Linguistics in Pursuit of Justice 9781107153455, 110715345X

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Linguistics in Pursuit of Justice

As a Black child growing up in inner-city neighborhoods in Philadelphia and Los Angeles, John Baugh witnessed racial discrimination at a young age and began to notice correlations between language and race. While attending college he worked at a laundromat serving African Americans who were often subjected to mistreatment by the police. His observations piqued his curiosity about the ways that linguistic diversity might be related to the burgeoning civil rights movement for racial equality in America. Baugh pursued these ideas while traveling internationally only to discover alternative forms of linguistic discrimination in Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia, the Caribbean, and South America. He coined the phrase “linguistic profiling” based on experimental studies of housing discrimination, and he expanded upon those findings to promote equity in education, employment, medicine, and the law. This book is the culmination of these studies, devoted to the advancement of equality and justice globally. john baugh is Margaret Bush Wilson Professor in Arts and Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis. He is best known for advancing studies of linguistic profiling and various forms of linguistic discrimination that were supported variously by the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the U.S. Department of State.

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Linguistics in Pursuit of Justice John Baugh Washington University in St. Louis

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University Printing House, Cambridge CB2 8BS, United Kingdom One Liberty Plaza, 20th Floor, New York, NY 10006, USA 477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, VIC 3207, Australia 314–321, 3rd Floor, Plot 3, Splendor Forum, Jasola District Centre, New Delhi – 110025, India 79 Anson Road, #06–04/06, Singapore 079906 Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge. It furthers the University’s mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of education, learning, and research at the highest international levels of excellence. www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781107153455 DOI: 10.1017/9781316597750 © John Baugh 2018 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2018 Printed in the United Kingdom by Clays, St Ives plc A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library. ISBN 978-1-107-15345-5 Hardback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

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Linguistics in Pursuit of Justice

As a Black child growing up in inner-city neighborhoods in Philadelphia and Los Angeles, John Baugh witnessed racial discrimination at a young age and began to notice correlations between language and race. While attending college he worked at a laundromat serving African Americans who were often subjected to mistreatment by the police. His observations piqued his curiosity about the ways that linguistic diversity might be related to the burgeoning civil rights movement for racial equality in America. Baugh pursued these ideas while traveling internationally only to discover alternative forms of linguistic discrimination in Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia, the Caribbean, and South America. He coined the phrase “linguistic profiling” based on experimental studies of housing discrimination, and he expanded upon those findings to promote equity in education, employment, medicine, and the law. This book is the culmination of these studies, devoted to the advancement of equality and justice globally. john baugh is Margaret Bush Wilson Professor in Arts and Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis. He is best known for advancing studies of linguistic profiling and various forms of linguistic discrimination that were supported variously by the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the U.S. Department of State.

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Linguistics in Pursuit of Justice John Baugh Washington University in St. Louis

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University Printing House, Cambridge CB2 8BS, United Kingdom One Liberty Plaza, 20th Floor, New York, NY 10006, USA 477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, VIC 3207, Australia 314–321, 3rd Floor, Plot 3, Splendor Forum, Jasola District Centre, New Delhi – 110025, India 79 Anson Road, #06–04/06, Singapore 079906 Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge. It furthers the University’s mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of education, learning, and research at the highest international levels of excellence. www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781107153455 DOI: 10.1017/9781316597750 © John Baugh 2018 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2018 Printed in the United Kingdom by Clays, St Ives plc A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library. ISBN 978-1-107-15345-5 Hardback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

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Linguistics in Pursuit of Justice

As a Black child growing up in inner-city neighborhoods in Philadelphia and Los Angeles, John Baugh witnessed racial discrimination at a young age and began to notice correlations between language and race. While attending college he worked at a laundromat serving African Americans who were often subjected to mistreatment by the police. His observations piqued his curiosity about the ways that linguistic diversity might be related to the burgeoning civil rights movement for racial equality in America. Baugh pursued these ideas while traveling internationally only to discover alternative forms of linguistic discrimination in Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia, the Caribbean, and South America. He coined the phrase “linguistic profiling” based on experimental studies of housing discrimination, and he expanded upon those findings to promote equity in education, employment, medicine, and the law. This book is the culmination of these studies, devoted to the advancement of equality and justice globally. john baugh is Margaret Bush Wilson Professor in Arts and Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis. He is best known for advancing studies of linguistic profiling and various forms of linguistic discrimination that were supported variously by the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the U.S. Department of State.

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Linguistics in Pursuit of Justice John Baugh Washington University in St. Louis

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University Printing House, Cambridge CB2 8BS, United Kingdom One Liberty Plaza, 20th Floor, New York, NY 10006, USA 477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, VIC 3207, Australia 314–321, 3rd Floor, Plot 3, Splendor Forum, Jasola District Centre, New Delhi – 110025, India 79 Anson Road, #06–04/06, Singapore 079906 Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge. It furthers the University’s mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of education, learning, and research at the highest international levels of excellence. www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781107153455 DOI: 10.1017/9781316597750 © John Baugh 2018 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2018 Printed in the United Kingdom by Clays, St Ives plc A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library. ISBN 978-1-107-15345-5 Hardback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

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For Chenoa, John, and Ariél

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Contents

List of Figures List of Tables Preface 1 Introduction 2 Linguistics, Life, and Death

page x xi xiii 1 21

2.1 The Birth of Forensic Linguistics 2.2 A Tale of Two Murders 2.3 Case Commonalities

21 26 41

3 Linguistics, Injustice, and Inequality

44

3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6

Speech Act Theory Youthful Linguistic Indiscretion Nefarious Linguistic Intent Audience Design Educational Inequality Linguistic Human Rights

4 Some Linguistic and Legal Consequences of Slavery in the United States 4.1 Changing Terms of Reference 4.2 Discourse Analysis of the Dred Scott Ruling 4.3 Refining Linguistic Labels to Distinguish Diversity among Black People 4.4 Voluntary Black Immigration to the United States

5 Linguistic Profiling 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 5.6 5.7

Inception Biblical Precursor Technological Ramification Foundational Research Contemporary Considerations Future Perspectives Conclusion

45 46 46 47 51 53

58 59 60 62 64

65 65 66 66 68 71 78 80

vii

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Contents

viii

6 Earwitness Testimony and Unbiased Formulation of Auditory Lineups 6.1 (Un)reliable Voice Identification 6.2 Illustrative Results 6.3 Implications for the Creation and Utilization of Auditory Lineups

7 Dialect Identification and Discrimination in the United States 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 7.5 7.6

Wealth Disparities in the United States Housing Discrimination without Visual Cues: Experiment 1 Ethnic Identification: Experiment 2 Dialect Perceptions of “Hello”: Experiment 3 Harmonic-to-noise Ratio: Experiment 4 Conclusion

8 Formulating Discrimination: Dimensions of a Historical Hardship Index 8.1 Heritage Matters 8.2 The Historical Hardship Index: Some Alternative Dimensions of Discrimination in the United States 8.3 The Anguish of Confirming Accurate Local Calibration in Diverse Communities 8.4 Interpreting Your Preliminary Score 8.5 Global Adaptation: Reformulating Historical Hardship Indexes beyond the United States

9 Linguistic Harassment 9.1 9.2 9.3 9.4 9.5 9.6 9.7 9.8 9.9 9.10 9.11 9.12

Formulating Linguistic Harassment Some Essential Operational Definitions Conceptual Integration Contextual Considerations An Illustrative Case: Coach Mike Lonergan, Formerly of George Washington University Diagnostic Speech Act Theory Conversation Analysis and Discourse Analysis Appraisal Audience Design Assessment Linguistic Defiance: The Special Case of Insubordination Pertinence to Politically Correct Language Usage Some Additional Legal Considerations Summation

10 Linguistic Contributions to the Advancement of Justice 10.1 10.2 10.3 10.4 10.5

Orientation Foundational Contributions Methodological Grounding Some Additional Linguistic Contributions to the Advancement of Justice Summary

82 84 87 95

97 97 100 107 109 114 118

120 123 127 131 132 132

134 134 135 139 139 141 143 144 144 146 147 148 149

151 151 152 156 173 182

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Contents

11 Shall We Overcome? 11.1 11.2 11.3 11.4 11.5 11.6 11.7

Foundation Pursuing Just Justice Overcoming Injustice Obtaining Justice Achieving Justice Sustaining Justice A Cautionary Coda

References Index

ix

183 183 184 185 186 190 198 199

201 212

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Figures

2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 4.1 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 7.1 7.2 7.3 8.1 9.1 9.2 10.1 10.2

Spectrogram of the word “I” (/ay/) page 31 Spectrogram of the words “I ain’” (/aỹen/) 32 Spectrogram of “I know I committed” 32 Spectrogram of “I know I ain’ committed” 33 Diversity among people of African descent 63 Graphic illustration of evaluations of Speaker #1 89 Graphic illustration of evaluations of Speaker #2 91 Graphic illustration of evaluations of Speaker #3 92 Graphic illustration of evaluations of Speaker #4 94 Comparison of White population and householder data to percentage positive SAE appointments 105 Comparison of African American population and householder data to percentage positive AAVE appointments 105 Comparison of Hispanic population and householder data to percentage positive ChE appointments 106 Historical Hardship Index Self-Test 128 An integrated model of different types of linguistic harassment 138 Bell’s model of audience design 145 Diverse levels of human communicative-to-linguistic competence 158 Diverse situational speech events in African American communities 168

x

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Tables

4.1 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 7.1

7.2 7.3 7.4 7.5 7.6 7.7 7.8 7.9 7.10 7.11 7.12 7.13 7.14 7.15 9.1 9.2

Diversity among prominent Black political figures page 62 Values associated with evaluations of Speaker #1 89 Values associated with evaluations of Speaker #2 91 Values associated with evaluations of Speaker #3 92 Values associated with evaluations of Speaker #4 94 Confirmed appointments to view apartments advertised for rent in different Greater San Francisco geographic areas (in percentages) 103 Population in different Greater San Francisco geographic areas by race and ethnicity (in percentages) 103 Householders in different Greater San Francisco geographic areas by race and ethnicity (in percentages) 104 Population in different Greater San Francisco in 2010: Geographic areas by race and ethnicity (in percentages) 104 Dialect and racial identification 109 General confusion matrices 112 Confusion matrix and summary statistics by dialect 112 Stimulus and response misidentifications 113 Row-adjusted confusion matrix 113 Confusion matrix and summary statistics for standard and nonstandard dialects 114 Acoustic measures differentiating dialects 115 ANOVA for F2 in /e/ 115 ANOVA for pitch peak 116 ANOVA for duration of first syllable, /he/ 117 ANOVA for harmonic-to-noise ratio (HNR) 117 Distinguishing between public and private offensive language 140 An ethnographic categorization of Lonergan’s speech 142

xi

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Preface

This book is fundamentally about fairness. It also explores some of the ways that linguistics can be employed to promote fairness. The origin of this work owes much to the vision of my mentor, William Labov, who first came to my attention when I had an opportunity to read his tremendously important and influential article, “The Logic of Nonstandard English.” That publication debunked many prevailing myths and misconceptions about the speech of US slave descendants of African origin; as a descendant of African slaves, I was inspired by the ways in which he deployed social science for the benefit of people who are greatly in need of help. All of you who read these words will have experienced a unique linguistic journey, one that is representative of your personal exposure and usage of one or more languages, as well as your impressions of how fairly you have been treated by others, and your observations of the ways that others have been treated in the communities you know well. Your linguistic journey also includes your impressions of the spectrum of injustice to justice regarding diverse populations throughout the world, through incidents that may have come to your attention. Linguists are rarely called upon to help balance the scales of justice; yet nearly every illustration of human-to-human injustice that history has witnessed or that one can imagine is likely – strongly likely – to have one or more linguistic dimensions worthy of analytic scrutiny. Indeed, linguistic behavior is such an integral part of daily life that it can easily be taken for granted – or worse, dismissed – as inconsequential when compared with many of the other criteria that inevitably intersect with conditions pertaining to the impartial treatment of people. Every reader of this book will also come to this text with some predisposed linguistic opinions, which, again, will reflect your personal experience with the languages and dialects you employ, as well as your impressions of other languages and dialects that are less familiar, if not foreign, to you individually. Linguistic loyalties abound everywhere on earth, typically reflecting allegiance to the mother tongue of each speaker. However, there are significant and noteworthy exceptions to this trend, where a combination of historical, xiii

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political, and social circumstances is such that people may develop a sense of linguistic inferiority, perhaps through no fault of their own other than mere accident of birth into less-than-ideal linguistic circumstances, where their native language or dialect is devalued, or perhaps reviled, by others who often live in close proximity. Many of the examples of linguistic injustice that are described in this book have occurred in my home country of the United States of America, which represents one of the most complex multilingual nations found anywhere in the world. The relative youth of the United States and the tremendous wealth that has been amassed in this nation have made it a magnet to immigrants since its colonial inception. The earliest introduction of European languages to the nations that now comprise North America and South America gradually displaced the hundreds of indigenous languages of the primordial peoples that thrived from coast to coast, prior to colonization and the conquest of populations incapable of defending their homes against more powerful invaders bent upon imperial expansion. These migratory trends still thrive in different parts of the world as people who speak different languages choose to leave the places where they once lived in search of new homelands and end up in places where they may be unwelcome, if not vilified. The linguistic dimensions of these changing population trends are inescapable, yet they are routinely overlooked. Often this linguistic disregard is benign, where the lack of linguistic awareness is not the result of any nefarious intent. By contrast there are far too many instances where the language or dialect spoken by new immigrants or refugees arriving in communities where they are unwelcome becomes an expedient political indicator used to accentuate their differences from the detractors who seek to rebuff them. It would be naïve to assume that linguistics or linguists can thwart these xenophobic tendencies completely; however, the absence of strategic linguistic inquiry has frequently perpetuated injustice unabated. This book recounts many instances where objective linguistic evidence, had it been present, might have helped to overcome some glaring gaps in noble attempts to alleviate injustice, in America and elsewhere. The singular contributions of this author toward that end are modest and owe their very existence to important insights by other linguists, anthropologists, sociologists, social psychologists, educators, and legal scholars – as well as serendipity. Although many of the issues that brought the connection between linguistic behavior and (in)justice to my attention as a college student living in the destitute slums of North Philadelphia are depicted in the opening chapter, they may inadvertently conceal many of the extraordinary benefits that I experienced as a child of well-educated African American parents who were understated civil rights pioneers living in the suburbs of the western San Fernando Valley, where I spent most of my developmental youth.

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Prior to 1960 my parents had always lived among fellow African Americans, primarily in their native Philadelphia where I spent my early childhood with fond memories of loving relatives who guarded my safety. In 1958 we moved to central Los Angeles into a multiracial community where many of my neighbors routinely spoke Spanish, Chinese, or Japanese in their homes. It was in 1960 that my parents were among the first African Americans to move to the predominantly White and reasonably affluent suburbs of the western San Fernando Valley; it was in that environment where I first observed occasional linguistic manifestations of racism, as some of our new neighbors would refer to me and other members of my family as “niggers.” It would be misleading to suggest that my parents ignored these insults; rather, they conveyed their disagreement through courageous acts of dignity that I was simply too young to fully comprehend at the time. Martin Luther King Jr. had already begun his quest to promote racial equality through nonviolence; without explicit reference to Dr. King, my parents would never overtly acknowledge verbal affronts, but they would always respond to these episodes by treating all of our new neighbors with considerable respect, and always with dignity. Returning, momentarily, to the influence that William Labov had on my life: a great deal of his research resulted from interviews that he conducted, primarily across the United States, including Hawaii. Nearly all of his sociolinguistic interviews began with questions pertaining to childhood games, such as, “What kinds of games did you play when you were growing up as a child?” This is a fantastic question to begin any personal interview: it is nearly universal because most children have played games of one form or another. His interviews would gradually include more personal questions, culminating with the interviewees’ experiences regarding “the danger of death.” Typically, this final question would take a form such as, “Were you ever in a situation where you thought to yourself, ‘this is it, I’m about to lose my life?’” The rationale for concluding interviews with this specific and deeply personal question is that when people describe near-death encounters, they tend to relive the event and therefore are not explicitly attending to their manner of speaking, as often occurs early in the interview process. During interviews with young men who lived in Harlem, famously depicted in “The Logic of Nonstandard English,” Labov would often ask questions regarding fights that may have occurred, and questions pertaining to fights were always asked prior to questions regarding the danger of death. Labov’s interview procedures are relevant at this juncture because I was occasionally forced to fight during my childhood and adolescence, and those conflicts had a major impact on me and my desire to promote justice during my youth. When my family lived in inner-city communities in Philadelphia and Los Angeles, the majority of the fights in which I engaged were one-on-one

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battles with adversaries for personal reasons that had nothing whatsoever to do with race. Occasional fights occurred during schoolyard games, and disputes over who was right or wrong about the ways to play a game; other fights resulted from conflicts about girls who were admired by more than one boy. My first experience with fights that occurred due to racism did not take place until we moved to the San Fernando Valley, and “nigger” was – at least to me – literally a fighting word. My classmates knew well that I would not tolerate anyone calling me a nigger, and I was sometimes injured when a group of boys thought it would be amusing to see how I would react when taunted, with the “N . . . word.” My fledgling sense of justice versus injustice began with conflicts regarding racial epithets directed toward me or members of my family; again, I would fight in response to these insults on nearly every occasion. Two noteworthy exceptions are relevant. When I joined the Cub Scouts, as the only African American member of my den, one of my den mother’s sons referred to my father as a nigger; rather than fight with him, I simply told his mother. Because she knew her son and knew me, she believed me, apologized, and punished him severely. I never had any more racial problems with that boy. A few years later when I was a member of the Boy Scouts, our troop would regularly attend large camping events with other Boy Scout troops from some of the other Western states. I was initially perplexed by the unexpected frequency with which boys from unknown troops would single me out and call me a nigger. These episodes typically happened while I was with members of my own troop, and they knew well that I would fight anyone who would insult me with the N . . . word. Eventually, after one of these episodes, which frequently resulted in injury to me or my combatants, a boy from one of the other troops told me that it was a member of my own troop who had dared others to insult me in this way. I knew the boy who had been accused of this quite well, and also knew that he thought he was clever; he was usually a spectator during the fights that ensued after the taunts that triggered them. Armed with this new information I was able to confront the accused, and I did so in front of witnesses who I knew would not defend him if they were aware of his guilt. He vehemently denied ever daring others to taunt me, but as I watched the other boys react to his denial I believed he was lying and told him so. He continued to deny his guilt; because I was slightly older than he was, and substantially bigger, I did not fear him, and it was immediately obvious that he now feared me. This highly personal reflection is relevant in the context of these remarks because it represents one of the most important moments in my life, where I had an opportunity to challenge what I considered to be unjust treatment, and my growing belief that others should be treated more fairly in the future, ideally without the threat of racial insults or other fighting words that might trigger combat.

