HOW YOU SAY IT

How we speak shapes our lives in powerful ways, argues a psychologist immersed in research on the subject.

In her persuasive first book, University of Chicago psychology professor Kinzler maintains that the way we speak, whether in a “foreign” accent, a “nonstandard” version of our own language, or a “high-status” one, affects both how we perceive the world and how we are perceived by others. Making judicious use of her own research as well as that of others, the author shows the deep roots of our reactions to language and its variations. Kinzler’s research is particularly fascinating: Many of her experiments were conducted with children less than 1 year old—sometimes just a couple months—and proved that even at this age, children are able to differentiate among accents and prefer those of their primary caregivers to any others. Perhaps more surprisingly, babies and children recognize language as one of the key defining aspects used in discriminating between “us” and “them”—even more essential than race. Kindergartners, for example, think that “someone who was white and spoke English was more likely to grow up to be black than grow up to speak French.” After comprehensively educating readers about the vital role that our speech plays in how we are viewed, Kinzler goes on to argue, using several legal cases as well as more formal research as evidence, that discrimination based on accent or regional speech is just as real as discrimination based on, say, race or national origin. In fact, it may be more insidious because it's often not consciously recognized by the individuals doing the discriminating. Writing informally and concisely, Kinzler aims to raise our awareness of this unnoticed prejudice so that we can put an end to it.

An articulate examination of an underrecognized aspect of human communication.