Shibboleth now this is time for audience participation you all say it after me
Shibboleth not bad but if these were Old Testament types and you were all
Ephraimites you would have said Sybil if now try that
Sybil if you say it like that the gileadites are gonna slaughter you
see you just lost a major battle to the gileadites
and you're trying to get out of Gilly odd and back to your homeland but to do
that you have to get back past the sentries that are waiting at the
crossing of the River Jordan and if those sentries find out you're
Ephraimites they will smite you so how are they going to know you guess that
Shibboleth they're making everybody say a password and by the way if you were
wondering Shibboleth either means a stream or an ear of corn
anyway they're making everybody say password and you are gonna struggle with
that password you Ephraimites because you do not have the sound in your
language yeah so it's likely that the very last word that you and some 42,000
other Ephraimites are ever gonna say on this green earth is Sybil if either that
or Oh
for that story from the book of Judges is likely the very first recorded use of
linguistic profiling that is using elements of language jubileus the sort
people
now the gileadites may or may not have been the first people on earth to use
shibboleths but they certainly weren't the last in fact we still use
shibboleths today humans are tribal by nature we have a variety of ways of
doing this sorting of people into us and them and language is just one of them
some of the other ways we do it or by the way we dress by where we live where
we went to school by which sports teams we root for and of course knowing that
the mascot is not a golden retriever come on Chesapeake Bay Retriever
so yes there are many ways that humans are developed to sort people into groups
in groups and out groups and that it seems to be part of what makes us human
it has its problems but language is ways we do this and so that's where I'm gonna
focus for example people from here will tell me that they can tell something
about people who call that city just to our northeast Baltimore versus Ballmer
versus Baltimore now the first group they tell me is likely African American
second group likely Caucasian and a third group well they're outsiders like
me people who aren't from around here now where I'm from in western
Pennsylvania we use the second person plural pronoun as a way to sort people
into the locals and burners you now you as kind of a vexed pronoun I don't know
if you've realized it but it can mean various things
so whereas French has to and rule and Spanish has to and bow so throws
we've only got you and does you mean you or did you mean you can't get kind of
confusing sometimes so we've developed a variety of ways of getting around that
kind of regionally in a big part of the country they say you guys parts of the
south say you all other parts of the south run it together to y'all and then
in New York New Jersey area some people say use but where I'm from it's Yoon's
yeah Younes is a cross between a conflation of you and one's right
we even sometimes say Yoon's guys
you ones and you guys don't ask me where it comes from because like a lot of
language that it's not really logical it's not based in logic it's just what
we say and I could probably see some of you all for saying y'all and you can
tease me for saying us and it's all just fun funny games right no harm done right
not necessarily so we all know that it is not good to discriminate on the basis
of race gender skin color religious affiliations sexual orientation and
several other categories its taboo in our society but language difference in
language usage is one of those areas that still fair game in terms of
discrimination and in fact we often use language as a stand-in for some of these
other categories there's a socio linguist named John BA who's conducted
some fascinating if of rather disturbing studies of linguistic profiling of
African Americans and Hispanics he's been able to show that discrimination on
the basis of language can lead to profiling that excludes people in areas
of landing housing employment things like that the way this usually works is
that people in the power in those domains will make snap judgments based
on what they hear in terms of accents now what he's done in order to study
this is that he calls those powerful people up and he takes notes he takes
collects data on how they react when he makes enquiries using different accents
so here he is talking to I believe it's a rental agent in Detroit Michigan yes
my name is Michael Davis I was calling to see if you might have any houses for
rent that might be available so that's an African American accent he
was doing there and here he is doing more or less the same call using a
Hispanic accent hello this is one Ramirez I'm come on about the apartment
you have advertised in the paper yes so what he's found through his studies is
that it's often the person who sounds white who gets the appointment so yes
linguistic profiling and shibboleths are alive and well today in our society and
they can have real negative consequences for our communities in case you were
thinking that this is all linguistic profiling is all about accents and
pronunciation it's not we also profile people based on their age and their
gender you know like oh my god when you make the ends of phrases and sentences
and like questions even though they're not up talk sometime in the late 1980s
valley girl speaks started to crawl out of the san fernando valley and creep
across the country and pretty soon young people everywhere were doing this upward
inflection on the ends of their phrases and sentences by the mid-1990s it was it
was pretty widespread even you know men and women all ethnicities lots of people
were doing this upward intonation lots of you probably do it too so how many in
the audience raise your hand if you're a baby boomer good good so you were the
folks it's like me you're probably most bothered by this up talk is it true yeah
yes baby boomers in the Silent Generation we are still likely the only
people in the country who haven't fully embraced up talk for most other
generations it's just normal right so baby boomers talking about my generation
yeah we can get a little bit cranky about it sometimes and we've even been