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Beyond these personal episodes, I was blessed to be the son of well-educated parents who were advocates on my behalf; when they observed teachers who they believed were treating me unfairly, they would make appointments with the teachers and/or school administrators to inquire about their concerns and, more important to me, to demand actions that would eliminate any future prospect of mistreatment or miseducation that could be detrimental to my academic well-being. My first acknowledgment is therefore reserved for my parents, Dr. Barbara Goore Baugh and Dr. Jack Baugh, both of whom were early models of fair and equal treatment who embodied individual and collective behavior that promoted liberty and justice for all. I am the oldest of three siblings; the love, respect, and admiration shared throughout my life with my younger brother, Kevin, and my sister, Cheryl, has been an enduring hallmark of our family as we each have attempted to conduct ourselves personally and professionally in ways that resemble the exceptional models our parents displayed throughout our lives. The love and support that I have known and cherished, derived from my childhood nuclear family, are traits that I have tried to share with my children, Chenoa, John, and Ariél, to whom this book is dedicated. Readers who have known the cumulative blessings accrued from loving family members will know well that their support is often inspirational, and in this instance a further amplification of the importance of the global pursuit of justice for all humanity. The actual work that has been invested in completing this book owes a great deal to a combination of people and agencies that have devoted themselves or their resources to my efforts to enlist linguistic science for the benefit of humanity. William Labov, whose influence I have already mentioned, is most responsible for my scholarly contributions; he took an interest in my linguistic ambitions in a manner that opened intellectual doors that had previously been closed to me, including exceptional efforts to help me procure funding for graduate school from the Ford Foundation before I had achieved any professional accomplishments. Professors Ralph Fasold, Ben Crane, Murray Halfond, and Marylyn Merritt were instrumental to my professional journey, each encouraging me to reach out to William Labov as my linguistic interests began to mature. Upon admission to graduate school, I was part of an exceptional cohort of graduate students who have become superb scholars in their own right, including John Rickford and Gregory Guy, both of whom remain among my most trusted advisors, and for whom I have the greatest personal and professional respect. A great deal of my own work on linguistic discrimination and linguistic profiling would not have been possible were it not for other exceptional scholarly ventures by Dennis Preston, Rosina Lippi-Green, Lisa Green,

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H. Samy Alim, Thomas Purnell, William Idsardi, Arthur Spears, Geneva Smitherman, Ana Celia Zentella, Sonja Lanehart, Otto Santa Ana, Marcyliena Morgan, Lawrence Bobo, Katie Crowder, John Gordon Baugh VI, Django Paris, Sali Tagliamonte, Mary Bucholtz, Jeff MacSwan, Douglass Massey, and Susan Fiske, among other social scientists who have been supportive of my scholarship for many years. A wonderful group of students worked closely with me as invaluable research assistants throughout various stages of this enterprise, including Ashlyn Nelson, Renae Skarin, Chris Bischof, Charla Larrimore, Cerena Sweetland-Gil, Kate Taub, Keshave Jayaraman, Deepa Devanathan, and Marie Bissell. They all worked diligently and tirelessly on behalf of this book, identifying resources and conducting experiments that exposed unexpected linkages between race, language, and (in)justice that would have otherwise escaped my attention. My intellectual debt to them can never fully be repaid; they have been tremendously beneficial to me and the completion of this book. I am also very thankful to Helen Barton of Cambridge University Press. Helen offered advice and encouragement at an early stage in the development of this project that gave it life and a clear sense of direction, including some exceptionally insightful and helpful observations from anonymous reviewers of a book prospectus that I prepared at her request. Those reviewers were clearly well acquainted with me and my work prior to their evaluations, and they helped me to avoid potential pitfalls and encouraged me to pursue directions that appear herein that I would have neglected but for their helpful advice. I also owe special thanks to an anonymous reviewer of the penultimate draft of this book; several additional insights that were provided have greatly enhanced this work, while helping me clarify details that could have been overstated or otherwise overlooked. Others at Cambridge University Press were also quite helpful to me as I prepared the manuscript for publication, including Stephanie Taylor, Mary Catherine Bongiovi, Mathivathini Mareesan, and Linda Benson. In addition to their exacting technical expertise and assistance, they served as beneficial, and unofficial, therapists as I grappled with strategies to provide clear images, and to procure the necessary permissions to reprint images in this book that were first published elsewhere. Their assistance was invaluable, and they were always gracious, particularly at times when I was experiencing combinations of frustration and occasional duress. The editors with whom I have worked on this book and related projects include Aaron Welborn, Stephanie Biermann, and Catherine Shreve. Aaron and Stephanie helped with early stages of this project, contributing substantially to corrections of errors that had escaped my attention, or inadvertent instances where I was unaware of self-contradiction. Catherine Shreve is, without question, the person to whom I owe the greatest thanks and appreciation for her

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close and careful reading of every word of every chapter contained in this book. It has been my honor to work closely with many outstanding editors in the past, but none surpasses the combination of grace, professionalism, and good humor that Catherine shared with me throughout revisions of previous drafts as she advised and encouraged me to find ways to best express many of the complex ideas that are conveyed throughout the book. Because this book spans more than twenty years of work that has been either directly or indirectly devoted to the ways in which linguistics can promote justice, I have had the benefit and good fortune to receive grants and fellowships from different institutions and agencies to support this mission. The Ford Foundation is deserving of special recognition because it has funded a great deal of my education and research at different stages in my career, beginning with my entry into graduate school, and culminating with generous support that allowed me to study linguistic profiling related to education, employment, fair housing, and legal entanglements in the Caribbean, Brazil, South Africa, France, and the United Kingdom. Prior to that international support, the Ford Foundation provided the initial funding that allowed me to evaluate various manifestations of linguistic profiling throughout the United States. Other agencies and foundations enhanced their support, including the National Science Foundation during the aftermath of the Ebonics controversy in Oakland, California in 1996; and the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which honored me with an award as a Civil Rights Pioneer of Fair Housing. In addition, the U.S. Department of Education, the U.S. Department of State, the Eugene Lang Foundation, and the Center for Applied Linguistics have all contributed substantially to my research devoted to the advancement of justice. I would especially like to thank the Rockefeller Foundation and Pilar Palicia, director of the Rockefeller Foundation Research Center in Bellagio, Italy, where I was a fellow in residence during the spring of 2016, giving me an uninterrupted opportunity to complete the first draft of this book. By wonderful coincidence, Douglass Massey and Susan Fiske were in residence at the Rockefeller Foundation Research Center in Bellagio at the very same time that I was there, and their wealth of knowledge regarding housing discrimination, racial stereotypes, and much more proved to be timely and tremendously beneficial in ways that I could not have anticipated as I tried to complete this work. Others who were in residence as fellows, and partners of fellows, during my tenure in Bellagio offered additional insights that were extremely helpful, even though they were not social scientists; however, they clearly shared my desire to find new ways to promote justice globally. My final thanks are reserved for you, the reader. The gift of your time and willingness to consider the ideas espoused herein is of utmost importance to this venture, because without your effort and willingness to ponder matters of

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(in)justice, and how they intersect with potential linguistic resolution, this enterprise would be doomed from the outset. I have no doubt whatsoever that this book contains various mistakes, and I know well that it cannot possibly be comprehensive. All limitations contained herein are entirely my own; no one other than me shares any blame for the shortcomings that inevitably exist within this text.

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Linguistics in pursuit of justice – why? In what ways, if any, might linguistic science contribute to the advancement of justice, or, inversely, could linguistics promote the elimination of injustice? This book explores various ways in which alternative forms of linguistic experimentation and evaluation could advance human equality throughout the world. Yes, the goal is ambitious, but it is commensurate with the urgent need to enlist linguistic tools in support of unique and collective efforts to enhance the human condition worldwide. My personal and professional interest in this topic began in earnest in 1970 when I moved from Los Angeles to North Philadelphia to attend Temple University. At that time I lived in a small apartment near the university, in the same building where my grandmother owned and operated a laundromat and dry cleaning business. She taught at George Washington Carver Elementary School, near the building she had purchased with my grandfather several years previously, and they supplemented their middle-class incomes with the modest profits derived from the laundromat and apartment rentals generated from that same building. I was unfamiliar with Philadelphia or its diverse cultural enclaves. North Philly differed considerably from other parts of the city in many ways, including an extensive network of sophisticated African American gangs that fiercely guarded their “turf,” typically delineated by the primary street intersections where each gang could be found; “Twelfth and Oxford” or “Seventeenth and Venango” would not only identify a gang by name through its location, but highly visible and artistic graffiti would also alert any passersby of which gang was in control of each territory. Despite the passage of several decades since I lived there, North Philadelphia remains one of the most destitute and racially disenfranchised areas of that iconic American city. I quickly learned which gang controlled my immediate neighborhood at the intersection of “Eighteenth and Diamond,” and I soon began to navigate my way through the community being ever-mindful of local territorial boundaries as well as the need to be able to quickly identify those young men (i.e., gang members) who were my protectors, and others who might do me harm should I stray into their domain. Justice in inner-city North Philadelphia at that time 1

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Introduction

was maintained by a curious combination of fairly rigid and well-established gang legacies, members of the Nation of Islam, the local Black Panther party, and – on occasion – officers who were members of the Philadelphia Police Department.1 Although I knew very little about linguistics at that point in my life, language usage was crucial to daily survival “in the ‘hood”; one’s ability to “talk the talk,” or not, was often the means through which an individual was identified as being an “insider” or “outsider.” Strangers who did not live within the local community usually raised suspicion whenever they were present, often to purchase drugs through fleeting transactions conducted rapidly while they were seated in their cars at a curbside and others kept watch for the police, or rival drug dealers. Marijuana, cocaine, and heroin were sold with the greatest frequency; psychedelic drugs – such as LSD or mescaline – were rarely sold by the local Black drug dealers where I lived, but they were available from White students who were among my classmates at Temple University. It was against this backdrop, where I started my undergraduate studies in pursuit of a career in accounting, that I began to notice a relationship between language, racial inequality, and the quest for justice among the vast majority of my African American neighbors. I had the clear benefit of a supportive family, consisting of middle-class college-educated African Americans who were devoted to supporting my academic pursuits, while many of my neighbors did not have the benefit of family financial assistance or immediate relations who were not incarcerated. The social climate in North Philadelphia near Temple University in 1970 was somewhat turbulent, due – at least in part – to student protests against the Vietnam War at the behest of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and the White Panthers, the latter a much more radical – if not revolutionary – group when compared to those who belonged to the SDS. Then, as now, Temple University made a strong commitment to Black Studies, and many programs were available that explicitly served African American students, both as Black Studies majors or those in pursuit of other academic fields. While many of my fellow college classmates had grown up in Philadelphia, they often chose to live at home with their parents in different parts of the city, so very few of them shared my experience of living locally in the heart of North Philadelphia, despite its close proximity to the Temple University campus. Then, as now, most Philadelphians considered North Philadelphia to be among the most dangerous of all neighborhoods in the city due to the combination of 1

The operational definition of “justice” employed throughout this book includes, but also exceeds, unbiased legal proceedings. Justice, as defined herein, includes fair treatment, equal opportunities, and respect for others, especially among people whose cultural and linguistic backgrounds are diverse.

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gang activity, drug sales, and other illicit activities that were frequently engaged in to generate income (Goffman 2014). For the purpose of introducing the personal and historical context that fostered my interest in the connection between language and inequality, it is useful to know about some of the episodes that I personally observed or encountered during the time I lived in North Philly. One of the most important encounters had nothing to do with the police per se; it was an effort on the part of my uncle to ensure that I would be protected in the event that I ever had any personal encounters with the Philadelphia police. Those familiar with the history of African American journalists may already know of my uncle, Orin Evans, who was a reporter for the Philadelphia Bulletin for most of his illustrious career; he came to be known as the “dean” of Black newspapermen, a title he earned through an extraordinary career that exposed him to a broad spectrum of Philadelphians, including frequent encounters with gangsters and the police. As a result of his reporting my uncle was personally acquainted with Frank Rizzo, who was either vilified or greatly admired depending upon the personal experience and perspective of his various detractors or supporters. He held the position of Philadelphia’s chief of police for many years prior to being elected mayor of the city, and he had developed a well-deserved reputation as a “tough cop” who dealt harshly with any criminal element throughout the city. Philadelphia then, as now, remains racially segregated for the most part, and policing in different neighborhoods continues to be perceived differently depending upon the racial composition of the immediate neighborhood. My uncle knew well that my local neighborhood in North Philly was among the most dangerous and notorious of any community within the city; he also knew that police officers who were assigned to North Philly – regardless of their race – were likely to be rough with anyone they perceived to be a troublemaker or lawbreaker. As a reporter my uncle had also seen many instances of mistaken identity where miscarriages of justice were visited upon law-abiding inner-city residents, often resulting from overzealous police enforcement that frequently led to excruciating bodily harm, or death. Shortly after I arrived in Philadelphia, my uncle insisted that he and I meet. In this instance his mission concerned my physical well-being. As soon as he saw me, he said, “Johnny, it’s important that if you are ever stopped by the police that you show them this card immediately. Keep it in your wallet and be sure to take it with you wherever you go.” He then handed me a card that identified me as a financial contributor to the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP). I didn’t fully understand or appreciate the significance of his gift at the time, but I slowly came to realize that encounters between the Philadelphia police and Black men living in North Philadelphia were often confrontational, if not fatal. He wanted to help inoculate me from that possibility, and he knew that if

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I showed any officer my FOP card that I would be treated less harshly than someone who could not immediately confirm a favorable connection to the police. This book is being written more than forty years after my youthful observations of harsh police treatment of various residents living in North Philly. We now live in an era where digital media have provided several explicit video recordings of police officers who have shot and killed unarmed Black men who posed no threat to them. Many of the African American men who have served as my linguistic consultants would recount woeful encounters with police officers who hurled racist insults along with using excessive force. The legacy of mistrust between many African Americans and their local police force still exists in many communities across America. During the 2016 celebration of Martin Luther King’s birthday in Washington, DC, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) director James Comey observed, “All of us, law enforcement and non-law enforcement, carry with us an implicit bias. We react differently to a face that looks different from our own. We have to stare at that and own that.” Prior to the events honoring Dr. King, Director Comey addressed the same topic in the aftermath of the death of Michael Brown, who lived in Ferguson, Missouri, and Eric Garner, who lived in Staten Island, New York. Both men – who were unarmed – were killed in confrontations with police; in the case of Eric Garner, his death was captured on video where he was overheard pleading with arresting officers, exclaiming, “I can’t breathe.” Grand juries ultimately offered acquittals to all of the police officers who were responsible for these deaths, which only served to heighten the pervading sense of injustice that already existed within and beyond the neighborhoods where Michael Brown and Eric Garner lived. Being mindful of this mistrust, and recognizing the formidable tasks confronting law enforcement officers who are justifiably fearful of the prospect of losing their own lives in deadly confrontations with criminals, Director Comey addressed these concerns directly during a lecture at Georgetown University presented on February 12, 2015: Unfortunately, in places like Ferguson and New York City, and in some communities across the nation, there is a disconnect between police agencies and many citizens – predominantly in communities of color. Serious debates are taking place about how law enforcement personnel relate to the communities they serve, about the appropriate use of force, and about real and perceived biases, both within and outside of law enforcement. These are important debates. Every American should feel free to express an informed opinion – to protest peacefully, to convey frustration and even anger in a constructive way. That’s what makes our democracy great. Those conversations – as bumpy and uncomfortable as they can be – help us understand different perspectives, and better serve our communities.

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The problems about which Director Comey spoke in 2015 and 2016 are not new, and the police brutality that I personally observed within North Philly from 1970 to 1972 alerted me to rampant injustice that was rarely if ever mentioned in the press. The fact that the misuse of police authority was not routinely reported should not imply that it did not exist. Before depicting illustrations of some iconic confrontations between the police and Black residents in Philadelphia, it is important to tell more about life in North Philly at that time; more precisely, how was justice maintained, and by whom? It was common – far too common – to witness illicit drug sales in different parts of North Philly. Outsiders would drive through the neighborhood looking for drugs and routinely flag down dealers who were sitting on stoops or hanging out on street corners. These activities were not only illegal, but the immediate neighborhoods where drug dealers peddled their wares were less safe, and much less desirable places to live. Like many destitute urban cities suffering from inattention and a decaying infrastructure, many blocks in North Philly were dotted with abandoned homes. Some were boarded up while others were vacant and periodically occupied by addicts who used them as a place to shoot heroin. Despite the expansion of urban blight, it was also fairly common to find a home or apartment building that was reasonably well maintained. These rare gems were typically owned by longtime residents who had purchased these properties long ago, at a time when the neighborhoods were in early transition from a majority of residents who were upper-middle-class Whites to a combination of upper-middle-class and middle-class non-Whites, consisting mostly of African Americans. Although this trend from once-affluent White neighborhoods to less affluent Black neighborhoods is not unique to Philadelphia, the situation in North Philly when I lived there was such that many local residents were reluctant to call upon the police to help them resolve local conflicts, robberies, or other concerns that might routinely be handled by police officers in more affluent communities. Again, mistrust of police accounts for some of this trend, but reliance on local residents who were known to help resolve conflicts further exacerbated this trend. One such incident is particularly memorable because I was indirectly involved when a local property owner wanted drug dealers to leave her block. She also wanted a return to unfettered access to a local playground that had previously been used by her grandchildren prior to the regular arrival of drug dealers who were always in close proximity. The woman in question was a regular customer at the laundromat where I worked part-time for my grandmother, and she and I had spoken on several previous occasions, typically related to her usage of our laundromat and dry cleaning business. However, on one day she asked me to accompany her to Broad Street, Philadelphia’s main north-to-south thoroughfare, where many stores were located. I agreed to do so believing that I understood her desire and

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Introduction

concern; if I accompanied her, she was less likely to be harassed by drug dealers or anyone who might consider her to be defenseless. I also assumed that she planned to do some shopping, and that her return trip home might be safer if I accompanied her, particularly if she was carrying groceries or other purchased items. My speculation was not only presumptuous, it was wrong. She had no intention of going shopping on this occasion; rather, she wanted to find one of the men who regularly sold copies of Mohammed Speaks, because the men who did so were also local members of the Nation of Islam. When we arrived on Broad Street, it did not take long for us to locate a man selling the paper, and she told him of her travails – her grandchildren could no longer safely play at the local playground because drug dealers now occupied the area, and they did so constantly. She explained that she had been confronted by some of the dealers, and that she no longer felt safe leaving or entering her home. The man selling the paper asked her where she lived and he wanted to know how long the drug dealers had been there, as well as the locations where they could be found. Once he had the relevant information, he told her he would be speaking with other men affiliated with the Nation of Islam and that they would try to help her. The assistance she sought was not immediately forthcoming; however, a few days after she met with the man who offered her reassurance that he and others would help her, several male members of the Nation of Islam came to the neighborhood and cleared out the drug dealers. I did not witness the incident personally, but I did see the aftermath – a few blocks surrounding her home that were subsequently free of any drug sales, and children who had returned to use the local playground. During her next visit to the laundromat I told her that I had seen the children playing in the playground, and I asked her what had happened. She then informed me that nearly twenty-five men, all impeccably dressed in business suits and sporting bow ties, came to her neighborhood; moreover, she indicated that they did so in two groups. The first group, consisting of nearly fifteen men by her estimation, came directly down her block, and each one carried a baseball bat. The other ten men were divided into two smaller groups of five, and they had already positioned themselves in locations that were likely to be used as escape routes by drug dealers fleeing from the larger group. She said that as the larger group of men approached, they began yelling at the drug dealers to leave, and that they did so aggressively. Although some of the drug dealers possessed weapons, they did not use them on this occasion, because they knew that if they shot or stabbed a member of the Nation of Islam they would surely be targeted for retaliation. When the assault began, those drug dealers who began to flee found themselves trapped by other members of the Nation of Islam who had been waiting for them. She told me that the confrontation was fairly brief, lasting long enough for her avengers to

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inflict enough harm to send a clear message. While some of the dealers were able to escape without harm, a few others suffered broken bones and other injuries. As she was recounting the events, she infused the narrative with a combination of gratitude and relief, exclaiming that she had no fear of retaliation for two reasons: first, the drug dealers had no knowledge that she or others living in that neighborhood had requested help to have them removed; and second, even if they did suspect her, the dealers knew well that any form of retaliation would result in future confrontations with the men who had warned them to leave the area and not return. Those living in North Philly at that time knew well that members of the Nation of Islam were not only devout, they also did not tolerate drug usage or bad language, and they always dressed well to bolster a consistent image of respectability. It was a tenet of their faith to affirm their role as good neighbors. Another group that many local North Philadelphia residents came to rely upon for various social services was the Black Panthers. The Black Panthers were located in a storefront building on another main thoroughfare, Columbia Avenue. From that location they provided several programs that were free to local residents, including a breakfast program and a clothing exchange. It was not uncommon to see children or families sharing meals hosted by the Black Panthers; neither was it odd to see racks of clothing in front of their offices, weather permitting, with local residents examining items that they might want for themselves or other members of their family. Those of us who lived in North Philly at that time tended to value the local contributions that were sponsored by either the members of the Nation of Islam or the Black Panthers who resided in the community. They were not feared; rather, they were often considered to be among the most reliable and beneficial residents in the area. Entrepreneurs like my grandmother had no objection to their presence, because whenever they were around criminal activity subsided. Philadelphians who did not live in North Philly may have had different impressions of these groups, especially so in the case of the Black Panthers because of the national publication of their newspaper, The Black Panther, and negative portrayals of the group through various media outlets. Confrontations between members of the Black Panther Party and the police were well known and well documented across the nation from their inception in Oakland, California, in 1967. My first exposure to the beneficial work being done by the Black Panthers in North Philly occurred in 1970. Some members of the group visited our laundromat seeking clothing donations, which we were able to provide because various items that had been left previously for dry cleaning had been abandoned and had been in storage for more than two years. They explained their intention, to distribute the clothing to those in need at no cost, and because the abandoned garments were still wrapped in cellophane, they were easy to gather.

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My grandmother’s business benefited from a reduction in the clutter of clothing items that were not going to be retrieved, and the Black Panthers were able to obtain additional items for distribution at no cost to them. Despite having established a great deal of goodwill in our local neighborhood, the Black Panthers were constantly under police surveillance, and many people assumed that they harbored firearms, although no guns were ever on display at their North Philly headquarters. From time to time the police would stop at their offices and make inquiries, occasionally from the seat of a patrol car or sometimes on the sidewalk on Columbia Avenue, which always had a significant amount of pedestrian traffic due to the many stores that were located on that street. The Black Panther Party had grown exponentially in Philadelphia, expanding beyond its headquarters at 2935 Columbia Avenue to two other satellite locations in West Philadelphia and Germantown, also predominantly African American communities. My personal experience and exposure were limited to North Philly, that is, where I lived, worked, and attended Temple University; however, the growth of the Black Panthers in Philadelphia gained national attention to the point that they planned to hold a “Revolutionary People’s Constitutional Convention” across the street from our laundromat at Philadelphia’s magnificent Church of the Advocate.2 The anticipated convention was intended to accentuate a “Ten Point Program” that had been described in The Black Panther newspaper, extoling the virtues of bread, housing, education, clothing, justice, and peace for poor Black residents in America’s inner cities. However, on the Saturday preceding the opening of the conference, a Philadelphia police officer was shot and killed in a guardhouse in Fairmont Park, and his death was followed by more attacks on police in other parts of the city. The police commissioner, then Frank Rizzo, reacted to these atrocities by conducting simultaneous predawn assault raids on all three Black Panther Party offices. These raids had differential consequences in Philadelphia and beyond, because the Black Panthers had been vilified by many law enforcement agencies, particularly the FBI. J. Edgar Hoover had targeted not only the Black Panthers for subversive surveillance, but also Malcolm X and Dr. King. Perceived threats to authorities, if not the government itself, by various “Black agitators” were a source of concern and consternation among federal and local law enforcement agencies across the country. For those who either feared or felt threatened by the growing influence of the Black Panthers, Frank Rizzo’s raids were most welcome. With a single police 2

The Church of the Advocate in North Philadelphia was designed by Charles Burns during the nineteenth century at a time when Diamond Street (where it is located) was considered to be one of the most prosperous and desirable places to live in the entire city. It is a massive and impressive edifice that rivals many of the world’s premiere churches from the standpoint of its design and embellishments.

