Lessons - The Power of Language | Valerie Fridland - “Like, Literally, Dude” Author

In this lessons episode, explore how everyday language choices reveal identity and shape human connection. Discover how speech patterns build trust and social bonds, understand why certain language features become stigmatized across gender and class, and uncover how cultural power dynamics influence the evolution of language over time. When we look at language and like our language choices, forget bias, but just our personal language choices. What does that say about our identity and our personality and our social relationships? I've an enormous amount and I think that's the thing that people tend not to realize. You know, we see language in two ways either good language or bad language and if you speak good language or a good person, if you speak bad language or something wrong with you. But in reality, language is about social identity just as much as it's about communication. So think about things like, hi, how you doing? That we say five million times a day. They're really about making connection, right? There's nothing informational in that other than, hey, I like you. I just want to check on you and let's have some connection here. Let's build a relationship. So it's relationship building. So a lot of times language is about talking in such a way that it invites connection, camaraderie, solidarity and closeness or it tells someone the way that you're approaching them. So you know, we were talking before we went on about how you can change your speech over time that you become more informal and more casual and that you've heard podcasters do that sort of over a couple of years. Well, the idea with more casual informal speech is it's inviting. When you go home and you used an overly formal way of approaching your family, they're going to look at you like, what the hell is going on with you? Because who are you? You know, because it's weird. It's not, it doesn't speak to your relationship. So when you are in a conversation that is someone you just met, for example, and you sort of get that sense that you like them, that you're making a connection, do you stay stiff and formal in your speech or do you switch and start using maybe more contractions like going to want to have to? Do you start saying, you know, I always switch. I always switch. Instead of will, do you say things like walking instead of walking? Those are very subtle cues that we give each other about the relationship. So if you've ever been in a conversation where someone does not shift, it's very off-putting. In fact, you probably walk away with a bad impression about them. And that's the same thing as using things like discourse markers. Well, oh, so like, you know, those are about connection. And actually, if you look at research on them, we find that when people take personality tests, more conscientious speakers tend to use more discourse markers. So it's actually the linguistic version of kindness when you think about discourse markers. So our dislike of them is really more about who has tended to use them historically more. So women tend to use more discourse markers. And it's probably a lot with women's speeches related to the position and the role that they've had compared to men for centuries. And women's voices have always been sort of vilified and told to be silent for, you know, since Aristotle. I think Aristotle had a saying that said, silence gives grace to a woman. So, you know, it sort of tells you what he thought about women's voices in the public sphere. And then, you know, we used to put them in scolds, bridles in the middle ages if they talked too much and said things that we thought was blasphemy, which was mainly saying, you know, he sucks. We should get rid of this guy are, you know, talking around the gossip circles and the water well that you had these feelings about, maybe those in governance or people that were doing things you didn't like. Well, that was dangerous, especially when women were saying it because women talked a lot of other women and they talked to their husbands and then it could spread like wildfire. It was kind of the internet, you know, the gossip circles were the internet of the middle ages. And so they actually would prosecute women for sins of the tongue and put them in things called scolds, bridles, which was like a metal handable lecture contraption that held their tongue down so that they couldn't speak. So here's this history. And so we have always been skeptical of women's voices. So that leads us to believe a women talk more than men, which they don't. Most research doesn't show that to be true. Women have less to say. It's unimportant. It's evacuous. It's empty headed. So that then gets assigned to the features they tend to use at a higher rate. So things like like our vocal fry or using a lot of intensifiers like vary or so are pretty or really those tend to be used at a higher rate women's speech. And the reason for that is that women actually lead in language change and have through time. So almost everything that you say today as a man was something that was started with a woman centuries ago. So it's very interesting that women are very powerful progenitors of change. Can I ask something? So if historically women's voices were suppressed, how was it so that even though they were suppressed, the items in their speech were actually setting like the precedent for how men speak in the future. In the next couple years or the next the next the next the you know the next 10 years men will sort of adopt some of these speaking patterns. How did that how did that happen? Well, I mean of course the big answers women are just cooler. So of course everybody goes after what they say. But the real answer and we are cool but the real answer is what is what is a role of a woman historically? So they are often the homemakers. They raise the children. They are talking to their husbands when they get home. So we have this really interesting thing called intimate diversification which is a big fancy word to say that unlike other subcultures that tend to be segregated. So if you look in a lot of cities you'll find segregated ethnic enclaves so that you have these different sort of backgrounds and different language choices perhaps. But they tend to be relegated to very distinct enclaves. A lot of times because of historical power differences and socioeconomic differences but whatever the reasons they're kept separate. So there's not as much borrowing across ethnic groups for features except of course now there's a huge amount of borrowing of African-American features from like black Twitter and hip hop into white male speech. So that's a totally different thing but women raise the children. So children tend to adopt initially at least until they go undergo vernacular reorganization in school. They adopt the features of guess who? They're moms. They're moms. So you know unless that changes drastically and of course it has changed somewhat it's still the case that that happened. So what we find is women are usually a generation ahead of men in picking up a speech feature. Now this is not all features. This is when you ask that question about what is our language say about us. It says a lot so much it's hard to get to it all. We could talk for hours but essentially in the majority of speech features that have become standard over time gone from being sort of less standard or just not notice to being standard it is women that have led in those changes. They lead by usually at least one generation because when they have children those children inherit their speech. So boys and girls inherit the system of the mother first and foremost and then they go to school and they start reorganizing their speech we call it vernacular reorganization to be more like their peers and then they pick up new forms and fashions in speech and that is what we dislike as adults right this difference in our speech and the children's speech because it says something like this is youth culture and this is adult culture it makes us feel old and we tend to label what they do as sort