known to profile sort of people by assuming that if they use this kind of
language this kind of up talk that they're unconfident unprofessional
maybe hyper feminine but the truth is there's nothing natural or preordained
about a downward inflection at the ends of sentences and phrases that's just a
convention and it happens to be a convention that for now at least Marc's
youthfulness but who knows maybe in about 20 years if you don't use up talk
you may sound as stilted as FDR that the only thing we have to fear is fear
itself
so in case you were thinking that shibboleths and linguistic profiling are
all about accents regions things like that you know we also profile people
based on grammar and grammar profiling is something that's highly affiliated
and associated with the Academy again it's true likely lots of you were told
some time growing up that it's wrong to use double negatives double negatives or
things like that won't do you no good or he ain't got none somewhere someone an
English teacher somebody probably told you you can't use double negatives it's
illogical because two negatives cancel each other out right well if that's the
case then how has it been at a lot of other languages around the world
double negatives are common that's just how you make a negative phrase like in
French you know Napa in Spanish el no tiene nada both of those sentences have
two negative particles nuke by and French and no nada in Spanish and they
both by the way mean he doesn't have any work he done he ain't got none but it's
perfectly acceptable right now here's one that gets a lot of people who care
about the rules fighting with each other is it between you and I or between you
and me I'm not going to bore you with my explanation as grabber Gatos
of prepositions and object pronouns and why it should be worried at what it is I
just want to say to those of you who are certain that you know what is the right
thing when was the last time you heard somebody get this wrong they said either
between you or I or between you and me they got it wrong but it meant something
for the meaning you couldn't understand them never right
as the Ephraimites would say about that fact who really gives us it so who then
decides what's correct how where do we get all these conventions where they
come from well in most cases it's the powerful people in society who decide
what the conventions are for the rest of us truth but sometimes often actually
it's the people with the power in a particular situation who decide what's
who decides what's okay to say and what's not for example if I walk into a
biker bar dressed like this and I'm sitting with a guy who's all tats and
chains and he says seen a really nice-looking Harley the other day when I
put on my grammar Gatos roll and I say I believe you mean you saw a really
nice-looking Harley the other day now how much longer do you think I'm gonna
be welcome at that bar see the point is context matters and what's considered
correct depends on what bar you're sitting at so then does anything go can
we say anything at all well clearly no because if we said absolutely nothing
followed no conventions whatsoever we wouldn't communicate at all right we
wouldn't know what each other we're saying and off actually there are often
times when it's important for safety and welfare and things like that to be clear
and unambiguous and how you speak or write obviously if you're writing
technical or legal documentation or if you're involved in high-level diplomacy
I mean after all you don't want to make a mistake like JFK did in Berlin and end
up telling the whole world that you're a jelly doughnut
so then what do we do how should we handle this how do we handle this issue
of correctness and appropriateness in our speech I would say if you're in a
formal speaking of writing situation when we're powerful people can make
judgments about you you might want to try to approximate the standard
approximate the kinds of language they're expecting of you non stigmatized
language but if you feel a little bit sassy and you're able to do this you can
code-switch start out with what they're expecting those powerful people and then
switch it up and use a vernacular that you're more comfortable with that kind
of calling the language game tells the person in power in an in effect I see
what you're doing I can do it but I'm also going to tell you who I am but when
you're the one who has the relative power in the situation it wouldn't do
you any harm at all to pay attention first and foremost to meaning what does
the other person actually trying to say
try not to judge people on surface aspects of their press self presentation
or their language don't turn someone out because they have
an accent don't judge someone is inferior because they use some kind of
non-standard words like he ain't got none and check yourself the next time
you're feeling like you want to criticize someone's tweet just because
they misspelled something or said the wrong there
in effect don't be a language gatekeeper it would behoove us all I think to try
to be to try to eliminate shibboleths and linguistic profiling from the way we
deal and speak with other people and instead let's try to use language in
ways that are most welcoming ways that bring in people to our schools and our
our communities and our offices and I believe that after all is something that
we can all give a sit about
and now it's my great pleasure to introduce to you the supremely awesome
Jackie Thomas do any of you like Will Ferrell movies of course you do because
you all look like sensible adults one of my favorite lines from the cinematic
classic kicking and screaming is I was born a baby a blank slate believing I
was in control of my own destiny and where we all know what babies are we
may not realize how much audacity a baby really has babies come into this world
kicking and screaming and demanding the attention and adoration of everyone
within earshot I and you were born babies with the spark of independence
but then something oh yeah but then no you know what we're going back I was
born a baby
everyone in earshot tiny cute with no awareness of limitations absorbing
messages of you can achieve anything you and
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