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action, he sent a vivid message that resonated strongly throughout Philadelphia; namely, his officers were the ultimate authority on the streets of that city. The message to citizens living in predominantly Black neighborhoods was even clearer: those who admired the Black Panthers witnessed their public humiliation through an armed insurrection that destroyed their Philadelphia offices at the same time that it reasserted police control of the communities where the Black Panthers had taken up residence. Detractors of the Black Panthers, in Philadelphia and other parts of the country, praised Chief Rizzo for his courage, strength, and tenacity in the face of a potentially armed group of revolutionary advocates. Few who disliked the Black Panthers, Black or White, decried their treatment or the fact that their civil rights might have been violated during these raids. Public strip searches, while ostensibly conducted in search of weapons or contraband, had a more chilling effect upon the immediate residents in the neighborhoods where once-proud Black men, the Panthers, previously held considerable sway. The dissemination of photos such as the following diminished the Black Panthers in Philadelphia, while reminding all Philadelphians that their police department was among the most forceful of any urban police department anywhere in the nation. By remarkable coincidence of timing and circumstance, these incidents occurred when I first became aware of linguistics and the highly influential studies of Black language usage by Labov (1969a, 1969b). I had not yet given much thought to the relationship between language, (in)justice, and race; however, I witnessed different forms of discrimination while living in North Philly that seemed to have unmistakable linguistic relevance. That is to say, these police raids and the ways in which they were described by the mainstream press employed a combination of vulgar and/or descriptive language, frequently with explicit – if not insulting – racial epithets or attribution. Related articles that subsequently appeared in The Black Panther surrounding these events were also vitriolic, depicting the police as “pigs” and “fascists.” The incendiary speech that was employed during and after these raids alerted me to an important linguistic fact: language matters. The preceding incidents, where a local resident sought justice without engaging the police, and the raids on the Black Panthers during the summer of 1970, exposed strong differences of opinion regarding the effectiveness or reliability of the Philadelphia police to provide protection against crime and criminals in different Black communities. Then, as now, distrust of the police in many Black neighborhoods across America prevails despite new efforts to modify policing, or to convince Black residents to be more trusting and supportive of their local police officers. The encounters that I observed as an undergraduate college student residing in North Philadelphia in the early 1970s are relevant due largely to a set of historical circumstances that are unique to that time period. The assassination of President

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Philadelphia Police Officers Conduct Strip Searches of Black Panthers

John F. Kennedy triggered a host of events that raised awareness of the dismal plight of many African Americans who remained mired in abject poverty. The simultaneous efforts of President Lyndon B. Johnson to promote a new “War on Poverty” while escalating the Vietnam War had huge consequences, particularly so in Black communities where disproportionately high numbers of young men were being drafted into military service and sent to fight in Vietnam.

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Introduction

11

Muhammed Ali’s refusal to be inducted into the army in 1966 sent an alarming message to many Americans from all backgrounds. If the premiere pugilist refused to fight for his country, what impact might that have on others who admired him? In 1971 the US Supreme Court overturned Ali’s draft evasion conviction in a unanimous 8–0 ruling, with a highly symbolic abstention from Justice Thurgood Marshall. Disagreements about the Vietnam War were also a source of consternation between President Johnson and Dr. King. The president wanted Dr. King to support his efforts and attempted to use his various legislative accomplishments promoting civil rights as levers to persuade Dr. King to support his decision to advance and escalate the Vietnam War. Readers who were alive during the Vietnam War will recall the massive student protests that were common throughout the nation at a time when Dr. King, Malcolm X, and members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) were critical of Jim Crow laws throughout the South. The horrific death of Emmett Till, who whistled at a White woman during a visit with relatives in Mississippi, as well as the murders of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwermer in that same state, also served to remind Americans and the entire world that racial discrimination and hostility in the United States was still ongoing and far from being resolved. Throughout these iconic events that captured national and global attention, seldom – if ever – were linguistic details ever mentioned, to say little of the potential role that linguistics might play in helping to resolve racial conflicts. Nevertheless, in the wake of President Kennedy’s death and with the War on Poverty, the political climate in the US Congress was such that government programs and research to enhance racial equality received significant support. Indeed, it was during this special historical period that Labov (1966) began his massive study of the social stratification of English in New York City. His analyses included extensive detailed evaluation of speech patterns throughout New York, and Black and Puerto Rican speakers were part of this massive study. Labov left Columbia University, where he obtained his PhD under the supervision of Uriel Weinreich, and joined the linguistics faculty at the University of Pennsylvania at the behest of Dell Hymes, another pioneer in sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology. Labov soon turned his research attention to Philadelphia, which has a fascinating history that includes the immigration of people from diverse backgrounds who settled in different sections of the city, always reflecting the linguistic heritage of their ancestors. While Philadelphia has always had an elite upper class, frequently tracing their origins to the Quaker settlers who gave the state of Pennsylvania its name, other immigrants came to Philadelphia to find work and to raise their families. W. E. B. Du Bois (1899) wrote about The Philadelphia Negro, a group from

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Introduction

which I am a direct descendant, and Blacks in Philadelphia were socially stratified based largely on the length of time an individual Negro living in that city had been free. Many of the affluent Quakers were leaders among the abolitionists who called for the dissolution of slavery, and their advocacy created a climate of greater opportunities for Blacks in Philadelphia. With the passage of time other groups from Germany, Italy, and Ireland came to Philadelphia, usually settling in areas where others from their heritage country were already residing. Indeed, to this very day sections of South Philadelphia preserve and perpetuate long-standing Italian traditions that have existed in that area for well over one hundred years. Many Jews settled in Northeast Philadelphia, where it was common to hear Yiddish, while the Irish moved to Kensington and Roxbury, often maintaining some of the linguistic traits spoken by their ancestors. As more Black people moved to Philadelphia in different waves, the social stratification of Black speech patterns came to span a continuum of those who had been influenced by their White neighbors (i.e., Black residents of long standing) and relative newcomers who maintained strong Southern influences in their speech. Puerto Ricans arrived in Philadelphia from both New York and the island itself, and they too typically settled in enclaves near North Philadelphia with others who either spoke Spanish exclusively or were in the early stages of learning English as a second language. Philadelphia gave the illusion of being a racially integrated city, as residents from every background would gather in the center of the city to shop at various department stores, but they would return home to neighborhoods with considerable racial, linguistic, and cultural segregation. The patterns of Philadelphia dialects are well attested by Labov and his students (Payne 1976; Dayton 1996; Labov, Ash, and Boberg 2006). When I moved from Los Angeles to Philadelphia in 1970 to attend Temple University, I was exposed to this diverse linguistic landscape. In addition, because I was a college student, I was also exposed to a wide range of linguistic and racial stereotypes, prejudices, and opinions. One of the very first linguistic differences that I observed in Philadelphia had overt racial relevance; depending upon who was speaking, some would use “you” as a plural form (i.e., among reasonably well-educated speakers), while many of the Italians from South Philadelphia would say “yous,” as in “Where are yous going?” The vast majority of Blacks who were my neighbors in North Philly would employ “y’all” in the same linguistic environment, typically without a present tense auxiliary verb, that is, “Where y’all goin’?” Again, at that point in my life I had not yet heard of linguistics, but I was making some important linguistic observations nevertheless. My linguistic awareness was further heightened when I was required to take a course in public speaking as part of my accounting major. Although

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Introduction

13

accountants are trained to evaluate spreadsheets and various expenditures, they are also called upon from time to time to present their findings, hence the need for a course in public speaking. The vast majority of my classmates had been born and raised in Philadelphia, and they were the linguistic embodiment of the full range of dialects that existed throughout the city. My childhood fascination with linguistic diversity expanded in that class. We were each allowed to select a primary topic as the basis for speeches during class presentations; based on my early observations as a North Philly resident, I chose the topic of police brutality. Long before the raid on the Black Panther offices in 1970, I routinely witnessed various police officers engage in harsh treatment of Black men in my neighborhood, and I too occasionally attracted the attention of the police. My linguistic dexterity proved to be helpful from time to time – that is, in the African American community, and during interactions with people who often devalued vernacular Black speech. Many of my neighbors understood that as a college student, I needed to “talk proper,” or, if they were being disparaging they would say that I occasionally “talked White.” My ability to shift between alternative linguistic styles proved most helpful when I was once falsely accused of theft by a store owner. I had confronted him when I noticed him overcharging less well-educated customers, claiming that his cash register was broken, which justified his need to tally the total prices of their purchases by hand. He was an unscrupulous man who had recently immigrated to the United States from West Africa, and his mistrust, if not disdain, for his customers was palpable. He called the police after I confronted him, claiming that I had tried to steal some items from his store; however, I had witnesses who knew of his false accusation, and the incident ultimately dissipated with the officers mildly admonishing me with a warning to “watch yourself and don’t be so damn uppity.” It was in this climate and context that my newfound interests in justice, language, and racial discrimination were initially incubated and became intertwined. Most of the racial confrontations that I observed took place between people of different races who came from different linguistic backgrounds. The alignment of race with language usage was ever present and was accentuated on those occasions when someone would make offhand remarks about the way that someone spoke, or claimed that those who employed vernacular Black speech patterns were not very intelligent. Since my life traversed Black and White culture daily, I knew from personal experience that many of the negative linguistic stereotypes about Black speech were false, despite televised images of Black speech that depicted stupidity. It was at this precipice of my youthful observations that I encountered some research, and that of Arthur Jensen (1969) in particular, that reinforced negative stereotypes about Black

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Introduction

people and low intelligence that I found to be both problematic and, frankly, objectionable. Day-to-day interactions with fellow African Americans revealed a range of encounters, almost always conveyed through vernacular Black speech, that included a continuum of dim-witted to absolutely brilliant remarks. I concluded that low intelligence was not attributable to the dialect itself but rather to the potential eloquence or lack thereof with which a speaker used it. Because I had grown up in a predominantly White upper-middle-class suburb in the San Fernando Valley, I also knew that many Standard English speakers were not inherently endowed with a superior intellect. Again, long before I had ever heard of linguistics my life experience showed me that “intelligence” was a highly personal matter, and that linguistic background was due fundamentally to the personal circumstances in which a child learned to speak. My fascination with the braided strands of language, race, and (in)justice was reinforced regularly, as I witnessed a combination of events that would show their relevance. Robberies and shootings were quite common in North Philly at that time, and the victims and perpetrators of crimes displayed behaviors that defied simplistic explanation. For example, many of the crimes that I witnessed were robberies or thefts; some of these crimes were intended to raise quick cash for drugs, while others were acts of desperation committed by otherwise law-abiding citizens who were trapped in poverty and who stole food or clothing for their families. Crimes of passion were also common, as arguments escalated to confrontations with weapons among people who were quite well acquainted, if not members of the same family. What relief, if any, could I provide to my neighbors in need? At that time I was searching for answers, and finding few solutions to problems that seemed intractable. My intellectual fascination and curiosity with language continued. As I pondered my future I thought I might pursue a career in advertising, where clever turns of phrase might become a marketable skill. In pursuit of that goal I studied argumentation and persuasion and took my very first courses in linguistics – dialectology and an introduction to sociolinguistics. With the clarity that comes with hindsight, I know now that these pivotal courses changed my life, exposing me to scientific evaluations of language usage that introduced me to analytic procedures that might, I believed, be used to challenge some of the prevailing stereotypes about Black speech that I had encountered throughout my life. By wonderful coincidence of circumstance, William Labov worked in close geographic proximity to Temple University, and he was invited to give a lecture on our campus. I had already read “The Logic of Nonstandard English” and found that study to be inspirational; he had already proved many of my beliefs about nonstandard speech and did so with scientific acumen. His lecture built upon his previous evaluations of Black speech and described some of the

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Introduction

15

reasons that many African American students encountered difficulties in learning to read. Moreover, he showed the intricate complexity of the ways in which the home language of many Black people differed from academic varieties of Standard American English, and I began to see how linguistics could bring rigorous scientific analysis to the issue that had thus far loomed so large in my life, namely, the relationship between racial and linguistic backgrounds. My thoughts about (in)justice were not well formulated at that time. In addition, the vast majority of research on Black speech patterns had been conducted to support efforts to improve educational outcomes for African American students, and I considered that work to be important, worthy, and incomplete. I therefore began to redouble my efforts to learn as much as I could about linguistics, and especially linguistic studies related to language usage among African American slave descendants. Since that time I have had the good fortune to meet and work with superb graduate students from around the world; as a result of their influence I began to think more broadly about the linguistic plight of less fortunate people in Puerto Rico, Mexico, South Africa, Brazil, Jamaica, France, England, and many other speech communities where those who live in poverty tend to suffer from devaluation of their linguistic behavior along with limited economic, educational, and occupational opportunities. My own life, as an African American boy-to-man, made me aware of the various forms of discrimination that impact US slave descendants, but I was much less familiar with other forms of linguistic disenfranchisement that affected many Latinxs, gays and lesbians, Whites living in rural Appalachia, and non-White people who had lived under apartheid. As I learned more about these people and other forms of linguistic discrimination, my desire to find new ways to employ linguistic science to promote equality grew. Ironically, it was another personal matter that brought these goals to fruition in unexpected ways. In 1987 it was my pleasure, indeed, my honor, to spend a year as a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences on the Stanford University campus. I had been engaged in studies pertaining to linguistic attitudes and, for the most part, determining the impact of these attitudes on educational outcomes of American students who were not native speakers of Standard American English. However, due to some special personal circumstances, I began my fellowship alone; my family had not yet joined me in Palo Alto. They were living in Los Angeles, and I initially commuted between Northern and Southern California on the weekends. We were a close-knit family and decided that their relocation to join me in the Bay Area was a priority, so I began to look for suitable rental accommodations. As previously indicated, many people who hear my voice assume that I am White; as the child of well-educated parents this should not come as a complete surprise, but linguistic stereotypes about

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Introduction

Black speech are prevalent; when speaking in professional contexts, I do my very best to maintain appropriate linguistic decorum. The same held true when I was seeking a new apartment or rental house. The events that transpired resulted in my long-standing work on linguistic profiling, because I was able to unearth evidence of racial prejudice and linguistic bias as I looked for a new place to live. Nearly every property manager with whom I spoke granted me an appointment to look at rental properties, and most of these visits took place without incident. However, on four occasions the rental agents or apartment managers, upon seeing me, claimed that there must have been some misunderstanding and that no rental unit was available. While I had no proof at that time that they were reacting to my race, I suspected that this was their actual reason for declining to show me a prospective rental unit or to allow me to complete a rental application. Thanks to the linguistic dexterity that I developed as a child while living in inner-city Los Angeles, I was able to conduct some preliminary experiments by phone to determine the extent to which a nonstandard dialect, that is, either African American vernacular English or Chicanx English, would be treated similarly or differently from my Standard American English rendition. Briefly, in many instances when I called using a nonstandard dialect to request an appointment I was denied; however, during ensuing phone calls conducted at a later time when I used Standard American English, my requests to see the exact same rental units were granted. I describe the outcome of this experience, as well as how it expanded my research on various forms of linguistic discrimination in a series of publications (Purnell, Idsardi, and Baugh 1999; Baugh 2000) and need not occupy further discussion here other than to clarify the sequence of events that led to the creation of this book, which is devoted to consideration of various ways in which linguistics can be used to promote the advancement of justice. Thus far my observations have been quite personal, explaining some of the circumstances that I witnessed during the course of my life that spawned my interest in racial discrimination, linguistic discrimination, and corresponding injustice that could be related to their intersection. Henceforth we will have occasion to consider a broader range of research and circumstances that is pertinent to this larger topic that includes and exceeds my various contributions to this subject, and we begin in the next chapter with events that gave birth to the field of forensic linguistics. “Linguistics, Life, and Death” is the title of Chapter 2, and it begins with an account of the events leading to the iconic testimony of Roger Shuy during the Cullen Davis murder trial. We shall also see that serendipity played an enormous role in the development of forensic linguistics, while affirming the potentially influential role that linguistic research can play during murder trials.

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Introduction

17

Not only does this chapter introduce the birth of forensic linguistics, it also illustrates a few instances where linguistic research made the difference between an acquittal or a conviction, that is, where linguistic evidence made the difference between the execution of a defendant or his eventual liberty. It would be misleading to suggest that this book is devoted to the field of forensic linguistics, because it is not. Legal proceedings, and the potential role that linguistic evidence might play in any given trial, are only a small part of the larger picture pertaining to justice, and it is for that reason that Chapter 3 seeks to identify the broader range of issues and circumstances in which we see a relationship between language usage and (in)justice. Again, some of these situations could pertain to legal proceedings, but others are not fundamentally related to the law; rather, they concentrate on matters of equality or inequality, especially when language usage can be shown to be a central tenet of disparities in opportunity or treatment of people from various linguistic backgrounds. While Chapter 3 concentrates on contemporary forms of linguistic injustice, Chapter 4 reflects upon the special historical circumstances that have resulted from the African slave trade. Vast fortunes were made at the expense of the liberty of countless enslaved Africans whose lives and opportunities were either lost entirely or taken from their personal control or volition. As previously mentioned, the linguistic legacy of slavery is not well understood, and the ways in which that unique legacy has played a part in the perpetuation of injustice against African slave descendants in different countries represent the main content of this chapter. Moreover, this historical foundation provides a scaffold upon which we can expose the multifaceted complexity of discrimination born of slavery, as well as the convoluted thinking – and language – that was employed to justify the ownership of Africans and their descendants. Whereas the history and relevance of the African slave trade is not applicable to all countries, Chapter 5, which explores linguistic profiling in global perspective, begins to look at other forms of linguistic discrimination that can be found almost anywhere on earth, or at least in those places where socially stratified populations coexist. Affluent and elite people throughout the world are the ones who determine which linguistic norms are valued, as well as deciding which languages, or dialects of their own language, they abhor. Typically, these linguistic preferences and dislikes do not exist within a sociopolitical vacuum, and those who are linguistically disenfranchised almost always can be identified by some demographic traits that have nothing whatsoever to do with language. However, their unique and identifiable linguistic characteristics are usually a by-product of their circumstances, and the sources of social strife that account, at least in part, for any injustice they may experience.

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18

Introduction

By looking at various forms of linguistic discrimination, we can identify and refine our understanding of some of the linguistic traits that are associated with speech produced by the elderly, speech that is associated with specific geographic areas, speech that may be stereotypically associated with sexual orientation or the gender of a speaker, as well as some of the racial and ethnic characteristics of speech that gave rise to this study in the first place. When viewed more comprehensively throughout the world, we obtain a fuller understanding of the problem; that is, many people living in diverse speech communities may become victims of linguistic prejudice, often without being aware of it. Moreover, by recognizing some of the factors that trigger negative reactions to language, we should be better equipped to find new ways to overcome their harmful consequences. One significant barrier to that success is described in Chapter 6, which is devoted to the relative reliability of ear-witness testimony. In much the same manner that law enforcement professionals have come to discover some of the limitations of eyewitness testimony, ear-witness testimony also faces important challenges that have not yet been adequately addressed by legal scholars or social scientists. Many of these problems were initially identified by Smalls (2004) when she described some of the characteristics associated with the most reliable ear-witnesses; a great deal of their reliability, or unreliability as the case may be, depends upon the relative familiarity that they have with the speaking style that is under scrutiny. People with good intentions may misjudge the identity of speech they overhear. Chapter 6 introduces some experimental findings that we have developed to promote auditory lineups as a means to help clarify the potential accuracy of voice identification when ear-witness testimony might be central to legal proceedings or other circumstances where linguistic barriers inhibit access to fair treatment. A great deal of what we have learned that is relevant to the reliability of earwitnesses grows from studies of dialect perceptions that have determined the extent to which people have accurately, or inaccurately, been able to identify the racial background of a person based on hearing short segments of his or her speech. In Chapter 7, we reintroduce some of the early research that has been performed on this topic, along with some updated findings that show many people are accurately able to identify the racial background of a speaker after hearing a single word, “hello.” Purnell et al. (1999) produced the first research that proved to be most significant in this regard, and Massey and Lundy (2001) demonstrated that these findings have social relevance when they proved that speakers from different dialect backgrounds had unequal access to housing based purely upon the sound of their voices. Because ear-witness testimony depends in large measure on perceptions of speech, Chapter 7 helps to illustrate and clarify some of the benefits and limitations of human speech perception in legal contexts as well as other circumstances where linguists can lend

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Introduction

19

assistance to those who seek to promote justice, or eliminate injustices, based on language usage. As a linguist I typically devote most of my attention to detailed analyses of speech, particularly as they pertain to authentic or perceived forms of discrimination that can be attributed to language; however, I know well that language usage does not occur in isolation from other social and demographic traits. Chapter 8 introduces some of the other ways in which people are often the object of discrimination. Simplistic studies of discrimination often attribute prejudice to a single or primary influence, but in actuality, a multiplicity of factors might account for the discriminatory profile that has impacted the life of a given individual. In this chapter a Historical Hardship Index is described that illustrates several factors that reflect different advantages and disadvantages that an individual person might experience, say, by considering the simultaneity of race, education, sex, and some other characteristics. These heuristic tools are introduced because of their immediate relevance to the pursuit of justice. Yes, our focus is primarily on linguistic dimensions of (in)justice; however, we also recognize that language represents one component of the many facets of the unequal treatment that an individual may experience. As a result, the linguistic issues and tools that are described throughout this book will be most effective when they are integrated with other empirically valid measures of factors that impede equal justice for all. These analytical tools are intended to help those attempting to find ways to reduce or eliminate the factors that prevent equal opportunities, and they are most applicable when systematic forms of linguistic discrimination may occur. The next chapter, Chapter 9, introduces a neglected topic, linguistic harassment, which occurs frequently and often haphazardly in numerous social circumstances where one person says something that lambastes another person or another group of people. Instances of linguistic harassment are most insidious when they occur on the job, and much of this discussion has been inspired and informed by the excellent work that has been completed to combat sexual harassment. The goal in this instance is to help expose this phenomenon, which is often associated with the verbal forms of bullying that are common in many walks of life across different age groups. Children are notorious for the verbal taunting they display, and often it is assumed, in many cultures, that children will outgrow this behavior as they mature. However, in many instances language usage exceeds being offensive and results in hostilities that clearly represent a form of harassment. We will see several similarities to forms of linguistic profiling, but linguistic harassment has the special property of being overt, whereas many instances of linguistic profiling occur in covert ways.

