, people who are likespin doctors are paid to take
ideas and transform them. Sothey become agitating, angry
(22:43):
making talking points happen,and then they diffuse out to the
population. So I would say oneof them is sort of grassroots
and bottom up that in groupreclamation, and the other one
is very much, um, purposeful,for I want to say nefarious. But
I mean, it really is for thevarious reasons that people want
(23:04):
an angry, uneducated, fearfulpopulace where people don't
trust each other. So that's onething to separate out. So I
talked about X ray vision beforefor me, X ray vision is my
version of when I'm givingworkshops, saying woke to
people, right? So woke and X rayvision are the same thing.
(23:24):
There's a thing that in yourformer state, you couldn't see,
because your eyes were closed inyour unconscious, or because
things were obscured to youbecause of the fog of culture,
or you haven't been trained tosee through things. And I'm
like, let me give you asuperpower. Wilk is like, hey,
you've been asleep, wake up. Imean, the entirety of the movie
Get Out is about this, right?And they call it the sunken
(23:46):
place. So what I've seen is, andpeople on Black Twitter do a
great job of deconstructingthese things. It shows up now to
mean, I would say sort of asynonym when it's being used in
a way that's designed to agitateand denigrate, woke is used to
mean something like, whatpolitically correct used to mean
(24:08):
it's sort of like the new PC,which dismisses things and says,
it's to toe the line, it's tovirtue signal, it's to perform
that you care. It's um, itdoesn't really have a basis in
reality, it's only becausethere's a thing that you feel
you have to do because of rudesocial pressure. And so you're
going to do that thing. And sofor example, a thing that
(24:30):
happens is people will talkabout woke casting. I've
collected some examples of this.And so people will say, the
like, they're nice things on theinternet. Well, there'll be
like, political versus regular,and so everything that's like
white male straight isconsidered regular. And then
everything that isn't white malestraight is considered
political. And it's the samething with woke. What does it
(24:52):
mean are woke hiring practices?So someone on a What was I on
the other day someone put acomment on something? I get so
many interactions with peoplewho, through the internet or
through workshops, I forget whothis woman was. But it was a
black woman who said that at herbusiness school, one of her
professors had said, aboutdiversifying your pipeline when
(25:13):
recruiting, they said, Why areyou going to fish in the same
pond? That's so limited, thenyou're gonna, you know, if
everybody's going for the samepond, you're gonna have to go
lower and lower, like we'regoing lower in our food chain,
you know, stuff that used to betrash fish is now regular
restaurant fish, right? But ifyou expand what you're fishing
(25:34):
for, then you can get the bestfish from all the different
pawns, right? So that's a veryreasonable and logical way to
look at things. So that's thekind of argumentation that
people can be used to say, Well,what about this, I think the
thing you can say to people is,for good faith people, so I
think I've decided with my bookis that I don't have the energy
(25:58):
to try to convince people thatinclusive language has value. So
if I'm going to interact withyou, you have to already be at
the starting point. inclusivelanguage has value. It's not, I
don't care, I'm not going towaste my breath, time, emotional
labor, intellectual labor, andpeople who are coming in,
genuinely not caring, oraggressive, or very resistant.
(26:22):
I'm like, go educate yourself,like Best of luck. Best of luck.
But for other people who arecoming in, and really haven't
had the education that helpsthem see the world with the
clarity that you see, or I see,because we've had these years,
really rigorously examining howthe world works, seeing
patterns, seeing patterns, andthen and then fixing them, or
(26:45):
seeing how to address them.Somebody who comes in who just
is like, well, this feels workto me, I don't get it, then you
can work with that person andsay, Well, what about this
doesn't feel real, because forme, I'm trying to reflect
reality. And then you can have adiscussion that moves people to
a place where I'll say one otherthing. In a lot of my workshops,
(27:08):
I've developed vocabulary todescribe bias that is granular
and behavior based. It doesn'tuse identity as a reference. And
it's not high level label. It'svery specific. Woke is the kind
of thing that used to be a niceshorthand for an in group. Oh,
be woke might not have noticedthis thing, right? Now, it's a
(27:30):
label that gets people to kneejerk, dismiss something. But if
you can get people out of thehigh level label, and describing
in granular ways in a nonaccusatory way, help me
understand what this feel like,what this feels unreal to you.
Right? What in this feels like aperformance and not like a good
faith effort to improvesomething? That's, I think, a
(27:52):
way to shift people. But PS likethis has been going on forever.
I I wish I wish so badly. Forsome cranky person writing about
complaining that people areseeing you instead of Thao these
days. Right? I keep on lookinglike there's so many complaints
about using vai instead ofurushi. Right? So many
(28:16):
complaints. I'm like, we did it.We did it. We moved away for
like we started using plural youfor a single person hundreds of
years ago. And guess what?You're not complaining? Because
it happened a long time ago. ButI'm sure there are
contemporaneous people who arelike, yeah, people these days
are so influenced by the Frenchand their vous, you know, like,
(28:37):
I don't want to sound French, Iwant to sound English. You know,
I'm sure I'm desperate forsomebody be going through
archives for the time period andfind those complaints because
these kinds of complaints areongoing. People are resistant to
change. And they often thinkthat change isn't for the
reasons that are addressingproblems. They often think that
(28:58):
it's made up, and you got towork through a lot of people's
resistance with science.
Kim Clark (29:05):
Thank you. Thank you for that. Right here. I noticed
and it was really building upmomentum. You probably hate me
right now. But the conversationwe recorded was so good. We just
kept going and going. So we'regonna split it in the sake of
your time protecting your time.We're gonna split this
(29:27):
conversation into two differentepisodes. So keep a lookout and
find the other half. And theother part of this conversation
with this guest I know you'regonna love it.
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