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How Much Does It Cost You in Wages if You “Sound Black?”
- uncoder0 14y ago[2008]
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- gamegoblin 14y agoI have long suspected this to be the case. I have found the most successful black people in my sphere are those who can easily code-switch (this is the linguistics term for switching between language varieties). I would conjecture that there is a lot of stigma associated with AAVE (African American Vernacular English) due to rappers and gangs and so on due to media portrayal, so even a rather intelligent person who communicated in AAVE rather than Standard American English would be grouped with the others. Being from the South, I would be interested to see the same study performed on how much it costs one if they sound "redneck".
- blackhole 14y agoThe article mentions "It turns out you don’t want to sound southern, either. Although pretty imprecisely estimated, it is almost as bad for your wages to sound southern as it is to sound black, even controlling for whether you live in the south."
- gamegoblin 14y agoSounding southern though is (at least for me, living in Arkansas) very different from sounding "redneck". There are many southerners who speak with a rather sophisticated gentility, then there are those who speak with a quaint but kind country accent (many farmers). Or just those southerners who use southern words, such as "y'all" and "coke" (as a catch-all term for soda). The redneck accent I speak of his found in rural places, not just in the south. Often condescendingly referred to as "trailer trash" or "white trash". But I suppose that the distinction is pretty arbitrary and not very well defined.
- tokenadult 14y agoSounding southern though is (at least for me, living in Arkansas) very different from sounding "redneck". The problem of many speakers of southern dialects of English in much of the United States is that speakers of broadcast varieties of General American English tend to lump all "southern accents" in a category that includes the redneck accents and the plantation-owner-descendant accents without further distinction. And that is why, as the article reports, there is an employment opportunity disadvantage (on average, other things being equal) to sounding like any kind of southerner. (I have been to all fifty states, having traveled to many states as a Chinese-English interpreter on contract for International Visitors Program of the United States Department of State. I can remember one case of a very upper-crust Mississipian, who was then living in Alabama, having an English accent that to my Midwestern ear was quite nonstandard, even though I was aware that in the south it would be taken to be the accent of an educated person from prosperous family.)
- gamegoblin 14y agoAh, I see what you mean. I don't often travel around the US nor do I talk about southern accents to many other non-southern Americans (as I do not have a southern accent, I speak with a more accentless midwestern style), so I am unaware of such a perception. I find many southern accents to be rather endearing, but what is known here as a redneck accent is rather hard on my ears.
- azakai 14y ago> Being from the South, I would be interested to see the same study performed on how much it costs one if they sound "redneck". The article did examine "sounding south" as well, with results similar to "sounding black".
- gamegoblin 14y agoI mainly meant sounding "redneck" as in "rural/uneducated" rather than a standard southern accent. I am from a large city in the South, so there is a heavy distinction between "southern" accents and "redneck" accents. Even here in the city, there is a stigma against "redneck" accents (but not southern accents).
- Xcelerate 14y ago> 84 percent of white speakers were correctly identified as white, and 77 percent of black speakers were correctly identified as black. Why is this? For people who are born in America, I don't understand why some would sound different than others. How can you possibly tell race just by listening to someone's voice, unless there are anatomical differences?
- chewxy 14y agoEbonics : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ebonics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ebonics Yes, you can make a pretty good guess because of intonations, glottal stops, timing, and etc. They're generally tied with the communities (for example, I'm Asian, and though I have spoken English my entire life, people can still tell by the slight off-ness of my accent)
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- moultano 14y agoAmerican culture isn't uniform. There are many dialects that correspond to cultural and historical boundaries.
- rachelbythebay 14y agoIt's not just one country in terms of language. There are lots of little variances here and there which provide certain signals. For instance, the big freeway is just "101" around here. However, in Southern California, the same route is frequently called "the 101". They tend to use "the" in front of the numbers for whatever reason. There are many of these things which can give you some insight on someone's background. Is it soda? Or pop? Or "coke" as a generic term? Do you use "hella" or "wicked" as a modifier, as in "hella cool" or "wicked fast"? There's the whole "ya'll" thing, and don't forget "all ya'll". Are you "fixin'" to do something? How about "ain't" and "busted"? This is just word choice. There are all sorts of different ways to pronounce the same words, too, and those also give you some idea of where someone might be from.
- readme 14y agoA lot of Ebonics is slang. Is this really about sounding black, or is it just about sounding unprofessional? What if I went to a job interview and said "dude" and "bro" every other word (lets assume I'm not interviewing at a startup)? Infotainment distorting reality to fit its presentation.
- gamegoblin 14y agoYou are precisely pointing out the idea of the article. African American Vernacular English (often referred to as Ebonics) is just another dialect of English that is studied by linguists just as any other. Much of it is influenced by slang and pop culture. The conclusion one might draw from your comment and the research is that to most Standard American English speakers, AAVE sounds unprofessional. I suppose I don't see how there is any distortion going on.