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Introduction

Chapter 10 is more uplifting; it reintroduces some of the important work that has already been completed that promotes ways in which linguistics has helped to advance justice and greater equality. Scholars from diverse fields have been engaged in this enterprise, and it will be beneficial for readers of this book to be exposed or reintroduced to some of the research, publications, and scholars who have devoted their efforts to finding ways to overcome linguistic dimensions of injustice in various parts of the world. This survey will also illustrate some of the complexities associated with efforts to eradicate injustice. For example, when apartheid ended in South Africa, the newly elected democratic government implemented a new national language policy that recognized eleven official languages; in so doing the Black politicians who had gained power had the foresight to recognize the importance of maintaining English and Afrikaans as two of these official languages – despite the fact that they were previously the only two official languages spoken predominantly by the White populations that held all of the political power before apartheid was dismantled. We will also explore some other instances of linguistic disenfranchisement in other parts of the world, as well as some of the important policy research in medicine and law that has been designed to address linguistic inequities in various speech communities. A combination of visible and invisible properties informs the linguistic circumstances of every speech community on earth, as well as the ways in which people living under different political systems strive to live their lives, spanning a continuum of circumstances from hostilities and social strife to peaceful harmonic coexistence. Regardless of the society in question, our goal is to help identify a set of research tools that can promote linguistic justice whenever possible. The final chapter is conclusive and is titled “Shall We Overcome?” It recaps many of the issues and themes that are described throughout the book, albeit with a sense of culmination that is an indirect, and occasionally direct, call to action on the part of people of goodwill who recognize the importance of liberty and justice for all.

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2

Linguistics, Life, and Death

2.1

The Birth of Forensic Linguistics

The birth of forensic linguistics happened completely by accident. Professor Roger Shuy, a well-known sociolinguist of considerable distinction, happened to be seated next to an attorney during a flight from Washington, DC, to Dallas, Texas, in 1979. The attorney was working on a case and Professor Shuy asked him what he was doing, initially assuming the man might be a minister who was preparing a sermon. The men exchanged salutations and confirmed their respective professions. Every professional linguist knows well that as soon as a stranger learns of our expertise, they routinely make some observation about language in one form or another. Some people express concern about their grammar, or unique aspects of their specific dialect or accent, while others immediately assume that every linguist is multilingual. This was not the case during the flight that Professor Shuy took to Dallas on the day in question; Professor Shuy explained that he specialized in sociolinguistics and, as such, that he evaluated tape-recorded conversations. In response the attorney began to ask questions about the nature of his work and suggested that Professor Shuy might be helpful to one of his colleagues, who was involved in an ongoing murder trial that relied heavily on extensive video and audio recordings made by the FBI. They were investigating a murder-for-hire case that accused Cullen Davis, a flamboyant Texas millionaire, of attempting to hire a hit man to kill his former wife and the judge who was overseeing the Davis divorce case. It was alleged that Mr. Davis suspected that his former wife was romantically involved with the judge, and that Davis hired one of his employees – a salesman named David McCrory – to spy on them and document any instances where they were together. However, Mr. McCrory told the FBI an entirely different story, according to Professor Shuy; he claimed that Mr. Davis had hired him to find a hit man to kill his former wife, the judge, and two witnesses who had previously testified against him. Mr. Davis spared no expense in his defense and hired a highly regarded, nationally known, flamboyant attorney called Racehorse Haynes. 21

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Linguistics, Life, and Death

It was he who hired Professor Shuy and used his expertise and testimony strategically. Prior to this case, linguists had not been called upon as expert witnesses to help either convict or defend murder suspects; however, because Mr. Davis had the resources to hire a superb defense team, Professor Shuy’s testimony proved to be crucial to Mr. Davis’s defense in the case. The Cullen Davis murder trial was particularly groundbreaking because it gave birth to forensic linguistics. It was the first time that expertise in the evaluation of recorded conversations turned out to be vital to a client’s defense. The FBI had gathered two types of recordings: video recordings and audio recordings. At first glance it appeared that Mr. Davis had asked Mr. McCrory to hire a hit man to kill his former wife and the judge with whom he believed she was romantically involved. However, Professor Shuy noticed some incongruities between the two recordings, which led him to examine both sources of evidence and then examine the ways in which they were aligned. Professor Shuy used a combination of methods, most notably discourse analyses and evaluations of topic initiation, to challenge the assertion that Cullen Davis had actually called for the killings. The prosecutors in the case had leaked some of the transcripts of the surreptitious recordings of Mr. Davis to the press, and the statements at first glance appeared to indicate that he had indeed wanted his ex-wife and the judge to be killed. The transcript of the last conversation between Mr. Davis and Mr. McCrory follows: I got Judge Eidson dead for you. Good. I’ll get the rest of them for you. You want a bunch of people dead, right? Alright, but . . . Help me too. I got to have an alibi ready for Art when the subject comes up. So give me some advance warning. mccrory: I will. I gotta go. mccrory: davis: mccrory: davis: mccrory: davis:

When recounting events pertaining to the trial, Professor Shuy noted, “Sometimes it’s good for the expert witness not to be told all the facts of the case. It was only after I testified that I learned that Mr. Davis had asked Mr. McCrory to spy on the behavior of Priscilla and the judge, which is why Mr. Davis needed to have a good reason to explain to Art why Mr. McCrory was missing work.” “Art” is Mr. McCrory’s boss, and Mr. Davis required an alibi to explain why McCrory would be away from his job, especially since Davis was asking him to spy on his former wife. However, the written transcript – while appearing to be quite damaging to Davis at first glance – was not the actual recording of the voices, and once Professor Shuy had an opportunity to listen to the conversation rather than simply read the words, he noticed some things that gave him pause. “When I listened to the tape, I noticed its odd pacing, timing,

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2.1 The Birth of Forensic Linguistics

23

and the intonation of Davis’s ‘good’ and ‘alright.’” The written transcript did not convey any of this vital information, and because Professor Shuy took note of these linguistic peculiarities he investigated further. Moreover, because there were two recordings, one audio and one video recording of the same event, Professor Shuy was ultimately able to connect the actual conversation with the physical movements of both men during it; by combining his findings he was able to demonstrate that it was quite possible that Mr. Davis did not hear many of the most damaging comments that were made by Mr. McCrory. Although Professor Shuy became curious about these linguistic oddities, it was his careful evaluation of both recordings that provided the most vital evidence in support of Mr. Davis’s defense: Even though the FBI had made a simultaneous videotape of this conversation from the back of an unmarked van across the parking lot, neither side had paid much attention to it because the sound quality of the audiotape was much clearer. The sound on the video track was weak but, when I listened to it, I found that it was adequate to use as a touchstone for the actions accompanying the speech of the much clearer audiotape. As it turned out, the video was crucial because it showed Davis getting out of the car and moving around it to the trunk where, as he said on tape, he was going to get his sunglasses. (Shuy 2008)

Professor Shuy never accused the prosecutors of intentionally trying to mislead the judge or jury; such an allegation would have been difficult to prove, if not detrimental to his client. Rather, he demonstrated that the unilateral focus on the audio recording failed to capture important details that a written transcript of the dialogue also concealed, such as various occasions where both men were speaking simultaneously. Because this was Professor Shuy’s first foray into the legal arena, he was being responsive to requests by the attorneys defending Mr. Davis, and he did not initiate many suggestions about how best to present the relevant linguistic findings. In anticipation of having the veracity of his claims challenged, Professor Shuy used the technique of transcribing the comments of both Mr. Davis and Mr. McCrory side by side; that procedure allowed him to illustrate the instances where both men were speaking simultaneously. However, that procedure did have limitations, because Mr. McCrory spoke in a normal tone of voice when Mr. Davis walked to the back of the car, whereas Mr. Davis raised his voice to ensure that Mr. McCrory could hear his comments. Again, Professor Shuy did not suggest that Mr. McCrory was attempting to entrap Mr. Davis; rather, he simply reported the facts – Mr. McCrory spoke with a normal tone of voice despite the fact that Mr. Davis was no longer in his immediate proximity. However, the content of Mr. McCrory’s remarks while Mr. Davis was out of the vehicle were among the most damaging of any presented during the trial. Their remarks, as presented by Professor Shuy, are

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illustrated next. Some additional background may be useful because this part of the transcript is derived from Professor Shuy’s analyses of “topic initiation,” that is, seeking to determine which man introduced a topic, as well as the time it was mentioned. In this instance the topic is devoted to the alibi that would be needed for Art, Mr. McCrory’s boss who would expect to see him at work during normal business hours. TOPIC: ART Davis

McCrory

I told him that, uh, to treat you like any other employee and, uh, so don’t give me too much pressure in that regard. I can’t, uh, say you’re gonna be gone a day or two every week or so. (Davis gets out of the car and walks to the trunk)

You better – – alright, –

Well look, this fuckin’ murder business – – is a tough son of a bitch. Now you got me into this

[give me,

into this goddamn deal]

[give me

right?]

a little [noti-, advanced notice,

Now I got j-]

good (inaudible word) I’ll get the rest of them dead for you. You want a bunch of people dead, right? Alright but I [uh, you know

di-, di-] Help me too,

[(inaudible word)

okay]

I got to have an alibi ready for Art when the – – when the subject comes

Okay?

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2.1 The Birth of Forensic Linguistics [up

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Alright]

(Davis comes back to the front door of the car) so give me some advance notice, – warning.

I will. I gotta go.

(McCrory gets out of the car and leaves)

There are two ways that one can read this transcript. The entire transcript can first be read as if the conversation is interactional – that is, as if the comments being made by Mr. Davis or Mr. McCrory are stated in response to remarks by the other. This interactional interpretation relies on the belief that both men were involved in the same conversation, and that both men heard the other man speak and responded to the content of the remarks just mentioned. Professor Shuy pointed out the second way of viewing the transcript: namely, that Mr. Davis had not heard anything that Mr. McCrory was saying, and that Mr. Davis was simply describing his need to provide an alibi for Mr. McCrory. Under this interpretation was not confirming at all that he had called for the murders that Mr. McCrory, seated in the car, was describing in a normal tone of voice, at a volume that would easily be detected by the recording equipment that he was wearing but was beyond the earshot of Mr. Davis. It was not necessary for Professor Shuy to demonstrate that Mr. McCrory was manipulating the crucial speech event by his strategic introduction of the topic of murder. Rather, it was his responsibility to point out that it was quite possible, even likely, that Mr. Davis simply did not hear Mr. McCrory’s remarks, and that Davis’s comments are self-contained regarding the need to establish a viable alibi for Mr. McCrory. By doing so he helped to make the essential distinction between a request to spy on his ex-wife and the judge, and a request to have both of them killed. In this instance, and in others, linguistic analyses can represent the difference between life and death for the defendant in the case. Not only was Professor Shuy victorious, he was working with a wily attorney who knew well that his expert had conducted extensive analyses of the speech that were crucial to the prosecution’s case: When Racehorse Haynes finally finished my direct examination, I was surprised that he never got around to asking me about the difficult exchange (above), when McCrory talked about getting Priscilla, the judge and the bunch of people dead. He knew that I was primed to give my analysis of this passage and I understood that he considered it helpful. But he didn’t ask me a word about it. I soon found out why. On my third day on the witness stand, it was the prosecutor’s turn to cross-examine me. One of the first questions he asked me was, “I noticed that in your testimony you said nothing about the passage talking about getting Judge Eidson and the others dead.” Relieved that I’d now get a chance to talk about this, I replied,

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“I’ve made a chart of this for the jury if you’d like to see it now.” As I brought out the chart I realized that Haynes deliberately had not asked me about it because he was setting a trap for the prosecutor to fall into. Now that I had said I had analyzed it, the prosecutor couldn’t say, “No, I don’t want to see it.” (Shuy 2008)

The prosecutor is the one who opened the door to the very testimony that would undermine his case, and he no doubt realized this fact as soon as Professor Shuy confirmed that he had not only analyzed the speech in question but had produced a chart that displayed the crucial evidence. Not only had Racehorse Haynes set the trap for the opposing council, he knew well that his expert witness was prepared to demonstrate the fundamental flaws in the evidence that would have otherwise resulted in Mr. Davis’s conviction for murder. While serendipity played a direct role in the circumstances that resulted in Professor Shuy’s expert analyses in this case, it opened the door to an entirely new branch of linguistic evaluation, and others began to intentionally explore ways that their linguistic analyses might be relevant to the defense or conviction of parties involved with other civil and criminal cases: The jury apparently liked my analysis because they acquitted Davis on all the charges. My experience in this case traveled quickly through the law community and my phone began to ring, which is why in my earlier post I referred to that casual conversation with my airplane seatmate as a “right angle turn” in my career. (Shuy 2008)

2.2

A Tale of Two Murders

Although I had heard about Professor Shuy’s iconic testimony during the Cullen Davis murder trial, and its role in the birth of forensic linguistics, I had no idea that I too would eventually conduct linguistic evaluations that were relevant to the defense of men accused of murder. The two cases that are described herein differ greatly from Professor Shuy’s case; he was helping to defend a wealthy White man. The defendants whom I have tried to help were poor Black men. They did not have the benefit of the ability to hire Racehorse Haynes or any other high-profile attorney; rather, they were defended by public attorneys. My depictions of the two cases described here are intended to help clarify legal circumstances where linguistic research has lethal relevance; that is, the linguistic evidence and corresponding expert testimony proved to be crucial to determining the difference between a murder conviction, and potential death sentence, and exoneration. When one considers the number of convictions in murder cases that have been overturned as a result of DNA evidence, despite eyewitness identifications of men who were falsely convicted of crimes, the need to enlist as many tools as possible to determine the actual guilt or innocence of defendants in murder cases looms large.

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Before turning to the actual circumstances surrounding each case, I should emphasize that linguistic evaluations should be conducted based on the content of the available evidence, and not predetermined based on the desire of either prosecutors or defense attorneys seeking to win their case. In much the same manner that a judge should be a disinterested party to any legal proceedings, so too must any linguistic expert who agrees to evaluate linguistic evidence that is pertinent to a given trial, regardless of whether they have been hired by the defense or the prosecution. To do otherwise diminishes the value of linguistic science in legal proceedings, and opens the field to potential criticism that our expertise is tainted or, worse, that we are merely shills seeking to line our pockets at the expense of hapless victims who could suffer from preordained outcomes. Whenever I am hired to evaluate evidence in a case, I inform the attorney seeking my help, in advance, that I cannot guarantee that my findings will be helpful to his/her case. This point is relevant because I have encountered some instances where people, typically reporters for news outlets, need an expert opinion, but they also have a clear conception of how they want to tell their story in advance of seeking that expert opinion. Although I have yet to encounter an attorney who has asked me to provide an opinion in advance of my evaluations, it is clear from the outset that the decision to hire me, or other linguists, has to do with the attorney’s strong belief that our findings will indeed prove to be beneficial to his/her client and/or the case being argued in court. Murder trials are quite special when compared to nearly every other legal proceeding, particularly if the defendant may receive a death sentence upon conviction. I can think of no other legal proceedings where defendants live in fear of the possibility that they may lose their life, and it is for this reason that linguistic evidence, whenever pertinent to a murder case, could be vitally important – as was the situation for Cullen Davis. Whereas Professor Shuy used careful conversation analyses to prove his point, especially on the occasions where both Mr. Davis and Mr. McCrory were speaking simultaneously, the following murder cases required different forms of linguistic analysis. In one instance it was essential to conduct detailed phonetic analyses, and to reevaluate the transcript of the defendant’s speech that had been prepared by the prosecution. In the other case it was necessary for jurors to actually hear the critical speech under scrutiny rather than to read a transcript of the recording of the defendant. Both cases share the fact that the men accused of murder were poor African Americans who spoke with a strong inner-city dialect. Indeed, it is due largely to my extensive research of Black American dialects that I was called upon to provide expert testimony for both cases. I knew very little of the actual details pertaining to the murder itself for the case that required phonetic analyses. The crucial issue that I was asked to

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address focused narrowly on recordings of the defendant that were made while he was in jail awaiting trial. He had been captured and accused of this capital offense, and he could not raise enough money for his bail so he was incarcerated prior to beginning the actual trial. Some readers may already be aware that those held in police custody are subject to having their telephone calls recorded, and this was the situation for the defendant in this case. Those awaiting trial in jail are allowed to make phone calls, and they frequently make collect calls because they often do not have money to initiate a call, and a collect call is not subject to the time limit that would be imposed by a coin-operated phone. The defendant made a call to one of his male cousins, who had agreed to pay for his collect phone call, and a great deal of this conversation was devoted to the case. The defendant spoke rapidly and loudly, reflecting the obvious anxiousness that he felt given his dire circumstances. In response, his cousin tried to offer advice or suggestions that he thought might be beneficial to the defendant in two ways: he wanted to offer reassurance, and he wanted to discuss possible strategies for the case that could eventually be shared with the defendant’s public defender. Because the conversation was being recorded, it was later transcribed and evaluated by law enforcement staff members who routinely listened to the recordings for any incriminating evidence; in this instance they believed they had unearthed a confession. The prosecutor concluded that the defendant, in a moment of exasperation, admitted guilt to the murder in response to a question posed by the defendant’s cousin. The remarks that were made during the telephone call were rapid, animated, and quite emotional; again, the defendant knew that his life depended upon an acquittal, and that any missteps during his trial could be fatal. His cousin asked the defendant if it might not be in his best interest to request a speedy trial. It was the defendant’s response to this question that the prosecutor seized upon, and he claimed that the defendant said, “Why would I do a speedy trial when I know I committed this shit?” Moreover, the prosecutor had the sentence in question analyzed and depicted in two significant ways: first, someone who worked for the police department in their laboratory conduced phonetic analyses of the speech producing spectrographic analysis of the crucial phrase; second, the prosecutor provided a transcript of the relevant interactive discourse that contained the alleged admission of guilt. It was after the prosecutor had arrived at this conclusion, and the defense team analyzed the same utterance, that I was contacted to enlist my help. When I first spoke with some of the legal assistants who were helping the defense attorneys evaluate these remarks, they were loath to explain too many details regarding the case. It was their hope, if not desire, that I could listen to the recordings that were crucial to the disagreement between the prosecutor and defense attorney about the defendant’s so-called confession.

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Members of the defense team then sent me a recording of the highly animated telephone conversation between their defendant and his male cousin. Again, when I first received the recording I knew nothing other than that it was pertinent to a murder case, and that the statements I was asked to evaluate were made by the defendant, who is an African American man. It was immediately obvious that the defendant spoke African American vernacular English (AAVE); a combination of phonological characteristics as well as various grammatical constructions, including multiple negation, were contained in his speech. I had no difficulty distinguishing between the two speakers, or determining which one was the defendant. My initial difficulty grew from the fact that the speech of both men was very rapid; as a result of the speed with which they spoke some words were not fully articulated. This point proved to be crucial within the context of the trial. I also had some difficulty making out some of the utterances; upon hearing these statements without knowing the context, I had to listen to the statements several times before drawing any conclusions about what was actually being said. Some words and phrases were fairly clear and would easily be comprehended by nearly any native speaker of American English, regardless of their dialect background. In other instances, the words were less clear, and, again, because of the fast pace with which the conversation took place, it was not immediately obvious exactly what had been said. Because I have my own linguistic laboratory, I had the distinct advantage of being able to slow the speech down, and I did so in gradual phases, ultimately playing the recordings at such a slow pace that the words contained in the statements were no longer recognizable. By engaging in this process of incrementally slowing the recordings, I was able to decipher more of the phrases that were less clear when heard at the normal rate of speech. From a purely analytical perspective my procedure, while allowing me to hear what was said more clearly, was less beneficial to accurate spectrographic analyses. In other words, by slowing the recordings I was able to hear the utterances more clearly, but the slower speech distorted the speech signal in ways that could not be measured accurately through spectrographic analyses.1 When I contacted the defense attorneys with my preliminary results, which were initially inconclusive regarding some of the phraseology, I told them that I had identified sections of the speech that could be misconstrued, primarily because of the defendant’s type of speech, and the fact that he exhibited several linguistic features of AAVE. I had been careful to look at instances of 1

Spectrographic analyses evaluate dimensions of the human voice during speech, showing precisely how a person has produced an utterance. Whenever voice identification is depicted on television or in films, spectrographic displays typically are shown on computer screens providing graphic illustrations of a speaker’s voice, and how it changes throughout an utterance. Relevant illustrations are provided shortly.

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phonological reduction; William Labov and his colleagues (Labov et al. 1968) had evaluated some of the phrases in question in some of the earliest research on AAVE. One such phrase corresponds to the phonological reduction of the expression “I am going to . . . ” which is often pronounced as “I’m gonna.” This form of phonological reduction is not unique to speakers of AAVE; many speakers of American English might say, “I’m gonna go to the store.” However, many speakers of AAVE reduce this expression by saying, “I’m a . . . ” where the entire phrase becomes reduced to the single schwa phoneme (I am going to . . . → I’m going to . . . → I’m gonna . . . → I’m gon . . . → I’m a [ə] . . .). This proved to be the case regarding the first part of the phrase where the defendant was presumed, by the prosecution, to have admitted his guilt. They transcribed his speech as stating, “Why would I do a speedy trial . . . ” while my transcription indicated that the defendant had drastically reduced the phonology of his phrasing as follows: “Why I’m ə do a speedy trial . . . ” This discrepancy in transcription, while noteworthy, paled in comparison to my next observation, and subsequent concern: the phrase “I committed this shit” was also rapid, but I noticed that the initial vowel /ay/ was elongated and nasalized. Indeed, I concluded that it was not a single vowel, that is, depicting the word “I,” but a phonologically reduced version of two words that was stated as a nasalized diphthong – that is, when two vowels co-occur. Represented through phonological transcription, the prosecutors claimed that the vowel in question was stated as /ay/, and I concluded (after listening to the speech at a slower pace) that the defendant had produced a diphthong which sounded like /ay˜en/. Thankfully, the fact that it was easy to point out the discrepancy regarding the difference between “Why would I do a speedy trial . . .” and what was actually said – namely “Why I’m ə do a speedy trial . . . ” – helped to reinforce the observation that some speech patterns are not fully articulated, especially when a speaker is producing them rapidly. Whereas the prosecutor believed the defendant had confessed his guilt, my assessment concluded that he had in fact denied his guilt, by producing a barely audible version of the word “ain’t” that was not fully articulated, immediately following the vowel “I” (/ay/) (Figures 2.1 to 2.4).2 In this case, the difference between life and death essentially boiled down to the presence or absence of a single nasalized vocalic phoneme. In terms of the semantic content attributed to the two different interpretations, had the 2

Readers who are unfamiliar with spectrograms should compare the patterns displayed by the dots (i.e., the pitch patterns), from left to right. These displays show significant similarities between the contrasting vowels (i.e., in Figures 2.1 and 2.2) and complete sentences (i.e., Figures 2.3 and 2.4) where the negative word, “ain’(t)” is depicted in Figures 2.2 and 2.4. By comparing the patterns of dots it is evident that the nasalized forms might be undetected when heard during speech.

