Documentary filmmaker David Thorpe grew up deep in the heart of Bible Belt Texas. As a child, he was taught that homosexuality was a sin, so it took until college for him to come out as gay. This new sexual identity shocked his friends and family. But, they also noticed another change.
After coming out, David spoke differently. His s’s were sharper and his vowels were longer. There was a lilt to his sentences. He had, in his own view, begun to “sound gay.” But, why? After all, coming out didn’t physically alter his vocal cords.
Yet, the change happened just as it did for many other gay men. That’s because the way we speak isn’t always down to biology. In fact, our vocal inflections are more than just sounds, they’re part of our identity.
The key message here is: The way we speak is shaped by subtle social forces.
Humans naturally divide society into different social groups. We categorize each other by nationality, race, religion, sex, even by which sports team we support. Some of these qualities have huge social significance while others are more trivial. One category which is extremely important, but often overlooked, is something called linguistic groupings. That is, our different styles of speaking.
The way we speak has a serious influence on our social lives. Of course, we tend to socialize with people who share the same language. But, it goes deeper. We also favor others with the same accent, inflection, or tone in their speech. And, when we join a social group, we often alter our way of talking to fit in.
Throughout the 1980s, sociolinguist Penelope Eckert studied this phenomenon. She found that teenagers changed their pronunciation according to their social group. At one high school, she identified two social categories: jocks and burnouts. While each group came from the same background they nonetheless had different ways of speaking. Jocks would pronounce the meal we have at midday as lunch while burnouts would say it more like launch.
These divisions appear across time as well. In the 1990s, American teens adopted upspeak, the typical Valley girl style in which every statement sounds like a question. Today, young people are more likely to have vocal fry, a low-pitched, gravely tone. In each case, older generations tend to look down on these speech patterns as annoying or unprofessional. But this habit just reflects people’s unconscious bias towards their own social groups.
How You Say It (2020) examines the role that speech plays in structuring society. Through research and intelligent analysis, it shows how our accents, word choices, and other linguistic quirks become part of our identity and change how we see others.
Who we are as social actors and beings, where we fit in socially, and where we do not, depends on our language.
Ich bin begeistert. Ich liebe Bücher aber durch zwei kleine Kinder komme ich einfach nicht zum Lesen. Und ja, viele Bücher haben viel bla bla und die Quintessenz ist eigentlich ein Bruchteil.
Genau dafür ist Blinkist total genial! Es wird auf das Wesentliche reduziert, die Blinks sind gut verständlich, gut zusammengefasst und auch hörbar! Das ist super. 80 Euro für ein ganzes Jahr klingt viel, aber dafür unbegrenzt Zugriff auf 3000 Bücher. Und dieses Wissen und die Zeitersparnis ist unbezahlbar.
Extrem empfehlenswert. Statt sinnlos im Facebook zu scrollen höre ich jetzt täglich zwischen 3-4 "Bücher". Bei manchen wird schnelle klar, dass der Kauf unnötig ist, da schon das wichtigste zusammen gefasst wurde..bei anderen macht es Lust doch das Buch selbständig zu lesen. Wirklich toll
Einer der besten, bequemsten und sinnvollsten Apps die auf ein Handy gehören. Jeden morgen 15-20 Minuten für die eigene Weiterbildung/Entwicklung oder Wissen.
Viele tolle Bücher, auf deren Kernaussagen reduziert- präzise und ansprechend zusammengefasst. Endlich habe ich das Gefühl, Zeit für Bücher zu finden, für die ich sonst keine Zeit habe.
Hol dir mit Blinkist die besten Erkenntnisse aus mehr als 7.000 Sachbüchern und Podcasts. In 15 Minuten lesen oder anhören!
Jetzt kostenlos testen
Blink 3 von 12 - Eine kurze Geschichte der Menschheit
von Yuval Noah Harari