- tirrellp 14y agoYou got it backward. Slang and pop culture are influenced by AAVE.
- gamegoblin 14y agoI don't see why you are implying it to be a one way connection (and I certainly was not). It is a back-and-forth relationship. Often some rap song becomes wildly popular, and it makes use of a novel word combination, or even invents a new word, which then quickly finds its way into AAVE. Alternatively, many regional words or phrases in AAVE get used by a rapper who gives the word or phrase a wider audience, which then propagates throughout the larger community. This is a bit of an oversimplification (one could do a linguistics PhD on this topic alone) , but, to conclude, I believe it goes both ways.
- tirrellp 14y agoI'm implying that its more often, something that is already a part of AAVE and becomes popularized in a song. This is, generally speaking, the linguistic direction that new language takes, from the vernaculars into the core.
- ck2 14y agoI often try to guess what country I am talking to when I call technical support but it dawned on me that they seemed insulted when I ask if they are in India. I am only genuinely curious but they seem to think I am looking down on that fact. The way support in India use American names and try to fake Texan or Australian accents sometimes makes me think they do not have much cultural pride (when they should). If a company is clearly outsourcing they should not try to hide it.
- tsotha 14y ago>The way support in India use American names and try to fake Texan or Australian accents sometimes makes me think they do not have much cultural pride (when they should). It doesn't have anything to do with pride. They make more money if they sound local to their customers.
- ck2 14y agoYikes so I might be costing them their job or demerits or something when I try to call them out on it. Didn't mean to do that.
- tsotha 14y agoWho cares? If you don't want to pay an economic penalty speak standard English.
- orangethirty 14y agoDefine standard English.
- tsotha 14y agoThe kind of English you hear from newscasters. No slang, correct grammar, and full enunciation.
- Snoptic 14y agoWhich newscasters? They don't all sound the same to me. And where can I buy that book of "correct" grammar?
- tsotha 14y agoVery few professional newscasters use their normal speech patterns on the air. They deliberately train out regional dialects. As for grammar, everybody who's been to high school in the US has had a grammar book that teaches correct (not "correct") grammar. There really is a right way and a wrong way.
- Dylan16807 14y agoYes. There are definitely choices in word use but grammar is straightforward.
- InclinedPlane 14y agoJust not the black newscasters, mind.
- Dylan16807 14y ago
- stcredzero 14y agoTo steal an idea from and in the spirit of pg's "What You Can't Say" essay: http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html We might look at smug, entitled "aristos" in a period French Revolution film, or look at slave owners in a pre-Civil War period piece and think ourselves better. We might look at those characters treating the urban poor like dirt or see a smug and shortsighted slave owner talking about the music of black slaves as if it were a primitive sign of their inferiority -- and shake our heads and feel smart knowing what we know as 21st century persons. But in the spirit of "What You Can't Say" let me say that there is just as much shortsighted abusive smarminess, smug superiority, and shallow judgment of people by their superficial features in our day as in those times past. And yes, this includes the West Coast, the Bay Area, and no small part of the startup scene. Remember that the historical persons such that characters mentioned above were based on thought of themselves as cultured, enlightened, and sensitive, much as many of today's knowledge workers do. Remember also that many of them were utterly blind to their own shallow judgements and earnestly thought of themselves as winners in a meritocracy, as many persons do today. Now note that only a minority of such individuals were actually as enlightened as they thought they were. And lastly, there are those among you who have or will overcome the blindness of your own subculture and time, but remember that only very rarely does this come without some form of shock, surprise, or pain. EDIT: Another instance where we can relate some media to the subject -- the powerful executives portrayed in Mad Men equated sounding like a top-tier university white male with "sounding professional." They equated looking like one of them with "looking professional." Just as much of that goes on today as did back then, it's just that the styles have changed.
- ChuckMcM 14y agoIts an interesting analysis, the general principle isn't whether you 'sound black' or not, its whether your sound 'correct socio-economic class' or not. Similar research was done in England comparing the wages and job prospects of people with accents from working class towns and neighborhoods versus people with accents from upper class towns and neighborhoods. (and they were all white, no racial biases) finding essentially the same result, if you talked like an upper class person you were treated better. On a personal level I grew up with 'air force' kids since my Dad was in the Air Force and we moved from base to base, and we all spoke alike (in terms of accent) pretty much regardless of race. One year when my Dad was stationed at Andrews AFB, one of my friends, who was black, was taunted by other blacks in our public school in Maryland because he 'sounded white' which I found really confusing. It was hard on him and I really didn't know what to make of it. That said, later in life I found that generally teasing on accents was common. So it was clearly something which caused others to respond.