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2.2 A Tale of Two Murders

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Figure 2.1 Spectrogram of the word “I” (/ay/)

defendant admitted guilt, by saying “I know I committed this shit,” or had he denied his guilt, by saying “I know I ain’ committed this shit?” Moreover, because the word “ain’t” was not fully articulated, and appeared immediately after a vowel and preceding a stop consonant (i.e., /k/ in ‘committed’), it was not easy to detect despite the fact that, in my opinion, it was said. With the clarity of vision that frequently accompanies hindsight, I should have tried to anticipate some of the issues that were raised by the prosecution during my testimony, because the prosecutor observed that there were other instances where the defendant was recorded saying the word “ain’t” and when he did so it was fully articulated; that is, the final /t/ was clearly present. Why, then, did the defendant modify his speech in this critical instance? I was able to point out that final consonants are not always pronounced during speech; it is common for many speakers of English to say “tol” rather than “told” as in “I tol the truth,” or they might not pronounce the final /g/ in “coming” or “going,” as in “She was comin’ ’round the mountain.” Few people who sing that song ever pronounce the final /g/ in “coming” or the initial vowel in “around.”

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Figure 2.2 Spectrogram of the words “I ain’” (/ay˜en/)

Ay no ˈay kəˈmɪtɪd I know I committed Figure 2.3 Spectrogram of “I know I committed”

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2.2 A Tale of Two Murders

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Ay no ˈay eɪn kəˈmɪtɪd I know I ain’ committed Figure 2.4 Spectrogram of “I know I ain’ committed”

The prosecutor thought he had trapped me by saving the spectrographic findings for last, because the spectrogram did not display a strong signal, and the prosecutor interpreted that to mean that the defendant could not have possibly said “ain’t” even in an abbreviated form. Because I am not an attorney, and professors by nature are inquisitive, I violated one of the fundamental precepts in a court of law – I occasionally posed questions to the prosecutor. He admonished me, rather harshly: “I will ask the questions, Professor.” My violations were unintentional because I wanted to engage in a fuller discussion; the prosecutor – quite appropriately – was trying to control the conversation. My first question, which drew the admonition, was “Why did you use spectrographic analysis?” Again, he did not answer my question; as indicated, he informed me that he would be asking the questions. He then went on to explain that his expert, that is, the person who conducted the spectrographic analysis, demonstrated that the defendant could not have said the word “ain’t.” I then asked another question before realizing my error, “Was he or she a linguist?” As I glanced at the jury after raising this point, I noticed that the prosecutor hesitated before replying. Perhaps he wanted to admonish me again, but it was clear to me that the jury wanted to know the answer to my question, and the prosecutor responded with the single word, “No.” I then made another

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statement: “Well, spectrographic analysis isn’t the right tool for evaluating this phrase.” The prosecutor was clearly perturbed; I was initiating observations that challenged his best evidence. He then reiterated his admonishment, “Can you wait until I ask the questions, please?” To which I replied, “But don’t you want to know why this is the wrong tool for this job?” He again replied with a single word, “No.” I was surprised that the defense team did not pick up on this point, because I was prepared to explain that spectrographic images are clearest when the speech signal is strong. Utterances that are weak and not stated with sufficient energy barely appear on a spectrogram. However, the jury never received that information because we explored other parts of the transcript, where I was able to demonstrate some additional inaccuracies that I believed called the quality of the prosecutor’s evidence into question. His final question returned to the presence or absence of the word “ain’t.” “Can the jury hear him say that?” I responded by indicating that it was quite difficult to hear for two main reasons: firstly, the speech was fast, and the linguistic environment was such that only the nasalized vowel after “I” (/ay/) indicated negation, and secondly, I had the benefit of being able to slow down the recording in my lab to better detect the presence of the nasalized diphthong. Clearly, this level of technical detail was potentially problematic; jurors are not linguists, and the question before them appeared to be straightforward – can they hear the defendant say the word “ain’t” or not? My explanation may have seemed like obfuscation on behalf of the defense, although that was not my intention. My testimony only played a small part in the entire trial, and other witnesses testified before and after I took the stand. I was unable to see or hear their testimony because all witnesses waited outside the courtroom prior to being called to the stand. However, two of the witnesses who followed me were African Americans, and the defense attorneys told me that they made statements during their testimony that reinforced some of the very linguistic observations that I had made while I was on the witness stand. The final outcome of this trial was a mixed blessing for the defendant, because he was subject to the death penalty for the murder that had been committed, and I have no knowledge as to his actual guilt or innocence of the crime he was accused of committing. However, I do believe that the statement he made during the recorded phone conversation where the prosecutor claimed that he admitted guilt for the murder was actually a denial – again, based on the presence of a single nasalized vocalic phoneme. The jury concluded that he was guilty of the crime; the other evidence clearly did not result in an acquittal. However, my testimony introduced the fact, or the possibility of the fact, that he adamantly denied killing the victim, and the jury did not request the death penalty, although he did receive a life sentence.

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2.2 A Tale of Two Murders

35

I believe that the jury found a considerable amount of evidence that pointed to the guilt of the defendant, which is why the prosecutor brought this case to trial. However, I also believe that enough questions were raised, and my testimony was part of that trend, to convince the jury that the defendant should not be put to death. Far too many convictions have been overturned recently as new evidence surfaced, and defendants were eventually shown to be wrongly convicted. If a defendant is put to death, there is no way to rectify mistakes. In the event that no exculpatory evidence is forthcoming, the defendant will spend the rest of his life behind bars. Another murder case for which I served as an expert witness has yet to be fully resolved. Whereas the preceding case concentrated on the death of a single individual, in this instance more than one person was killed, including a father and his young daughter who was only seven years old. In some respects, this case might be considered somewhat stereotypical; similar scenes have been depicted in movies of Black gang members in conflict, who retaliate against one another through drive-by shootings. Regrettably, the case to which we now turn is not fiction; the fact that an innocent child tragically lost her life placed added pressure on the local police department to either solve the crime as quickly as possible or at least identify a suspect. The case first came to my attention when a fellow linguist contacted me, indicating that she did not believe that she had sufficient knowledge of AAVE to serve as an expert witness in the case; she asked if I would be willing to speak with the defense attorneys who had contacted her in search of linguistic expertise. She gave me the names of the attorneys and told me she would contact them to let them know that they would hear from me. When I called and spoke with one of the defense attorneys, I heard a tragic story, one that reminded me of the gang conflicts I had witnessed in Philadelphia, albeit at a time when gun violence between gang members was relatively rare. During the 1970s gang members in Philadelphia were often armed, but typically with knives – not guns. Since the turn of the century it is far more common for inner-city gang members to carry concealed guns; upon capture by the police many claim that the guns are needed for self-defense as violence between rival gangs continued, and perhaps continues, to escalate in many of America’s poor Black communities. The murders in this instance occurred in a major urban center on the West Coast, and the defense attorney described the events related to the murders, as well as the specific linguistic evidence that she wanted me to evaluate. Rival gangs had been hostile for decades in the city in question; from time to time there had been shootings, some resulting in fatalities. The shootings arose from conflicts relating to various affronts or disagreements about turf, or who controlled a specific territory with regard to the sale of drugs or control over young prostitutes.

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The case in question was not elaborate. A gang member had been wounded in a shooting, and those who belonged to the same gang as the wounded man were alleged to have planned their retaliation. The drive-by shooting occurred at night outside the home of one of the rival gang members. A group of young men, most of whom were in their twenties, were attending a party at the home, and some of them, perhaps five or six men, had gathered on the front lawn of the house. According to the report that I heard the party was not excessively boisterous or loud, but a joyous occasion where a group of friends had gathered to drink, dance, and share food and music. In the local parlance, “They was jus’ chillin’.” It was less clear to me how the location or timing of the party was identified by those who committed the drive-by shooting. The recording that I evaluated for the case offered speculation that one of the young women at the party sent text messages to some of her friends, who were then assumed to have informed the rival gang of the gathering, and the potential vulnerability of those who were in attendance. When the drive-by shooting occurred, single shots were fired from the car, wounding two people, and fatally wounding a father and his daughter. The car sped away after the shooting, and those remaining at the scene of the crime were outraged and coping with myriad emotional reactions as they attempted to offer immediate care to those who were wounded and dying. Shortly after the shots were fired, the police arrived, as did medical first responders, and all of those who had either seen the shooting or who were in attendance at the party were questioned to help the police identify potential suspects for the shootings. News reporters with camera crews showed up shortly thereafter, and the events related to the shooting were broadcast on different television networks in the local region, but the story did not capture national attention. Indeed, when I was being told of the events by the defense attorney, I was somewhat surprised that I had not previously heard of the case, particularly so since a young girl lost her life in the process. Regardless, I was being informed of the events for more practical reasons – namely, to determine if I might be able to evaluate some vital linguistic evidence that had been gathered in the case, and whether my findings would prove to be beneficial to the defense of one of the suspects. The linguistic evidence in this instance differed considerably from the murder case previously described because the prosecutor in that case had unfettered access to any of the telephone conversations that the defendant made while he was incarcerated. In this instance the police were still in search of their primary suspect(s), and they coerced a former gang member into lending them assistance as they attempted to obtain more information about the shooting, as well as the whereabouts of the gun that had been used in the crime.

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At least in part because the little girl was killed in this incident, and because it had been widely reported through various local media outlets, the police were under considerable pressure and scrutiny. After they had questioned those who had witnessed the crime or had been in attendance, they believed they had identified the rival gang, if not the specific gang members who they believed might be responsible for the deaths that occurred. However, in the absence of any hard evidence, the police could not merely round up members of the gang under suspicion; they needed to obtain some type of corroborating information, and the recording of a suspect without his knowledge proved to be central to an eventual arrest, and to the defense that I was being asked to assist. A former member of the gang under suspicion had been released from prison and was on probation as he tried to reestablish his life after serving a three-year sentence. He was a family man with young children whom he was raising with his wife, and they were struggling financially and socially as he tried to find legal ways to support his family. The police went to his home unannounced, arriving in several squad cars that raised immediate concern on the part of the former gang member, his family, and the neighbors who witnessed the event. He was not being arrested, but he was informed that someone who had attended the party where the shooting took place claimed that he was there, which would have been a violation of his probation and, if true, he would be subject to returning to prison. He vehemently denied being at the party and wanted to know who told the police he was there, but the police did not divulge the identity of the person or persons who had identified him as being present during the shooting. The police made clear that if he had been in attendance, he would likely return to prison, and they wanted proof that he was not there. He then agreed to help them try to identify others who may have been involved in the drive-by shooting; the police already had identified the man who they believed had pulled the trigger, but they did not have enough evidence to make an arrest, nor did they know the location of the gun that had been used in the shooting. After discussing some analytical logistics with the defense attorney, we agreed that I would examine the recording of a telephone conversation between the primary suspect, whom she was defending, and the former gang member. The recording was made at the police station in a room with recording equipment that produced both a video recording of the gang member in the room and an audio recording of both sides of the conversation. Significantly, the police provided the former gang member with a cell phone for the purpose of this call and recording, and the number was restricted so that whoever answered a call made from that telephone would not be able to trace or identify the number from which the call was initiated. This point proved to be relevant because when the suspect answered the call, and the former gang member identified himself, the suspect immediately observed that the call had been “blocked.”

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The former gang member deftly responded by saying he was using someone else’s phone, which must be “blocked”; however, it was obvious that both men recognized each other’s voices, and the conversation continued. Prior to listening to the actual recording of the conversation, I had been sent a transcript of the telephone call, which portrayed the suspect in a bad light. The content of the call was devoted to several matters related to events that occurred the night of the shooting. The former gang member attempted to make clear that he was not at the party, but that someone who was there had told the police he was present. The responses by the suspect appeared to confirm the assertion, because the suspect described some of the people who were in attendance, and mentioned that people were in the house and others were gathered in the front yard. Another part of the conversation dealt with the location of the gun that was used during the shooting, and the suspect stated that he had no idea where the gun was; as far as he knew, it would not be found. The conversation then shifted to the particularly tragic death of the young girl, which, based on the content of the transcript, did not look good for the suspect. Evidently the police had already interrogated the suspect, but there was not enough evidence to justify an arrest. However, the police believed that he might be the guilty party, so they coerced the former gang member and surreptitiously recorded the conversation that I was reviewing in its written form. The description of what took place as far as the shooting itself was somewhat convoluted because the suspect described his previous interrogation with the police. That is, he did not describe the actual events that took place the night of the shooting but described instead the conversation he had had with the police in the aftermath of the shooting. The transcript indicated that the police had accused him of killing both the father and daughter at the scene of the crime, and, curiously, his description of events made it appear – at first glance – that he was (or could have been) outside the vehicle when the shooting took place. More precisely, the transcript recounted the police accusation that the suspect had shot the father, and then shot his daughter, perhaps as a spiteful gesture to emphasize the retaliatory nature of the shooting. The next portion of the transcript was surprising, because it appeared as though the suspect actually corroborated the police accusation: “Right, so I walked up on the dude and shot him, and then turned right around and shot his daughter.” The punctuation in the preceding sentence is critical, if not potentially deceptive. Consider, for example, the following two sentences, and especially how they might sound as spoken utterances: “I never knew my brother was a track star” in contrast to “I never knew my brother was a track star?” The first sentence is a declarative statement, whereas the second sentence is a question. Because the utterances, in terms of their lexical content, are identical, punctuation is used to convey the difference between the statement and the question in print, but intonation is

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used to convey the difference between a statement and a question during speech. Such proved to be the case in this instance, once I had an opportunity to hear the actual recording of the conversation. The written transcript was reasonably faithful to the content of the discourse between the two men, both of whom spoke with pronounced AAVE grammatical structures and phonology, as well as a considerable amount of slang, such as referring to the gun as a “burner.” Another seemingly minor point, relevant to the use of the N . . . word among Black men when referring to each other, is quite significant based on the phonological pronunciation of the final syllable; namely, do they pronounce the N . . . word with a final /er/ pronunciation or is it pronounced with a final /ə/ and no /r/ at the end? The difference between Black men who say “nigga” in contrast to “nigger” is significant in African American culture, because the latter pronunciation is usually considered to be offensive, whereas the r-less pronunciation is often acceptable among friendly acquaintances, which was the case during the conversation between the two men who were being recorded. However, the transcript used the “nigger” spelling; again, it appears to be accurate, yet it does not convey the actual pronunciation that was used on the several occasions when this word was spoken during the conversation. In this instance the spelling convention could be, perhaps unintentionally, misleading; someone reading the transcript without the added benefit of hearing the actual conversation might find repeated usage of the N . . . word to be off-putting, if not offensive. However, those who are familiar with vernacular African American culture, and the speech of Black gang members, know well that selfreference and reference to other “homeboys” as “my niggas” is not only common, it is frequently a sign of in-group solidarity. The conversation about the location of the gun remained ambiguous, even when I heard the actual conversation, because the suspect indicated that he had no idea where the gun (i.e., burner) was located. A crucial detail that was not evident from the transcript, but which was obvious from the video recording was the fact that the police officers who were present during the recording of this telephone conversation were able to hear both parties throughout the conversation, and from time to time they would slip notes requesting specific information to the former gang member. He did his best to read the note without having the disruption interfere with the normal flow of the conversation, but it was obvious during my evaluation of both the video and audio recordings that some of these notes where slightly disruptive, as the former gang member would either nod his head or gesture with his hand that he understood the request being made. One such note had to do with a follow-up question regarding the location of the gun, where the former gang member stated that the burner needed to be taken care of. The suspect replied again that he had no idea where the gun was, but that he was sure it was gone and would not be

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found. This final statement, on the transcript and during the recordings, appeared to suggest that the suspect did – at some previous point – potentially have knowledge of the weapon prior to its disposal; but this implication was indirect at best because the suspect never admitted to owning the gun or to knowing anything about the whereabouts of the weapon or how it was discarded – “that motherfucker gone!” The most crucial part of the transcript, which I found fascinating and problematic, focused on the comments that the suspect made about his reply to the police immediately after they had expressed their opinion that he was the person guilty of shooting the father and daughter. The recordings conveyed a very different interpretation, because it was obvious that the suspect had tried to convey that he could not be the killer. He noted that on any occasion when gang shootings occur, that if children are seen to be present then the shooters withdraw. He also noted, with obvious sarcasm, that his statement that was presented in the transcript as an assertive statement was actually an incredulous remark, intended to cast doubt on the veracity of the suggestion that he “walked up on the dude and shot him, and then turned right around and shot his daughter?” The written transcript did not convey any sense of sarcasm; however, the actual recording made clear that the suspect disagreed with the assertion that he was the shooter, especially so since a child had been shot at the same time. The conversation then shifted back to speculation about who might have told the police that the former gang member was present at the party, and that portion of the conversation appeared to be initiated by the former gang member himself to bolster his denial that he was present (and therefore not in violation of his parole). He mentioned that he did not want to do anything that would lead to separation from his children again, and that someone was talking and he strongly suspected that it must have been one of the women in attendance at the party. My role and responsibility as an expert witness differs greatly from that of those responsible for investigating all of the details pertaining to the case. My job is narrowly defined, to provide my best assessment of the evidence I have been presented, and to offer my results based on the best available methods. The evidence that I evaluated was inconclusive regarding the suspect’s actual location at the time of the shooting. Portions of the written transcript and recording are potentially contradictory with regard to confirming whether he was either present at the party itself or a witness to the gathering, perhaps as the shooter or a passenger in the car from which the shots were fired. Again, my role in the case is confined to analysis of the written transcripts and recordings of the conversation between the former gang member and suspect. Nevertheless, that narrow role proved to be essential to confirming that the suspect did not agree with the accusation that he was indeed the shooter; rather,

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his obvious sarcasm – which would only be evident to someone who listened to his actual statements – confirms that he strongly disagreed with the assertion that he shot the father, or that he would then kill the daughter even if he was guilty of initially shooting the adult. 2.3

Case Commonalities

The common denominators connecting these three cases include the fact that all three deal with murders, and all three required some form of linguistic evaluation to help determine the truth of what actually transpired. The pursuit of justice is perhaps most significant in legal cases where deaths have occurred; while linguistic evidence may not be central to every murder case, the three cases illustrated here demonstrate that careful linguistic analyses were beneficial to seeking a valid verdict. It is also important to recognize that different analytical procedures were needed in each case. Professor Shuy employed some of the classical methods that were developed by Schegloff, Jefferson, and Sacks (1974) to perform conversation analysis for the Cullen Davis case.3 His transcript, unlike the one produced by the prosecution, made clear that there were several instances when both Mr. Davis and Mr. McCrory were speaking at that same time, rather than speaking sequentially without any overlap. Moreover, by illustrating these points of overlapping speech in the written transcript itself, it became clearer that Mr. Davis might not be responding to comments that Mr. McCrory was making while being seated in the car. The next case depended substantially on a combination of phonological evaluation, which included identification of the morphological content associated with phonemes that were either present or absent in the statement, “I know I (ain’) committed this shit.” The phonological and morphological findings, along with consideration of spectrographic analysis of the crucial phrase, also had semantic relevance; that is, if the defendant actually said “ain’” albeit within a diphthong (i.e., two adjacent vowels), then – from a semantic point of view – he introduced a negative into the sentence intended to deny his guilt. On the other hand, if he did not say “ain’,” as the prosecutor asserted, then the sentence in question would have been a declarative statement admitting guilt. The final case that we reviewed is one where experimental findings could have been used had it become necessary; however, simply allowing those involved in the legal proceedings to have an opportunity to compare the written transcript to the actual recorded statements would have easily revealed the 3

The fields of conversation analyses and discourse analyses were combined in support of Shuy’s testimony. Analytic methods developed by Goffman (1964, 1981), Schegloff et al. (1974), Gumperz (1982), Goodwin (2003), Tannen (2005, 2009a, 2012), and Wodak (2009) are illustrative of the methodologies that resulted in Cullen Davis’s acquittal.

