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 Sun Jul 13, 2008 1:38 am Racial identity and speech |
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No
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Amy
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ESL teacher, translator, and a native speaker of American English |
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Yankee
I'm a Communicator ;-)
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| Sun Jul 13, 2008 10:07 am Racial identity and speech |
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OK |
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Molly
I'm a Communicator ;-)
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| Sun Jul 13, 2008 19:30 pm Racial identity and speech |
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| Molly wrote: | | Speaking about English, can one detect racial identity from speech? |
時々 |
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MrPedantic
I'm here quite often ;-)
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| Sun Jul 13, 2008 19:44 pm Racial identity and speech |
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Germanic? |
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Molly
I'm a Communicator ;-)
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| Sun Jul 13, 2008 19:54 pm Racial identity and speech |
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My accent gives me away every time.
MrP |
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MrPedantic
I'm here quite often ;-)
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| Sun Jul 13, 2008 20:29 pm Racial identity and speech |
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Hi,
| Quote: | | Speaking about English, can one detect racial identity from speech? |
| Quote: | No
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Amy |
That needs serious amplification.
Alan
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English as a Second Language
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Alan
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| Mon Jul 14, 2008 0:45 am Racial identity and speech |
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| Alan wrote: | That needs serious amplification.
Alan |
Or contesting. See Jamie's info:
| Quote: | | First, you should know that in the US it's relatively rare to meet a black person who doesn't have an African American accent, so that even if they're speaking standard English, they will exhibit the phonological features of AAVE. If they don't, you start to wonder about the circumstances of their upbringing -- where they grew up, who raised them, who their friends were, what kind of school they went to, etc. Most black Americans who don't know how to speak AAVE nonetheless have the accent. |
And some landlords might agree with Amy:
| Quote: | IN April 2001, A Californian named James Johnson began to suspect that the owners of an apartment he wanted to rent in the San Francisco Bay Area were ignoring his phone calls because he was African-American. Johnson hadn't met the landlords in person or told them about his race. But he had spoken to them by telephone, and he assumed that they could identify his race from the way he spoke. So he sued, alleging racial discrimination.
In Johnson v. Jensen, which will be heard in upcoming months in the U.S. District Court for Northern California, the defendants will likely argue that they had no idea Johnson was black. Having only heard Johnson's voice, they couldn't have discriminated against him on the basis of his race. Race, after all, is something one sees, not hears. |
http://web.bham.ac.uk/forensic/news/02/profile.html
And John Baugh might disagree with her.
| Quote: | | Or is it? John Baugh, an African-American linguist at Stanford University, is on Johnson's side. In Johnson v. Jensen, he will provide expert testimony to support the claim that people can often identify a speaker's race from speech alone. In recent years, Baugh has emerged as one of the leading experts on the intersection of race and language, largely as a result of his research into this sort of “linguistic profiling,” a term he coined. |
Same link.
And then again, John McWhorter might agree with Amy:
| Quote: | | John McWhorter, an African-American linguist at the University of California at Berkeley and the author of Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America, argues that linguistic profling is a phenomenon largely dreamed up by civil rights crusaders desperate for fresh battlefelds. |
Same link. |
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Molly
I'm a Communicator ;-)
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| Mon Jul 14, 2008 2:06 am Racial identity and speech |
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More on Baugh:
| Quote: | | when he was 38 and looking for a place to live in an affluent suburban section of Palo Alto, California. Using his professional voice, he phoned landlords and consistently received appointments. But when the landlords met him in person, he says, things quickly changed. “That's when I was told the apartment was no longer available,” he recalls, “or there had been some mistake.” He decided to conduct an experiment, making a large number of phone calls to landlords in the Bay Area, varying the calls among his three dialects. As he predicted, when he spoke in Standard English he set up far more appointments in predominantly white areas than when he spoke in his other dialects. |
| Quote: | | BUT DOES LINGUISTIC PROFILING REALLY need a scientifc defense? The novelty of Baugh's involvement has created a stir of excitement around Johnson's case, but in truth courts have long acknowledged that race can be identifed by speech—at least in a variety of criminal cases. |
http://web.bham.ac.uk/forensic/news/02/profile.html
So maybe race can be detected from speech. |
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Molly
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| Mon Jul 14, 2008 2:12 am Racial identity and speech |
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And this is the big question, IMO:
If racial identifcation by voice has been acknowledged in murder and drug cases, why hasn't it played a more conspicuous role in housing discrimination cases? |
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Molly
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| Mon Jul 14, 2008 2:24 am Racial identity and speech |
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Hi Molly
Do you think you would be identified as being black and a woman by an apartment rental agent or landlord in the US -- based only on your speech and voice?
If you don't think your voice would be readily identifiable as female, would you nevertheless be identified as a Negro by a landlord in the US -- based only on your speech?
Why or why not? (Please be truthful.) 
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Amy
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ESL teacher, translator, and a native speaker of American English |
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Yankee
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| Mon Jul 14, 2008 9:38 am Racial identity and speech |
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| Quote: | | Do you think you would be identified as being black and a woman by an apartment rental agent or landlord in the US -- based only on your speech and voice? |
Unless the landlord was familiar with Nigerian accents, I probably wouldn't be identified as black, no. I'd probably be identified as foreign though. As for as a woman, I hope so - I have a delicate feminine voice.
Would you say that basing racial identity on speech is overtly racist, Amy? |
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Molly
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| Tue Jul 15, 2008 0:15 am Racial identity and speech |
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| Molly wrote: | | I have a delicate feminine voice. |
Would you go as far as "dulcet"?
MrP |
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MrPedantic
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| Tue Jul 15, 2008 0:38 am Racial identity and speech |
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| MrPedantic wrote: | | Molly wrote: | | I have a delicate feminine voice. |
Would you go as far as "dulcet"?
MrP |
Would you go as far as "on-topic"? |
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Molly
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| Tue Jul 15, 2008 0:42 am Racial identity and speech |
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| Molly wrote: | | Would you go as far as "on-topic"? |
Not on a first date.
MrP |
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MrPedantic
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| Discussing semantic prosody/ies | Find document about British culture |
