"linguistic profiling"

After watching the video clip in class about housing discrimination based on the "color of your voice", I started to think more about this. When I hear a voice on TV or the radio without being able to see the person speaking, I suppose I do form an opinion of the speaker's race. I think it's only natural that people of different ethnicities have different ways of speaking. But what is wrong is when people then act on those inferences. How can someone refuse an apartment to another person just because he/she thinks the other's skin color is different? To me, that is the same as not accepting someone for a job position because he/she is gay. There is just no humane basis for it. Unfortunately, this "linguistic profiling" does occur in the U.S. Fortunately, there are organizations that work to stop it. Let's hope that people can learn to stop discriminating based on accents or other aspects of voice, because really, does that tell you anything about a person's character, talents, or other attributes? I thought not.

Standard English?

Since I grew up speaking "Standard English" in my home and in school, I don't have any experience with learning another dialect out of necessity or in order to further my education. I can't imagine how difficult it would be to learn when to use each type of English, which settings are appropriate and which are not. It is so unfortunate that in order for many African-Americans in this country, this education of Standard English is necessary to "succeed". Why do you have to talk a certain way to get a good-paying job when your home dialect can get the same points across, just in a different way? How does Standard English make you sound any more intelligent than Black English? Tell me that one, I'd sure like to know. I know people won't change their mind anytime soon, but I'd like to challenge anyone who reads this to think about how you judge people the next time you hear an African-American speaking Ebonics. What is your immediate reaction? Why do you think you had that reaction? It's something to consider.

language change over time

To get into the Christmas spirit, now that it actually is the correct month of December, I went to the Strawberry Banke Museum in Portsmouth for their Candlelight Stroll. In each of the old houses we heard stories from volunteers dressed up as people from the 18th century about their holiday traditions and family stories. It was interesting to hear how they spoke two hundred years ago in this area. I did not pick up on any specific differences that made it difficult to understand, but the speech was a little bit more formal and precise than our speech today. Maybe it was because the actors had rehearsed their material, but they did not use discourse markers nearly as much as we do today. Also, children spoke only when prompted by the adults present. When did that change? (Not that I'm complaining!)