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obvious sarcasm that had been conveyed when the incredulous comments were made. The potential experiments would have illustrated and evaluated the difference between identical sentences stated either as declarative remarks or sarcastic expressions. Again, sarcasm is frequently conveyed through spoken (question) intonation, which may not be immediately evident when reading a written transcript of previously recorded remarks. By coincidence of circumstance, the cases that I have illustrated in this chapter have all dealt with premeditated murder, where those who were killed died as a result of intentional advance planning. Many manslaughter cases are not the product of premeditation, and other trials where wrongful deaths have occurred will differ materially from the illustrations that have been provided here. Focusing on the bigger picture, where linguistic findings can be used to promote a just ruling in a legal case, be it a murder case or a trial dealing with some other criminal or civil dispute, it is important to appreciate that careful linguistic evaluation can be employed by law enforcement agencies as well as those who seek to defend their clients. While serendipity played a central role in the birth of forensic linguistics, it is important to recognize that the tools that linguistic analyses can bring to various legal proceedings are often ignored or underutilized. This neglect or avoidance of detailed linguistic evaluation is somewhat understandable because language usage is ubiquitous, and most welleducated people – and attorneys are all well-educated by definition – frequently believe that they have a reasonably good understanding of how language works, and they therefore feel no need to seek additional expert linguistic advice. An analogy may be useful, particularly when we ponder the role that linguists might play in future legal proceedings. Consider, for example, a person who is making observations about the weather. It is possible to notice dark clouds and blustery conditions and draw the conclusion that rain may be forthcoming without feeling any need to seek additional confirmation from a qualified meteorologist. Moreover, if rain eventually falls after observing these conditions, the average person may feel as though his/her unprofessional anticipation of weather changes is adequate. Recognizing that weather forecasts rarely have legal significance, the analogy has some obvious limitations; however, in much the same manner that any ordinary person uses language during nearly every human encounter, and that any ordinary person will observe the weather in any location, it is not difficult to surmise that many people do not seek expert advice or opinions regarding facts that may, on the surface, appear to be obvious. I fear that expert linguistic opinion that is overlooked during many legal proceedings may inadvertently fall prey to a similar situation.

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Another analogy seems relevant regarding potential differences of opinion that might arise from competing linguistic interpretations. In this instance the comparison that may be relevant pertains to medical diagnoses. Physicians may not always agree after conducting medical evaluations of the same patient, and this is to be expected on some occasions. There are also some rare circumstances where unscrupulous physicians have been known to advocate medical procedures based on false diagnoses to increase their income. While I am not aware of any unscrupulous linguists who are willing to assure attorneys of preordained outcomes, it would be naïve to assume that such a possibility could not exist. It is also possible that two qualified linguists may have a difference of opinion regarding the linguistic facts about a case.4 Despite these potential limitations, in much the same manner that no ill patient should forgo the potential value of medical advice, so too would it be ill advised for legal experts to avoid enlisting linguistic expertise whenever it might prove to be beneficial. And, as is often the case when one consults a medical doctor, the findings that linguists may provide might not be favorable to those who seek the expertise. Professional linguists who are ethical know well that our science has many limitations, and the credibility of linguistic expertise in support of legal pursuits will vary tremendously from case to case. The overriding concern, particularly in this chapter, is to recognize that linguistic science has played an important role in helping to clarify vital evidence during murder trials. Ideally those analyses have been beneficial to the attorneys, judges, and jurors who share the tremendous responsibility of trying to determine the guilt or innocence of defendants who have been accused of capital crimes, and who may be subject to execution if they are found guilty of the murders for which they are accused. Without question, in each of the cases that we have reviewed in this chapter, not only has linguistic science been beneficial to the pursuit of justice, it has been central to the difference between life and death.

4

An illustration of one such difference of professional linguistic opinion exists regarding disputes as to the potentially offensive name affiliated with the professional football team located in Washington, DC, namely “The Redskins.” Highly qualified linguists made arguments in favor of keeping the name as well as banishing its use as a racial epithet. The advocates for keeping the name cited the evolutionary usage of the term, concluding that it no longer had the same hostile meaning as when it was first coined. The opposing opinion argued that Native Americans continue to revile the term, and that its continued usage represents a willful use of an offensive racist label that should be eliminated from any professional product.

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Linguistics, Injustice, and Inequality

The pursuit of justice clearly includes, but also far exceeds, legal considerations. Fairness lies at the heart of the operational definitions distinguishing justice from injustice that guide this discussion, as well as efforts to promote and achieve equality. Others will no doubt recognize that matters pertaining to impartiality are also relevant, as well as actions toward others that are free of bias. Justice, as conceived herein, is inherently complex because it can be illusory, when – in reality – it must be concrete to actually uplift humanity.1 This chapter moves beyond the realm of forensic linguistics to consideration of various circumstances where language usage intersects with (in)justice and the quest for equality among diverse people throughout the world. Moreover, to anchor these issues to real-world circumstances, we will consider a combination of historical facts and heuristic formulations that could, under favorable conditions, prove beneficial to the advancement of justice. History has witnessed a combination of cruelty and kindness that defies simplistic explanation, and the reduction or elimination of brutality between people is surely a worthy goal in its own right, to say little of the role that language plays in the perpetuation of conflict and social strife. Yet vilification frequently takes linguistic form, occasionally as a personal insult, or at other times as the hostile disparagement of an entire group of people. Tragedy can ensue when words stated in anger lead to actions with harmful intent. This chapter strives to outline a broad range of circumstances wherein language, injustice, and inequality may occur in synchrony. As suggested, there are occasions when this triad is a highly personal matter between two people who find themselves at odds. In other instances, entire nations are in conflict, and the language used to castigate others may include unfair caricatures that are politically expedient, or cynically intended to procure power over others less capable of self-defense. Whether we are looking at these matters in terms of micro encounters or macro confrontations, there can be no doubt that justice is best served when 1

Although “justice” is relevant to a broad range of issues that exceed human beings, including animal welfare and environmental concerns, our foci are devoted primarily to human conditions.

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language is used with great care, and good will prevails among people who strive for mutually fair and equitable treatment of one another. There are many reasons why I believe linguistic science can lend strategic assistance to the cause of justice worldwide, and some of this – perhaps wishful thinking – stems from the fact that so many people take language for granted. The cliché that “talk is cheap” is quite true; talk is also “free,” in the sense that we converse with others in our day-to-day lives about all manner of subjects from mundane to profound topics, and depending upon our elocutionary skill, we may be more or less effective in expressing ourselves. 3.1

Speech Act Theory

It is perhaps most useful at this juncture to mention some relevant facts that are derived from speech act theory (Austin 1962; Searle 1965, 1969; Grice 1975), because some statements or remarks carry more weight than others depending upon who says them, and for what purpose. Consider, for example, the statement, “You’re under arrest.” When a police officer says this, it has consequences; if someone who lacks the appropriate official capacity says the identical phrase, it will have no consequence. We will return to the relevance of speech act theory in association with specific examples; however, it is important to appreciate that some instances in which language, injustice, and inequality have combined take on special significance because someone in a position of authority has made pertinent statements. If your employer exclaims, “You’re fired,” then you have lost your job. Whereas, if a casual acquaintance tells you the very same thing, the comment will have no bearing upon your future employment. Returning to instances where language embodies injustice, many leap to mind that are the result of misunderstanding. A boss may berate an employee unfairly and do so either privately or in the presence of others; even if the comments are unjust, the employee may have little recourse to challenge what was said. Zentella (1997) describes situations where Spanish-speaking workers were admonished for using their native language rather than English, despite the fact that their conversation was personal and not related to their job or interactions with other coworkers who were monolingual English speakers.2 She observed that the punitive treatment of the workers who were reprimanded for speaking Spanish was unfair and unequal. 2

Because the employer did not speak Spanish, his misunderstanding of the language used by his Spanish-speaking employees triggered his misreading of the situation. He wanted to be able to understand what all of his employees were saying while they were at work; since he did not know Spanish, his insistence that all employees use English regardless of their capacity to speak other languages was intended to eliminate communication that could not be comprehended by monolingual English speakers.

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Before turning to other examples of hurtful and unfair uses of language, it is beneficial to recognize that the opposite often occurs, when language is used in uplifting ways to promote justice and equality. Perhaps the finest example of this is embodied in the Magna Carta, in which language was crafted to promote equal treatment under the law. The inspirational tenor of that document was echoed in the Declaration of Independence that gave birth to the United States, and it also inspired many of the edicts contained in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. These iconic examples of occasions where language bolsters equality and justice are significant, and they stand in contrast to instances where hurtful remarks have had the opposite effect. 3.2

Youthful Linguistic Indiscretion

Children throughout the world are sometimes the perpetrators and recipients of taunts that represent fledgling instances of unjust comments. Youngsters are often unaware of how harmful their remarks can be to those who are the object of verbal ridicule, if not verbal abuse. Often these malicious statements are considered to be funny by those who say them, even though they know “name calling” occurs at the expense of those who are the objects of the insults or linguistic, if not physical, bullying. Children who have diminished mental abilities have for far too long been the objects of verbal abuse, as when others refer to them as “retards,” or worse. Children attempting to come to grips with their emerging sexual orientation have likewise been cruelly castigated as “fags” or “dykes.” When I was a child some of my Latinx classmates were called “beaners” or “wetbacks,” and I myself was told more than once, “You’re a nigger.” These degrading phrases do more than inflict psychological injury upon those to whom they are directed; they provide empirical confirmation of the vibrancy with which the linguistic dimensions of injustice are embedded in everyday life. 3.3

Nefarious Linguistic Intent

Perceptions about justice vary depending upon a combination of social perspective and the content of the language that may be thought of as unjust. Consider Adolph Hitler’s declaration of war on Poland in 1939; he claimed that he had exhausted efforts to pursue peaceful resolution of the argument that the city of Danzig was German, not Polish. Moreover, he exclaimed that he alone had the right to pursue war against Poland on behalf of minority ethnic Germans who had been mistreated while living in Danzig. The thousands of Germans who heard his speech and rallied to his cause did not consider his comments to be unjust; they also believed that their fellow ethnic Germans residing in Danzig had been treated unfairly.

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Many Germans at that time considered Hitler’s remarks to be uplifting, if not visionary, as he spoke of a master race of German people who should rule the world. I will not recount all of the historical events surrounding the start of World War II, but Hitler’s 1939 declaration of war on Poland serves to illustrate the social relativity that alters people’s impressions of statements that they consider to be just, or unjust. These differences of opinion may benefit from objective linguistic evaluation that deconstructs the content of remarks that may claim to achieve one goal while simultaneously concealing nefarious motives. Indeed, a discourse analysis of Hitler’s rationale for invading Poland reveals that it is saturated with claims of his efforts to seek prior peaceful resolution to no avail. He used carefully crafted language to indicate that he had no alternative but to invade Poland, in order to ensure that a city that many Germans still considered to be their own would be reannexed, thereby guaranteeing the rights and liberties of the minority ethnic Germans who still lived there. Those living in Poland and in other parts of Europe who were concerned, if not reviled, by Hitler’s saber rattling tended to view his comments differently than did those Germans who believed that the Treaty of Versailles had disparaged them, their pride, and their national coherence. From a linguistic point of view, we see that words that can be interpreted by some people as a valid justification for war may, to others, be perceived as disruptive, aggressive, and extremely hostile. Justice, unlike beauty, must exceed the eye of the beholder in favor of determining what is truly fair and impartial for all people who may be impacted by a dispute. To what extent can linguistic science be employed for this purpose? When linguistic analyses are devoted to historical statements or documents, they have the potential to offer clarification of facts that are almost always the product of speech acts; the results might shed light on facts that might otherwise remain concealed. This type of clarification could be an intellectual exercise in its own right, but such historical accounts might also serve to inform contemporary thinking and help people, including policy makers, refrain from repeating mistakes that were once made in the past. 3.4

Audience Design

One of the best analytical tools that linguistics can bring to bear in circumstances such as the evaluation of historical speeches was developed by Bell (1984), who studied audience design based on the speech of radio announcers. He observed that many who speak to audiences via radio modulate their speech based on knowledge of their audience members and their preferences. Radio formats are often determined by market analyses to identify the potential size and interests of the anticipated audience, and, again, Bell (1984) demonstrated

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that announcers are mindful of this information, which allows them to formulate their speech in ways that their intended audience will find most appealing. Although audience design research was developed with radio listeners in mind, the techniques that Bell developed can be used retroactively for historical evaluation. Hitler’s declaration of war on Poland is an excellent example of audience design helping to more fully understand the relationship between speech, the perception of injustice, and claims that ethnic Germans were being treated unfairly in Poland. Also, Hitler’s public speeches – much like radio broadcasts – are unilateral in the sense that he was not engaging in a conversation; rather, he was producing a monologue. Ethnographers of speaking would characterize this as an instance where Hitler served exclusively as the sender, and those who were present to hear his remarks (i.e., the audience) were collectively the receivers. What, then, can we glean from this historical interpretation of the German audience that was enraptured by Hitler’s remarks, and how might these analytic techniques help to better inform our understanding of the relationship between linguistics, justice, and inequality? Speech act theory also pertains to this observation, because a declaration of war is only meaningful when made by a political leader who is in a position of authority to act upon that declaration. Ordinary citizens do not have the power to declare war or peace. Once a political leader decides to declare war, the rationale for that decision must be explained in a manner that engenders support, if not enthusiasm. Hitler was mindful of the widespread perception among Germans that World War I had ended in ways that they considered to be unjust and unfair. Moreover, he was keenly aware that these perceptions were persistent, and a source of anger among many Germans who were nostalgic for the bygone days when the “Fatherland” was more expansive and influential. He also understood that his declaration of war would garner greater public approbation by arguing that he had exhausted repeated attempts to achieve his objectives through peaceful means – that these olive branches were deflected or rejected by those who cared little about the minority ethnic Germans for whom Hitler proclaimed his loyalty and allegiance. Anyone who listens to Hitler’s 1939 declaration of war will be struck by the fact that he was a master of audience design, because he was able to evoke emotions that included nostalgia, national pride, and the simmering sense of outrage that had spread throughout the German body politic since the end of World War I. The same analytical linguistic tools that allow us to deconstruct the impact of Hitler’s speech, which history now casts in infamy, can also be used when evaluating public speech that history has viewed more favorably. I speak in this instance of Mahatma Gandhi’s 1930 inspirational salt march speech, prior to his pedestrian journey to Dandi, India. Before comparing Hitler’s speeches to

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those delivered publicly by Gandhi, another dimension of audience design is worth noting – namely, Hitler delivered his speeches in German, which was not only his mother tongue but also the national language. Gandhi’s speeches were delivered in English – that is, the language of the colonizers of India; the fact that he used English rather than an indigenous Indian language reflects the political circumstances that impacted the diverse multilingual and religiously bifurcated populations that Gandhi was attempting to reach. These decisions, regarding which language would be most appropriate for the purpose of public speaking, fall within the realm of language policy, if not linguistic planning by default or design. Hitler did not adopt Polish when he declared war because he was seeking to enlist and motivate his fellow Germans toward battle. Gandhi adopted English in order not to exacerbate divisions that existed among different castes and different regions of the country where more than one indigenous language prevailed. We therefore see that dimensions of language planning may also be relevant to the triangulation of linguistics, justice, and equality in illusory ways. Gandhi’s audience, while linguistically diverse in terms of their first languages, were united by the imposition of English on the entire nation without regard to local linguistic or religious circumstances. Rather than defy these linguistic trends, Gandhi strategically employed them to his own advantage. He was not only able to communicate effectively with his fellow Indians; he was also sending a message to the British of his intentions and he did so in a way that deftly constrained their political options. The historical circumstances surrounding events that gave rise to Gandhi’s speech preceding his salt march are complex and, to a considerable extent, exceed the immediacy of our focus on the relationship between speech, injustice, and inequality. Those seeking a more complete historical explanation would be well advised to consult Gandhi’s remarks directly, or to read the work of Kuhn (2010) and Weber (1997), who provide extensive and exacting historical details. Focusing here, quite narrowly, on precisely what Gandhi said on March 11, 1930, his speech began with a sentence exclaiming, “In all probability this will be my last speech to you.” Consider, once again, the relevance of audience design, particularly when the audience consists of two large constituencies – Gandhi’s fellow Indians whom he was seeking to uplift, and the British colonizers whom he repeatedly castigated for their undemocratic control of his nation. Both audiences were alerted to Gandhi’s belief that what he was about to say would evoke reactions that would prevent him from ever speaking publicly again. He knew well that beginning his salt march speech in such a manner would be dramatic and impactful to the audiences for whom he had carefully designed his speech.

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The next two sentences of his speech offer speculation; the first speculation is that the British-controlled government might not allow him to engage in his highly publicized march to Dandi where he intended to make salt from the sea that would be free of any taxation. He also speculated that his intended action might result in the loss of his life. These remarks accomplished two things simultaneously: they alerted Indians to the possibility that Gandhi might be denied the chance to pursue his march and, if he did, that he might lose his life in the process. The political impact on the British-controlled government was constraining: even if it had planned to stop Gandhi from marching, if it did so after this remark, its actions would confirm the further repression that Gandhi had forecast; or, if it was in any way responsible for his death during the journey to Dandi, then Gandhi’s highly visible martyrdom would be enshrined. The relevant historical facts that reveal the relationship between linguistics, injustice, and inequality grow from the British-controlled government of India’s monopoly of the production and sale of salt. This monopoly did more than generate funds through taxation in support of the British-controlled government; it also ensured that Indians’ consumption of salt was entirely under legal stipulation. Gandhi’s speech specifically stated, “Whenever possible, civil disobedience of salt should be started.” Again, because this statement was made during a speech that Gandhi exclaimed might be his last, he acknowledged that he might not live to witness this civil disobedience, and so he provided explicit instructions to “volunteers” who should defy the salt monopoly after his demise. The unauthorized production, sale, and manufacture of salt was illegal under British rule in India at that time. Gandhi described the relevant laws that controlled the production, sale, and taxation of salt, at the same time that he encouraged volunteers to find ways to violate all of these laws whenever they could. Of utmost importance throughout his salt march speech, however, are Gandhi’s repeated refrains demanding that all of these actions be conducted in a nonviolent manner; his mandate that nonviolent civil disobedience remain paramount – even with the specter of his possible death – was ever-present throughout his speech. Once again, two audiences were the intended recipients of these remarks – Indians who might otherwise believe that violent retaliation against British rule might be justified, especially if Gandhi died at the hands of the British government; and the British colonizers who controlled the salt and, by extension, the entire indigenous Indian population. These historical illustrations do more than demonstrate monumental occasions where linguistics, justice, and equality intersect; they also show some of the ways that linguistic analyses, including audience design, conversation analyses, speech act theory, and the ethnography of speaking, can be utilized

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3.5 Educational Inequality

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to clarify the content and the motives of those who once delivered these iconic speeches, regardless of their tyrannical or liberating intent.3 While these well-documented examples of historical speeches are quite noteworthy, they are atypical when compared to contemporary circumstances when ordinary people may find themselves being treated unfairly, if not unlawfully. And if that unfair treatment is bolstered by either statements or documents where linguistic content is used as the rationale for unjust mistreatment, it is quite possible that various linguistic methods could be brought to bear to unmask nefarious intentions that might otherwise go undetected. 3.5

Educational Inequality

Chapter 7 describes many of the experiments that were performed when we first discovered instances of linguistic profiling in housing markets in the San Francisco Bay Area – where telephone inquiries about prospective rental properties were rebuffed, sight unseen, based purely upon the dialect or accent that the caller employed. It is most noteworthy in this chapter to recognize that a great deal of housing discrimination, which can be unjust, unfair, and potentially illegal, is based on first linguistic impressions that trigger a discriminatory response. The initial work on housing discrimination resulted in new efforts to explore the prospect of linguistic profiling in other domains, such as education and employment. There, too, we were able to identify cases where a combination of intentional and unintentional linguistic bias resulted in unequal treatment, with profound consequences impacting the lives of children and adults in the United States, who were not native speakers of mainstream Standard American English (Baugh 2000). The educational problems of which I speak are not unique to the United States but are often found in countries where students attending school do not share a common linguistic background, yet few or no accommodations are made to take their linguistic heritage into account when devising their educational programs. Far too often these students are not native speakers of the dominant national language, or languages, and they also tend to be considerably poorer than children who are native speakers of the dominant national language(s). In Germany, for example, Turkish workers have immigrated to that country for several decades, bringing their entire families from Turkey with them. Their children would then attend German schools, hoping to obtain a good education. However, if these native Turkish-speaking children lacked fluency in German, 3

Illustrations of how these various analytical procedures can and should be used to promote justice are discussed more fully in Chapter 9.

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they were far less likely to succeed; the educational system in that country tracks high school students either toward higher education or vocational schools when they are teenagers, thereby relegating many students of Turkish descent to high schools that are not intended to prepare them for college or professional careers. Somewhat similar educational circumstances exist in the postcolonial countries of Jamaica and Haiti, where a clear social stratification of language exists between social elites who are fluent speakers of either English (i.e., in Jamaica) or French (i.e., in Haiti), and huge segments of the less affluent to poor people who speak Jamaican Creole or Haitian Creole. Elites in both of these countries have always believed that their local languages were actually ungrammatical renditions of either English or French. Nevertheless, thanks to the exceptional efforts of linguists conducting a combination of linguistic and educational research in both countries, these postcolonial nations have evolved into bilingual countries, where English and Jamaican coexist (see Devonish and Carpenter 2007), as do French and Haitian (see DeGraff 2007). As is so often the case wherever educational policies are formulated, politicians and policy makers – not linguists – are responsible for providing the funding and offering guidance as to the forms of curricula that will best serve the populations under their jurisdictions. If policy makers believe that poor children speak an improper form of the same language that they speak, then they may be likely to attribute any academic shortcomings that exist to the students’ being inarticulate, lazy, or possibly not as intelligent as the children of elites who speak “properly.” Despite the fact that a substantial amount of linguistic evidence exists, and that some educational experimentation has demonstrated positive outcomes for Jamaican students who have been taught using explicit bilingual education techniques (Devonish and Carpenter 2007), a great deal of political resistance remains due to these long-standing historical linguistic impressions, which are entrenched and defy change, even in the face of scientific evidence confirming the existence of bilingualism. The educational bias to which linguistic diversity falls prey frequently goes undetected for many reasons, including a political ethos that all students should be treated equally. Consider, for instance, the practice of textbook adoption for the state of Texas. Publishers compete to have their educational materials adopted by the commissioner of education; s/he decides which educational materials will be accepted or rejected based on state review panels consisting of educators, parents, and academic experts from across the state. The Texas State Board of Education (SBOE) then specifies which educational materials are acceptable or unacceptable for public education within the state. Local educators then select the materials they will purchase based on the SBOE lists of approved materials.