of novel and undesirable but in fact a lot of it does end up staying around and becoming the norms of the next generation but it's women more than men that in the teen years push language forward so then we have this relief frog where okay women were a generation ahead they had children the kids inherited their generation they go to school or their speech they go to school with the same system but then girls forge ahead another generation if a change is going is going to continue the girls will push it forward and then they give it to their children so you have this kind of leap frog pattern that men stay a generation behind until that change has moved to completion meaning that it's sort of what everybody says and it's so so widespread that there's no more leap frogging and that's only find that men catch up and that's when a new norm gets established over time and so a great example historically would be because sometimes it's easier if you have an example when you say you know he does instead of he doth that was actually a change led by women so we find in letters of course we don't have recordings back from back then but in the early modern period which was about 1500 to 1700 we find letters written by women and we also tend to find letters written by less educated people as well that sort of also gives us the sense that these weren't really standard features in fact it was a northern feature a northern British feature and it was finally adopted into London speech which is when it became the standard but we find does starting to appear instead of doth first in women's and less educated speakers letters and then about you know another generation skips forward and we start to see it in men's speech so that's sort of what incrementally pushes change forward now sometimes of course a feature gets very gendered so little boys go to school and then they hear girls say it and it takes on this very feminine tone they get a very gendered association with that it's sort of like totally as an intensifier yeah and so they retreat and that's where you find that changes tend not to progress or they become very gendered changes over time where only women do them to a high degree and men don't and we find the opposite is true as well sometimes features become gendered towards men and women don't do it as much so you know what we and what would cause that what would cause the totally to to be a more gendered feature well a lot of times it's the different types of a track of sociocultural attractiveness that features carry so what makes a boy popular in school you know you you were a boy right you were just sports yeah like like sports having friends you know being kind of tough in macho right sort of yeah yeah basically yeah that kind of thing and does that is not the same kind of thing that happens for women want to grow I mean they can play sports but is sort of masculine bravado very no traditionally no no it's really not femininity and more totally 180 right yeah so think about the types of features that boys tend to use you know like man and bro and dude are good example of that that it's sort of is a masculine solidarity tough kind of guy or just the appropriation of hip-hop language you know that type of thing saying things like generally women as young girls get vilified for their speech much more than boys do so if a girl comes home and says I ain't doing that that have parents that have an expectation about what that girl should sound like she's going to get ridiculed for it much more than a boy would because for a boy we kind of have this expectation of rough tough kind of behavior and so features that embody that kind of roughness that toughness that masculine kind of quality those are the types that boys tend to pick up which is why they tend to be very attracted to non-standard features because we have these stereotypes about what those speakers are like even though they're completely cultural artifacts like the idea that young black men are dangerous and rebellious and non-conformist well that's that our interpretation of a speech feature that has nothing to do with the reality of why a young black man uses it right because of a young black man might use a speech feature like thing or ain'ts or ain't or acts because he's he's trying for solidarity with a group of other speakers who have faced the same sort of social cultural prejudice as he has and and he has to have that that's part of what bonds them is having a shared language and it's it's actually acts is an older feature than ask and that's what ask came from which is so another thing that's why so you're saying like people know I just want to understand so that means that one group of individuals have completely adopted a language I'm going to just very very simplify this so I understand it one group of individuals have have adopted certain things in their language because of a certain social cultural norm and then another group has misinterpreted that social cultural norm and then adopted things because of that misinterpretation and then that's been brought so that's really what's happening exactly what happens that's exactly what happens and the reason that ethnic features tend to be so popular among young men so if you go to high school I have a teenage son and so I'm and he plays a lot of sports so I'm around a lot of boys a lot of times and sometimes it makes me laugh the way they talk because I want to say do you realize what you're doing you know but they would totally ignore me and my son would never invite me to another game so not going to do it but what what they don't understand is the reason those features are attracted attractive to them is because they're completely misinterpreting why they're used in the first place they are used as sort of symbolic so solidarity symbols for the groups that use them in the same way that we use certain features like like or vocal fry to like claim to other aspects of our identity and those tend to be very predominantly kind of white and middle class features and actually if you look at I'm an I use which we should talk about at one point because they'll blow your mind if you look at the distribution of use of those features man use much more than women do and upper class speakers tend to use more field pauses than lower class speakers so they sort of it's funny how these different features take on these associations that are very subtle we don't realize it but they send messages to us about who those people are because of the very very detailed distribution of those features in speech that we can't articulate unless we're a linguist but influence us nonetheless so when we see higher rates of certain things like contractions or palitalization which is when you say things like wacha did ja that's called palitalization because it simply two sounds coming together because of how they're articulated in the mouth that palitalize meaning the tongue moves more towards the palate we find higher rates of that speech feature everybody does them but we find higher rates in among non standard English speakers probably because it is used as a language of communication of intimacy of connection so when we shift to more informal features among our family members it's because we're showing them that we're connected and we identify with them so in communities that tend to have that as a very very important facet of self protection against a larger dominant culture that tends to despise them that's a way to show it is in your language is connection so but the problem is a lot of times young men misinterpret those sort of signs of solidarity as also representing what those people represent to them from cultural stereotype which is sort of dangerous and edgy and cool and then to get that in their own persona they adopt those features so that's sort of how that cycle works it's pretty fascinating thanks for tuning in if you found this valuable don't forget to hit that subscribe button so you never miss an episode and if you want to dive deeper into this conversation check out the links in the description to watch the full episode see you in the next one