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Lessons - The Power of Language | Valerie Fridland - “Like, Literally, Dude” Author · Success Story with Scott Clary

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