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Texas is such a large state that educational materials that have been adopted there are often used in other states with smaller populations simply because these smaller states do not command a comparable market share of the public educational purchases that are required to serve public education in Texas. Thus, if educational materials are ill suited to, say, students for whom English is not native, those students will not have access to educational materials that might better match their linguistic backgrounds and, in turn, their particular educational needs. Although it is true that the textbook adoption process in Texas has been criticized from time to time for attempting to control controversial content in some subject areas, such as human evolution, or the impact and malevolence of slavery in the United States, our focus here is restricted to its practice of failing to recognize or serve Texas’s linguistically diverse students who are not well served by textbooks they cannot read or comprehend. However, the state review panels that identify acceptable (or unacceptable) educational materials are constrained to a one-size-fits-all approach for textbook adoption due to a philosophy that the availability of identical educational materials throughout Texas is fair and unbiased, thinking that all students are being treated identically because they all receive the same educational materials. Yet it is abundantly clear that not all of the students residing in Texas achieve successful educational outcomes, particularly if they are not native speakers of English. Again we find that linguistics, justice, and equality come together when seeking to understand differential educational outcomes for poor Texas students of color.4 Hakuta (1986), Valdés (1996), Zentella (1997), Gutiérrez (2009), and Santa Ana (2004), among others, have persistently attempted to bring greater awareness to the educational plight and needs of English learners attending schools throughout the United States, and their efforts represent outstanding examples where linguistic research has been applied to overcome the injustice of unequal educational opportunities for students who are not native speakers of English. 3.6

Linguistic Human Rights

The educational issues just reviewed that are located in different countries, and that require locally crafted solutions, are part of a larger issue pertaining to linguistic human rights that has been discussed at considerable length by Skutnabb-Kangas (2015), Philipson (1992), Kontra (1999), and Piller (2016), 4

Texas is certainly not the only state where students of color perform less well than White students. However, the practice of statewide textbook adoption may exacerbate this trend among students who lack fluency in mainstream Standard American English.

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among others. Clearly, the education of children frequently intersects with their linguistic human rights whenever educational programs do not align with the linguistic heritage of the student, and some countries have been more receptive to addressing this problem than have others. Is it unjust not to consider or provide effective educational programs for students who may not speak the dominant language(s) in a country? While the issue of injustice may for some be considered moot, there can be no doubt that such linguistic mismatches in educational contexts are unequal, and they could be addressed and perhaps overcome with strategic linguistic intervention. Perhaps one of the clearest examples of a change in national policy that explicitly employed linguistic evaluation to help advance justice and promote equality can be found in South Africa’s post-apartheid national language policy, which now recognizes eleven official languages. Readers may already know that prior to the end of apartheid, only two languages, Afrikaans and English, were officially recognized in South Africa. None of the indigenous languages had achieved official recognition. In addition, the apartheid government had implemented a controversial education program that, at first glance, appeared to support my earlier assertion that children learn best when doing so in a language they already know, yet the political reality was that it was designed to severely limit their prospects. The political context of the struggle for equality in South Africa provides a beneficial illustration of how linguistic human rights can collide with a combination of linguistic domination and subordination that impacts other human rights and the ability to pursue equal justice and opportunity under the law. As was the case with some of the other historical events we have considered, these observations are not intended to offer a comprehensive overview of relevant historical events or circumstances that gave rise to White minority political and linguistic domination in South Africa. Our emphasis remains focused on well-documented events that illustrate the relationship between linguistics, justice, and inequality. The political transformation in South Africa is particularly useful to consider in this regard because it was due largely to the efforts of Neville Alexander (1990, 2002), a trained linguist who was the architect of South Africa’s more inclusive national language policy, whose explicit goal was to overcome the history of racial injustice that had previously excluded indigenous speakers from the majority Black populations from using their native languages for official purposes. Readers who are unfamiliar with South African history, and the transition from apartheid to the election of Nelson Mandela, may wish to learn more about this subject, because our linguistic emphasis here is admittedly incomplete and could inadvertently convey a combination of simplistic or false impressions about the significance of discriminatory pass laws or the

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consequences of the Bantu Education Act, which were precursors to the linguistic liberation that was the object of Alexander’s efforts.5 One year prior to the US Supreme Court landmark ruling in Brown v. Board of Education, which occurred in 1954, the South African government implemented the Bantu Education Act. Whereas the policies supporting racially segregated schools that once existed within the United States offered the pretense that such schools were separate but equal, the educational goals espoused in the Bantu Education Act made clear that education for non-Whites was unequal by design, and intended to perpetuate White supremacy. The act exceeded linguistic constraints, which advocated teaching in the so-called tribal languages to Black South Africans; the act was designed to provide an inferior education that would limit employment prospects for non-White South Africans regardless of their potential or ability. These racially segregated schools, while under the jurisdiction of the dominant White national government, were underfunded and often lacked running water or electricity. Prior to the implementation of the Bantu Education Act, schools serving non-White students tried to promote academic subjects as best they could, but the act eliminated curricula once intended to close educational achievement gaps between the races, in favor of explicit policies that reinforced White supremacy at the expense of the hope of greater social equality or access to higher-paying jobs for Black South Africans. Thus, while in principle it may be arguable that children benefit from receiving education in a language that is well known to them, unless the educational content that is provided in their native tongue is intended to uplift their academic prospects, the potential advantages of native tongue education will be muted. Black South Africans demanded access to educational opportunities that would benefit their lives, and the Soweto uprising of 1976 was triggered in reaction to the overt educational discrimination that was codified by law through the Bantu Education Act.6 The current national language policy of South Africa, while not without flaw, attempts to both recognize and overcome the negative consequences of the act at the same time that it seeks to promote greater linguistic justice through the official recognition of indigenous languages that were once relegated to overt 5

6

Gibson (2004, 2009) provides a lucid account of the importance of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission during the immediate aftermath of apartheid. McCormick (2002) examines a combination of linguistic and social dimensions of the displacement of residents in Cape Town’s District 6, which is also relevant to a complete understanding of the impact of apartheid on the lives of those who had previously lacked any voting rights or political influence. As many as 20,000 high school students participated in protests, beginning on June 16, 1976, in response to the imposition of Afrikaans as a medium of educational instruction. Hundreds of these protesters were killed, and thousands were wounded when police opened fired upon them.

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positions of inferiority in the land of their birth.7 While no well-intended South African would ever suggest reviving the Bantu Education Act, ongoing debates continue regarding the role that languages other than Afrikaans and English should play in higher education. The University of Kwa Zulu Natal, for example, has promoted efforts to utilize iZulu in higher education, and Black students attending Stellenbosch University have requested an expansion of linguistic options beyond Afrikaans, which was the dominant language used for instruction at that university prior to the end of apartheid. It is therefore clear that many South Africans want to integrate and expand the use and importance of all eleven official languages, yet the journey toward full linguistic equality is somewhat perilous for a combination of reasons. English is the only official South African language with immediate global utility, and Afrikaans has the historical advantage of having been the other dominant official language before other languages received official recognition, once Nelson Mandela became president and Neville Alexander was able to formulate the more expansive national language policy that presently exists. The transition from apartheid to a racial egalitarian society in South Africa exhibits a combination of economic, political, social, and educational impediments that have yet to be fully overcome. The linguistic dimensions of this process, described herein, are illustrative of yet another instance where we find that linguistics, justice, and equality are linked inextricably. In several of the remaining chapters, we will have occasion to examine this triangulation in more exacting detail. Linguistic profiling, which occurs when a person is the victim of linguistic discrimination based purely upon his or her manner of speaking, represents one of the clearest areas where linguistic science has already been used to thwart misdeeds – through identifying its use by individuals who seek to conceal discriminatory behavior by using language as a surrogate for excluding people who may otherwise be fully within their rights to pursue employment, or housing, without linguistic encumbrance. We will also evaluate some of the forms of linguistic harassment that occur in public and on the job, where employees often find themselves unfairly berated by overzealous bosses who blurt out hurtful remarks that may create a hostile work environment. Some instances of linguistic harassment have been aimed at people based on their sexual orientation, and insensitive language has been shown to be detrimental to many people throughout the world if they do not conform to the dominant heterosexual norms of the societies in which they live. 7

Despite recognition of eleven official languages, English and Afrikaans remain dominant, and many other indigenous languages exist in South Africa without the status of official recognition.

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While many of the examples that have been illustrated in this chapter have unquestionable legal relevance, we have also observed examples of language bias where unjust behavior may exceed legal relief. When viewed collectively, all of the linguistic illustrations that have been presented in this chapter expand beyond the life-or-death scenarios that we considered in the previous chapter. More broadly, this chapter demonstrates that linguistic science has been underutilized as a means to advance justice and to promote greater equality among humanity worldwide. Linguistics is certainly not a panacea or cure-all for every injustice that people inflict upon one another; however, there are far too many occasions where unjust actions could be challenged or rectified with the assistance of linguistic analysis, although no such assistance has been forthcoming. The tools that linguists might bring to bear when dissecting a specific instance of injustice will vary depending upon the relevant facts and available evidence. Scientific constraints notwithstanding, there may be desirable evidence that is simply unavailable for evaluation; under these circumstances, a credible linguistic analyst must take great care not to overstate the case. With this important disclaimer firmly in mind, we have seen many examples where an array of linguistic tools was used to challenge the linguistic status quo where language barriers reinforced unfair practices against individuals or groups of people. There are also other manifestations, such as educational policies, where linguistic science has been beneficial to those who have been disenfranchised from equal opportunities due to language barriers that have gone undetected or merely overlooked. Such is the case regarding the linguistic legacy of US slave descendants, whose circumstances receive primary attention in the next chapter.

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4

Some Linguistic and Legal Consequences of Slavery in the United States

Several of the linguistic tools that have been identified thus far to assist the pursuit of justice are grounded in the field of sociolinguistics, broadly defined. Whereas theoretical linguistics is devoted to grasping details that are relevant to individuals, and the ways in which their brains, neurology, and physiology connect to the development of linguistic competence (i.e., the ability to identify and produce grammatical sentences in a language), sociolinguists evaluate linguistic behavior in social context. Who is speaking with whom, and toward what end? What was said, and how was it said? These questions, which are often elusive to rigorous scientific inquiry, are relevant to any person who has ever been engaged in a conversation, and Labov (1963, 1966, 1969a, 1969b, 1972a, 1972b, 1994, 2001, 2010) devoted his entire career to the development of sophisticated quantitative analyses that are central to many sociolinguistic studies.1 Labov’s career is also noteworthy with regard to his pioneering studies related to the linguistic legacy of slavery in the United States, which is the main focus of this chapter. In what ways does the history of slavery in the United States intersect with linguistic or legal issues, and are there ways that scientific linguistic research can help to advance justice and equality for US slave descendants? I strongly believe that the answer to the preceding questions is unequivocally, “Yes.” Whereas studies of Black people in the United States are often marginalized within a larger discipline such as anthropology, economics, political science, or psychology, sociolinguistics represents a significant exception because Labov devoted so much of his foundational research to the African American linguistic experience. The global evolution of sociolinguistics as a research discipline owes much to research that began under a banner focused on analyses of Nonstandard Negro English, and its manifestation in this chapter concentrates primarily on the linguistic circumstances of US slave descendants of African origin.2 1

2

William Labov served as my dissertation supervisor. He, more than anyone else, has guided my research and thinking about the ways in which to study language in society, and to use those findings to promote justice. Throughout this chapter matters of diversity among Americans of African descent are emphasized, distinguishing those whose ancestors were once enslaved in the United States from other Black Americans whose ancestors were never enslaved in America.

58

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4.1 Changing Terms of Reference

4.1

59

Changing Terms of Reference

It is important to appreciate that the terms Negroes and Colored People were once the most respectable ways that Americans could refer to African slave descendants; this is no longer the case as both terms are now in disfavor – even among Black people themselves. Those references, once considered to be highly respectful, were also intended to be inclusive of all people of African descent.3 A Negro need not be an American, and Colored People referred to Blacks but also to other non-White populations, including Native Americans and many Latinxs, among others. From a scientific point of view, racial nomenclature has been inadequate, resulting in part from the fact that respectable terminology used to refer to US slave descendants has evolved. The most disparaging term of reference is well known, and it is so reviled that it is now euphemistically referred to as the “N . . . word.”4 Americans who have wanted to avoid that word have witnessed the evolution of changing terminology, including the negative-to-positive transformation of the word Black when used to refer to a person of African descent. During my childhood, in the 1950s and 1960s, any reference to a fellow African American as being Black was considered to be an insult. However, the advent of the civil rights movement, accentuated simultaneously by the overtly political Black Power movement, witnessed the unanticipated inversion of the term Negroes yielding to Blacks – to the point that the word Negro is now considered to be offensive, while many US slave descendants frequently use the label Black people as their preferred respectable term of self-reference (Baugh 1991).5 The evolution of the changing terms that inferred respectable reference to US slave descendants is relevant to the pursuit of justice for several reasons, not the least of which being that slaves initially had no rights under the US Constitution. It was not until passage of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments that Black people living in America had any 3

4

5

Gates and Burton (2011) remind us that debates regarding acceptable terminology depicting slave descendants exceeded the labels Negros or Colored People. The label Colored was challenged in 1831 due to the potentially offensive reference to color alone, rather than alternative terms such as “Afric-American” or “Africamerican.” Similarly, Gates and Burton (2011) report that Negro was rebuked that same year (i.e., 1831) in an editorial appearing in The Liberator. Despite the racist origins of the “N . . . word,” many people often use it, occasionally intended as an insult; but often among African Americans themselves, it is said as a term of either endearment or solidarity. Pronunciation is also crucial to this distinction, where “Nigger” is always considered to be derogatory, the pronunciation “Nigga” is not universally stated in a pejorative manner. Although Malcolm X and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had many political and philosophical differences, a close examination of their public speeches reveals that each man came to adopt the term “Black” while abandoning the term “Negro,” which both men used in their early speeches as a positive term to refer to their fellow African Americans.

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expectation of legal protection under US law. The legal evolution that eventually included slave descendants as citizens of the United States has a great deal to do with the history of unequal treatment based, most significantly, on race, not language. 4.2

Discourse Analysis of the Dred Scott Ruling

Thanks to the existence of a useful linguistic tool, namely, discourse analysis, we can shed additional light on this subject with exacting clarity, because the most iconic historical legal ruling intended to exclude African Americans from ever being treated equally in the United States rarely mentioned race. More precisely, Chief Justice Roger B. Taney’s opinion in the Dred Scott case, at least from a linguistic point of view, is both extraordinary and ironic. It is extraordinary because of his ability to restrict his ruling to a single race, namely, “Negroes.” His opinion is also ironic because it may hold the key to finding new ways to address the inequality that is still experienced by many US slave descendants without explicitly needing to refer to their race. The concept of race and how it should be defined or used for policy purposes remains quite controversial and operationally problematic for many social scientists, legal scholars, politicians, and policy makers. Returning to Justice Taney’s ruling, one of the tactics he employed when writing his decision was to dehumanize those who were enslaved in America; by doing so he could then justify their exclusion from legal protection or consideration. He chose an interesting perspective to support this effort, by concentrating on those whose ancestors were brought to this country (the United States) and sold as slaves. This phraseology also contains the potential to deemphasize race along with controversial policies based on tenuous racial classifications. His observations regarding the legal paradox that confronted “Negroes” did more than expose fundamental contradictions in the US Constitution that tolerated slavery; they confirmed that the legacy of enslavement, not race, could be the locus of American racial reconciliation. As a linguist, I have been fascinated by Taney’s carefully crafted wording and the distinction he makes when he writes, “It will be observed, that the plea applies to that class of persons only whose ancestors were negroes of the African race, and imported into this country, and sold and held as slaves.”6 It is because of Taney’s distinction, which he repeats, that we see his fixation with slavery, rather than a more amorphous group classification based on racial background alone. Moreover, his legal concern is precisely expressed in the following statement: “Can a Negro, whose ancestors were imported into this country, and sold as slaves, become a member of the political community 6

Dred Scott v. John F.A. Sandford, 60, U.C. (19 HOW.) 393,399 (1857).

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4.2 Discourse Analysis of the Dred Scott Ruling

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formed and brought into existence by the Constitution of the United States, and as such become entitled to all the rights, and privileges, and immunities, guaranteed by the instrument to the citizen?”7 His usage of the terms “Negro” and “citizen” are particularly worthy of close scrutiny because they are not compatible. Taney strives to make the distinction irreconcilable. By his logic, Negroes, whose ancestors were imported and sold as slaves, were ineligible for any of the “rights, and privileges” afforded by the federal Constitution to citizens. The Dred Scott decision attempted to make clear that descendants of slaves in the United States should never gain access to the courts or equal justice under the law. However, slave descendants are currently a subset of the African American population, and debates pertaining to affirmative action based on race fail to appreciate the full range of cultural diversity represented by Black citizens in the United States. John Ogbu’s (1978, 1992) classification of caste-like minorities in the United States provides useful insight in this regard. Ogbu classifies US citizens not by race, but by family heritage regarding the immigrant status of their ancestors as voluntary, involuntary, or autonomous. In Chapter 8, we further explore some essential linguistic dimensions of Ogbu’s categories as well as corresponding discrimination based on distinctive accents or dialects (Baugh 2006). When viewed from a linguistic point of view, the African American population corresponds closely to Ogbu’s caste-like categories, particularly with respect to the distinction between voluntary and involuntary immigrants. Stated in other terms, Black Americans who have, or whose ancestors have, immigrated to the United States of their own volition tend to differ linguistically and culturally from Black Americans whose ancestors were imported to this country and sold as slaves. Taney was unquestionably referring to involuntary immigrants, according to Ogbu’s classification. When important cultural, linguistic, educational, economic, and political differences are viewed in terms of broader circumstances of immigration to the United States, challenges to the empirical validity of racially based domestic policies emerge. In The Case for Reparations, Charles Ogletree (2002) devoted primary attention to disadvantaged US slave descendants. “It’s not designed to benefit the Tiger Woodses and Oprah Winfreys or so many others who have overcome the barriers of institutional discrimination,” Ogletree says. He does not devote direct attention to distinctions between descendants of US slaves and, say, people of African origin whose ancestors were enslaved outside of the United States. To his credit, Barack Obama acknowledged these important cultural distinctions in his first book, noting that his own African American experience was atypical (Obama 1995). Although Obama is an African American, as a biracial African American whose African father was 7

Dred Scott v. John F.A. Sandford, 60, U.C. (19 HOW.) 403 [Emphasis added] (1857).

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a voluntary immigrant to the United States and whose mother is a European American, he has no direct historical familial ties to American slavery. 4.3

Refining Linguistic Labels to Distinguish Diversity among Black People

Different linguistic labels pertaining to Black people reveal significant diversity. Table 4.1 lists four prominent Black politicians: President Nelson Mandela, President Barack Obama, former Secretary of State Colin Powell, and former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. For the purpose of this discussion, we consider alternative labels and their relevance to all or some of these prominent political figures. Although all four can be classified as Black, only three are African American. Of the African Americans only two are slave descendants, namely, Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice. However, only Secretary Rice is descended from people who were once enslaved in the United States. Secretary Powell’s ancestors were enslaved elsewhere. All of those listed in Table 4.1 are African descendants, but only Secretary Rice would fall under Taney’s depiction of “a Negro, whose ancestors were imported into this country, and sold as slaves.” Based on this evidence, and more, I think it is important to reform many controversial race-based policies in favor of pinpointing assistance to US slave descendants who are most in need of help. The slave descendant case is presented more fully by Ogletree (2002). Blacks who have moved to the United States of their own volition as voluntary immigrants may differ considerably from those whose ancestors were brought to this country and sold as slaves. These distinctions are not trivial from a legal perspective, nor are they irrelevant to well-intended policies that frequently miss their intended target population. Again, Taney’s insights prove helpful because of their unmitigated linkage to slavery in the United States. Table 4.1 Diversity among prominent Black political figures

Nelson Mandela Barack Obama Colin Powell Condoleezza Rice

Black

Black/African American

Slave Descendant

US Slave Descendant

Yes Yes Yes Yes

No Yes Yes Yes

No No Yes Yes

No No No Yes

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All People of Black African Descent Black/African Americans US Descendants of Slaves Owned in Other Countries US Slave Descendants of African Origin

Figure 4.1 Diversity among people of African descent

Figure 4.1 illustrates this point with relevance to the potential application of affirmative action policies, some of which draw upon the US Census Bureau, which uses the term Black or African American to refer to anyone of African descent; it determined that Black or African American referred to people with “origins in any of the Black racial groups of Africa,” including people who reported their race, for example, as Black, African American, Nigerian, or Haitian.8 Taney’s opinion, however, was concerned only with those whose ancestors were once enslaved in America, and thus it did not conflate all people of African descent into a single category. Brown v. Board of Education perpetuates this trend, confirming that “minors of the Negro race” could not be “denied admission to schools attended by white children under laws requiring or permitting segregation according to race.”9 Again, using Figure 4.1 as a point of reference, Brown v. Board of Education does not constrain itself to the plight of US slave descendants, but instead to Negro children, who – by implication – are presumed to be descendants of enslaved Africans in America. Racial classification alone, however, is no longer sufficient to identify those Blacks who still suffer the consequences of the legacy of American enslavement to which Taney makes most explicit reference. Ogletree’s (2002) best case for reparations can still be made for those who are disadvantaged US slave descendants. In the meantime, the linguistic evidence is unmistakable. American vernaculars still include the linguistic legacy of the African slave trade, which left indelible traces of African and colonial dialects that are themselves the product of language contact on plantations throughout North and South America. Moreover, descendants of African slaves in Brazil, the Caribbean, and the United States all speak vernacular dialects of postcolonial European languages that have always been deemed as inferior to their dominant standard counterparts. 8 9

US Census Bureau, 2000 Census of Population, Public Law 94–171, at www.census.gov /quickfacts/ Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483, 487–488 (1954).

