Linguistic Profiling

So it's not a tremendous revelation to me that people sound different. I've always been interested in the way people speak, and I listen very carefully to the sound of their speech, so I pick up on subtle differences that seem indicitive of a person's race. Does that make me racist? Of course not. I do my very best to treat everyone I speak to with equal measures of respect, regardless of how they sound. So the bigger issue is how people react to what they hear coming out of another person's mouth. And that, I think, comes from social problems that go far beyond just language.

Also, everything in this assignment focuses less on what people say than how they say it. Accents are everywhere in popular media, particularly TV and movies, and can easily pin a stereotype to a race. Comedians, as seen in the 20/20 video, use accents to tell jokes about racial differences. Even dialogue in novels can be written to indicate the accents of the speakers. Very rarely are these mediums utilized to fight stereotypical assumptions about accents and the people behind them. Combine that with the rampant racism that still abounds in the world, and you can get very depressed.

The video with the cat demonstrates the importance of your reactions to someone's speech patterns, and shows how you can improve in a simple and amusing way. I kind of wish I had time to search out and watch the rest of that 20/20 report, because I think the portion we watched only glossed over the issue without really diving into it. But did anyone else notice the subtle profiling that 20/20 employed? A story about racial discrimination was reported as "20/20 downtown." The shots and the music were all very urban, assuming that the issue of race happens only in the city. I don't think the story needed to be focused on a specific area, because this kind of thing happens everywhere. But I suppose that's profiling for you!

And this video doesn't completely relate, but it's a fun poke at language barriers. Plus Big Train is brilliant.