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4.4

Voluntary Black Immigration to the United States

We turn now to Ogbu’s voluntary Black immigrants, who, in striking linguistic and cultural contrast to US slave descendants, have personally chosen to immigrate to the United States, usually long after slavery’s demise. While these newer Black Americans may suffer the consequences of racism long known to US slave descendants, it is difficult to determine whether they are the intended recipients of the historical discrimination described by Taney, nor is it clear that they are the intended beneficiaries of affirmative action programs designed to overcome historical discrimination in the United States. In the wake of 2003 Supreme Court decisions regarding college admissions at the University of Michigan, it is our hope that linguists and other social scientists will lend further support to legal efforts to enhance the empirical precision with which we shall ultimately overcome the history of racial injustice born of slavery and the social disadvantages that still afflict so many US slave descendants.10 Although many hailed the divided Supreme Court decision regarding law school admission at the University of Michigan because it preserved the right to consider race along with other factors, that decision perpetuates the same flaw that has marked most legal rulings that pertain to race: they have been reluctant to make explicit reference to slavery, thereby perpetuating a misleading connection between Black Americans (as a race) and those “whose ancestors were brought to this country, and sold as slaves.” These observations are offered in an effort to enhance precision across disciplines in the quest for fair and equal treatment of those who may be harmed because their ancestors, as slaves, were not free to participate fully in the Republic or the growing economy that their forced labor and ensuing military service helped to create and sustain. It is perhaps a fitting tribute to Taney’s overtly racially divisive ambitions that we now acknowledge his exacting language with a resounding reply to the ponderous question he posed more than a century and a half ago. Toward that end, may it be said, and may it be so, that henceforth all those “whose ancestors were imported into this country, and sold as slaves” shall become full members of the political community formed and brought into existence by the Constitution of the United States, and as such become entitled to all the rights, privileges, and immunities guaranteed by that instrument to the citizen.

10

Grutter v Bollinger, 539 US 306 (2003); Gratz v. Bollinger, 539 US 244 (2003).

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5

Linguistic Profiling

5.1

Inception

Linguistic profiling differs from other forms of linguistic discrimination in specific ways; those who engage in linguistic profiling make inferences about the speech they hear, and then they act upon those inferences by denying goods or services to the speaker based on negative stereotypes about her or his speech. To more fully comprehend the complete nature and complexity of linguistic profiling, it is perhaps beneficial to consider the construct from which it was initially derived, racial profiling. The concept of “racial profiling” was formulated in the wake of evidence that police officers – primarily in New Jersey, but not exclusively in New Jersey – were stopping Black and Latinx drivers in far greater numbers than White drivers along the very same thoroughfares. Some police departments did not keep track of the racial background of those who were being stopped for traffic violations; of the law enforcement organizations that did maintain those records, many exhibited patterns of racial discrimination based on the disproportionately high numbers of minority drivers who were being stopped. Racial profiling was fairly easy to detect once accurate records were available. Since there are many more White (i.e., majority) drivers than Black or Latinx (i.e., minority) drivers, if the majority of those who are stopped for traffic violations are members of minority groups, then it is difficult to conclude that the officers who made these traffic stops were not specifically targeting minority drivers – hence the subsequent creation of the phrase accusing many law enforcement agencies of engaging in racial profiling. Racial profiling occurs when a person engages in racially discriminatory behavior based on seeing the person who is the object of the ensuing discrimination. These discriminatory acts are the result of visual identification. Although some forms of linguistic profiling are racially motivated, triggered by linguistic stereotypes about the racial background of various speakers, other forms of linguistic profiling have nothing whatsoever to do with race. Some instances of employment discrimination, resulting from telephone inquiries about job availability, for example, have exposed instances of sexual 65

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discrimination: women were told that jobs were unavailable, while male callers inquiring about the very same job were told that the position had not yet been filled; in these instances, linguistic profiling is based on sex, not race. Some scam artists have begun to target the elderly, often using random-digitdialing devices to initiate telephone calls intended to ensnare unsuspecting senior citizens; they are linguistically profiled on the basis of the fact that they sound old to the caller, who then launches a pitch intended to swindle them out of their money or property. Other instances of linguistic profiling have been detected by those who believe callers have discriminated against them based on linguistic stereotypes associated with their sexual orientation. Thus, whereas racial profiling is not only visual but is also constrained to race, linguistic profiling is most often associated with discrimination based on speech, which has racial significance in some cases, but may exceed racially motivated discrimination in many other instances. 5.2

Biblical Precursor

Before turning to other contemporary considerations related to linguistic profiling and discrimination, it is helpful to appreciate that the phenomena of which we speak have existed for centuries; the first attestation of linguistic profiling that has been described fully is depicted in the Bible. The crucial episode is portrayed in the Book of Judges 12:5 and 12:6 and illustrates a situation in which combatants used language as a means to identify their enemy – that is, when clothing or unique racial characteristics were insufficient for this purpose: The Gileadites captured the fords of the Jordan [River] opposite Ephraim. And it happened when any of the fugitives of Ephraim said, “Let me cross over,” the men of Gilead would say to him, “Are you an Ephraimite?” If he said, “No,” then they would say to him, “Say now, ‘Shibboleth.’” But he said “Sibboleth,” for he could not pronounce it correctly. Then they seized him and slew him at the fords of the Jordan. Thus there fell at that time 42,000 of Ephraim.

The consequences of linguistic profiling described in the preceding passage had lethal consequences for thousands of Ephraimites, whose only hope of survival depended upon their ability to produce an utterance that contained phonological characteristics that were foreign to them. Although contemporary illustrations of linguistic profiling often result in setbacks for those who fall prey to its discriminatory consequences, the likelihood of death has been greatly reduced, though not completely eliminated. 5.3

Technological Ramification

The biblical attestation of linguistic profiling just described took place thousands of years ago, long before the invention of the telephone, or cell phones,

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and their expansive use throughout the world. These inventions have added to the ease with which linguistic profiling now occurs, as well as the complexity of proving that it has indeed taken place when a speaker has been the object of unwelcome, if not illegal, linguistic discrimination. The existence of linguistic profiling in the United States was initially discovered by proponents of fair housing. Administrators affiliated with the National Fair Housing Alliance in Washington, DC, had been conducting tests to determine if patterns of housing discrimination based on race could be detected in different regions of the country. Some of these tests were conducted in person, while others took place using the telephone. Both forms of evaluation, that is, reactions based on face-to-face meetings as well as requests by phone, confirmed that members of minority groups were denied opportunities to rent properties far more frequently than was the case for Whites making identical inquiries, often with evidence of being less qualified than the minority tester who expressed interest in renting the very same properties. Linguistic profiling was detected during many of these telephone calls when minority callers, who were usually African Americans or Latinxs, were told that the apartment they were seeking was not available; yet White callers requesting the availability of the very same apartment were subsequently told that the unit was available for rent. Many of these prospective landlords had no idea they were being scrutinized, and the fact that some of these individuals would systematically deny the availability of any apartment to African American or Latinx callers was carefully documented. Advocates for fair housing were able to demonstrate that some unscrupulous landlords were actively engaged in discriminatory behavior, even though they had never seen the prospective tenant in person. Many of these prospective landlords – once confronted with the facts of their biased telephone replies – would claim that they had no idea about the racial background of various callers because they had never seen the caller and therefore could not possibly draw any racial inference about someone they had not seen in person. They frequently believed that this lack of visual identification would be sufficient to inoculate them against any potential prosecution claiming racial discrimination. However, the experimental findings described in Chapter 7 have been used to show that, in many instances, the discriminatory intent to exclude minorities from some housing markets was unmistakable. Prior to the invention of the telephone, this type of discrimination could not have taken place, because it would have been necessary for someone to actually meet a potential client or prospective employee in person before rejecting that person, say, due to an undesirable speech pattern. The technological creation of the telephone, followed by the inventions of radio and eventually television,

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provided millions of people worldwide with the opportunity to hear speakers of other dialects without having to travel to the regions where they lived. Various legal systems throughout the world simply did not anticipate that telephones could be used as instruments of discrimination, or that the nature of that discrimination might exceed racial prejudice. However, we have now gathered clear evidence of linguistic profiling globally, and those who engage in this type of surreptitious linguistic discrimination have done so for quite some time, often without detection. The pursuit of justice demands a clearer understanding of linguistic profiling, and the various ways in which it has been effectuated. 5.4

Foundational Research

Analyses of linguistic discrimination grow from a combination of research methods that have culminated with a series of studies and experiments to evaluate the ways in which people perceive speech, or writing in some cases, and the ways in which they convey their linguistic preferences and dislikes. The roots of this research exist in classical studies of dialectology. There is a long-standing tradition of dialect analyses in Europe, including France (Chaurand 1972), Germany (Bernhard 1954), and England (Trudgil 1986). Indeed, the English research tradition in this regard has been immortalized by George Bernard Shaw’s (1918) play, Pygmalion, describing a poor flower girl, Eliza Doolittle, who speaks with a working-class cockney accent and undergoes a linguistic transformation at the behest of an English linguist, Professor Henry Higgins. Although fictional, Pygmalion calls attention to class differences in British speech based largely on pronunciation. Many readers of this chapter may already be familiar with the play, or its film incarnation, My Fair Lady. The essential point is that Eliza is the object of linguistic ridicule at the outset of the play, and with sufficient linguistic indoctrination she becomes an object of linguistic adoration. European dialectology preceded robust studies of American dialects by notable scholars such as Hans Kurath (1972) and Raven McDavid (1979, 1980), as well as Frederick Cassidy, who coordinated research resulting in the Dictionary of American Regional English (1985). These dialectologists concentrated primarily on lexical items and their pronunciation. In other words, they were not grammarians studying syntax, but scholars devoted to evaluating the dialect features associated with different regions where native speakers of the local language(s) would often employ unique linguistic pronunciations, words, or expressions. Sociolinguists such as Uriel Weinreich (1953) and his student William Labov (1966, 1972b) used many of the methods developed by dialectologists, but they also went further by conducting more extensive analyses of

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entire linguistic systems. Weinreich is perhaps best known for his studies of languages in contact, and the relative impact they have on speakers who have been influenced by exposure to a language that is not native to them. Labov advanced studies of variable linguistic phenomena, moving beyond the optional variability described by Chomsky and Halle (1968) pertaining to the sound pattern of English. Whereas Chomsky and Halle posited that some phonological rules were optional, suggesting that people applied a rule in some instances but not in others, Labov observed that some of this linguistic variability was gradient, favoring rules in some instances, and disfavoring them in others. As a result, Labov (1969b) developed “variable rules” that were not merely “optional” but were governed by combinations of phonological and grammatical influences. A great deal of Labov’s research was descriptive by design, because it was necessary to evaluate the language of ordinary people using colloquial speech in order to reveal the variable patterns where they might pronounce coming as “comin’” or told as “tol’.” Labov’s quantitative procedures were refined by Cedergren and Sankoff (1974), who developed computerized programs to evaluate linguistic performance (i.e., speech) as a statistical reflection of linguistic competence (Chomsky 1957, 1965). Dialectologists and sociolinguists studied language usage, and by doing so they were able to identify significant differences in the ways that speakers of the same language employ unique linguistic characteristics. Armed with these methodological tools, Preston (1989) began to conduct a series of experiments that were foundational to his creation of the discipline known as “perceptual dialectology.” Preston discovered that in addition to the fact that people who spoke the same native language but lived in different regions of the country tended to employ distinctive linguistic traits, they also maintained differences of linguistic opinion about the regional boundaries of other dialects, as well as whether they considered those dialects to be appealing or appalling. Generally speaking, the vast majority of speakers of American English value their local dialect and tend to have a high opinion of it in comparison to dialects associated with other regions of the country. Stereotypes associated with specific racial or ethnic groups are another matter, and these were not immediately evident from studies of perceptual dialectology that focused on provincial considerations. Nevertheless, an abundance of evidence existed to suggest that some linguistic prejudice against speakers of minority dialects did exist, although not universally, and frequently these prejudicial responses were triggered by a small number of linguistic features. Preston’s (1989) analyses of perceptual dialectology are not inherently linguistically judgmental, although some of his research reveals commentaries about dialect preferences in different parts of the United States. Other scholars,

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including Lambert (1972) and Baker (1992), have explicitly studied language attitudes. In some instances, such as the analyses of Cohen (1974), attitudinal studies were oriented toward speakers of languages other than English. Tucker and Lambert (1972) have explored attitudes toward different minority dialects of American English, and some of their attitudinal evaluations have racial implications, as embodied in research by Wolfram and Schilling (2006). However, additional research exists that exposes strong opinions regarding dialects or accents that are either cherished or reviled by members of the same race who do not share the same speech styles. Much of the work devoted to language attitude evaluations has supported other studies of discrimination based on language. Lambert’s (1972) study was interdisciplinary and innovative, combining experimental methods from psychology with carefully crafted linguistic scripts that exposed bias against many French speakers in Canada, a nation where both English and French are sanctioned by law. He cleverly used balanced bilingual speakers to produce speech variously in French and English; listeners who had no idea they were judging the same person, albeit speaking either French or English, randomly evaluated their languages. Thus, while these bilingual speakers remained fixed, in the sense that the same individual produced both languages, Lambert (1972) was able to expose several instances where French was devalued. Baker’s (1992) attitudinal studies also acknowledged psychological research that pondered the potential value or cognitive limitations that might result from bilingualism. Proponents of bilingualism and its cognitive advantages argued that knowledge of more than one language clearly enhanced a person’s expressive capacity, and, by extension, his/her mental acuity. Critics of bilingualism claimed that cognitive deficiencies might result from linguistic decline, where two languages operating within the same speech community were deemed unequal socially and, by extension, attitudinally where minority languages, such as Welsh, Gaelic, Irish, or French (in Canada) were somehow subordinate to English. Baker (1992) also observed that many educational policies were designed to favor the dominant language (i.e., English) at the expense of the less influential language that had been subjugated, often as a result of political circumstances that reinforced negative opinions and social pressures on those minority languages. Beyond matters of bilingualism, Tannen (2003, 2006, 2009b) and Lakoff (1973) independently demonstrate that differential linguistic attitudes can be found within a family, or on the job, particularly when language usage is either shared among women or directed at women whose employers may be insensitive men, or worse. They have discovered many instances where attitudes toward women, or among women engaged in discourse, intersect with language usage that is typically unique to women, thereby adding important sexual

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dimension to language attitude research that might otherwise be easily overlooked. Chapter 7 provides a fairly complete account of research conducted by Purnell, Idsardi, and Baugh (1999), encompassing a series of experiments that incorporated insights from a combination of the research methods previously described. They evaluated the extent to which speakers of American English could accurately identify the racial background of speakers. Moreover, some of these experiments evaluated how accurately speakers of American English could specify the race of a given speaker based upon hearing the single word, “hello.” Purnell et al. (1999) therefore concluded that listeners did not usually require extensive exposure to any given speaker of different American English dialects before they could draw an accurate inference regarding the dialect background of the speaker. 5.5

Contemporary Considerations

Although early research on linguistic profiling began with studies of housing discrimination, newer analyses of various forms of linguistic discrimination have expanded to a variety of social domains. Long before evaluations of linguistic profiling existed, many educators were inadequately trained to identify linguistic bias in schools. In the vast majority of instances where educational bias in schools had been detected, the resulting discriminatory behavior was not overt; that is, the biased behavior among teachers, administrators, and staff members was not the result of explicit racial prejudice but the product of misunderstandings about the linguistic backgrounds of students who lacked native proficiency in mainstream Standard American English. Some of the most obvious confusion grew from a lack of awareness regarding the best ways to educate students for whom English is not native. This was especially so prior to 1976, when different states had alternative policies pertaining to the education of students who were not native speakers of English. In the worst cases, no special accommodations were made to assist students who did not understand English. Under such circumstances, the resulting linguistic profiling had negative educational consequences because educators simply had no idea of how best to meet the educational needs of students who could not comprehend instructions given in English, nor read or write English. Although some states and school districts did attempt to find ways to improve educational opportunities for English language learners, these efforts were inconsistent, resulting in differential educational outcomes that routinely lagged far behind those for students whose first language is English. These issues came to a head in San Francisco when a student who was a native speaker of Chinese enrolled in a public school in that city, but no educational accommodation was made for his language background. His

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educational performance suffered as a result, and his family filed suit against the school district, complaining that by the district’s not recognizing that he could not understand English, there was no way he could be expected to succeed in school. The case resulted in the 1976 Supreme Court ruling Lau v. Nichols, which was won by the plaintiff. The ruling asserted that public schools throughout the nation needed to make special educational accommodations for students who did not speak English. The educational plight of many African American students, from a linguistic point of view, has been less clear. Some of the earliest efforts to promote improved educational outcomes for African American students employed bilingual education techniques (Baratz and Shuy 1969). Ensuing efforts promoted bidialectal education programs that were intended to respect home and community usage of AAVE while providing students with ways to learn prescribed dialects of English that were demanded in academic contexts. This educational journey was jostled by the fact that some scholars, including Arthur Jensen (1969) and Berieter and Englemann (1966), believed that Black students were either intellectually incapable (in Jensen’s case) or that they arrived in school lacking a coherent linguistic system (as espoused by Bereiter and Englemann). Their opinions were indirectly reinforced by research in England conducted by Basil Bernstein (1961) that claimed to identify significant class differences in language usage where members of the upper classes were said to be speakers of an “elaborated code,” while speakers from the working and lower classes were constrained by a “restricted code.” Collectively these scholars were advocates of a “deficit hypothesis” suggesting that minority or working-class students simply did not have the intellectual or linguistic capacity to achieve academic success, and the legacy of dismal educational outcomes for these groups – for many – seemed to confirm the accuracy of these controversial opinions. In contrast to studies that accentuated racial, cultural, and linguistic deficiencies, a group of diverse scholars conducted research that argued that minority and working-class students had experienced “different” modes of linguistic development that were barriers to their academic success. Stated in other words, these scholars argued that many low-income and minority students were not suffering from any intellectual or linguistic abnormalities, but that combinations of residential segregation, relative linguistic isolation, poverty, and being educated at underfunded schools accounted for their low academic performance (Cazden, John, and Hymes 1972). Black students, and their language usage, came under close educational and legal scrutiny in 1979, when eleven inner-city African American students were bused from their home community to Ann Arbor, Michigan, to attend a more affluent public school. When they registered for school, they were given some tests to determine suitable educational placements, and the eleven students in

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question were (mis?)diagnosed as suffering from abnormal linguistic development. A speech pathologist administered an evaluation that “proved” these Black students from the inner city lacked “normal” language development, and they were subsequently placed in remedial education classes, where their academic performance continued to wane. Their parents were initially disheartened and then emboldened by the fact that they, the parents, disagreed with these assessments and believed their children might be suffering from racial discrimination in violation of their civil rights. These parents consulted with attorneys, whom they hired to file a class action lawsuit against the district, and, again, the preliminary complaints argued that the students’ civil rights were being violated on the basis of race. By remarkable coincidence of timing, Geneva Smitherman (1978) had just published Talkin’ and Testifyin: The Language of Black America. She also appeared on the Today Show that year, and her appearance was seen by the plaintiffs’ attorneys, all of whom resided in Detroit, where Professor Smitherman was teaching at the time at Wayne State University. Two events had transpired that made their collaboration fortuitous; first, Judge Charles Joiner, who was the federal district court judge overseeing this trial, dismissed the charges associated with racially motivated civil rights violations, and, second, he informed the attorneys that since the students’ remedial placement was based on pathological evaluations of their speech, the case could proceed as long as the foci were on matters pertaining to language. Smitherman began to travel across the country consulting with many of the most prominent linguists who had studied AAVE, including William Labov, Richard Bailey (her mentor), and several other distinguished linguists, all of whom agreed to serve as expert witnesses on behalf of the plaintiffs. By striking contrast, the defendants (i.e., the Ann Arbor School District) chose not to call upon any experts in its defense, arguing instead that the district had never made any special educational accommodations for students who speak various American English dialects, regardless of their racial background. From the standpoint of the linguistic discriminatory issues that are central to this discussion, it is noteworthy that this trial exposed the fact that speech pathology diagnostics for children in the United States needed to be revised to account for those whose dialect backgrounds differed from those of children who had learned mainstream Standard American English natively. In addition, this trial alerted educators to the fact that many teachers were ill equipped to provide the necessary instruction and encouragement to introduce academic varieties of English to African American students who had been raised in urban or rural communities where AAVE was common, to say little of the motivational strategies that would be necessary to convince students that they should

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use formal styles of language that, in their local parlance, were routinely thought of as “talking White.”1 The Black English Trial concluded with a verdict in favor of the plaintiffs; the Ann Arbor School District decided not to appeal the decision, choosing instead to provide educational programs for their teachers to better inform them about the linguistic circumstances of the vast majority of their Black students. It also agreed to teach some educational strategies to promote academic uses of English without punitive repercussions for the dialect differences that many of these educators previously devalued. Although this legal ruling had a strong local impact in the Ann Arbor School District, many other urban educators were slow to respond to this verdict. Although of great legal significance, unlike Lau v. Nichols the Black English Trial did not have national standing because the Supreme Court did not consider it. Had the Ann Arbor School District chosen to appeal the ruling, it is difficult to predict the ensuing legal or educational outcomes, but because Judge Joiner’s ruling was only relevant to his local federal district, the educational impact of this case was muted and haphazard. Some states and school districts did take notice of the ruling and tried to implement educational programs to promote greater use of English for academic purposes among their African American students, while other states and school districts made no accommodations whatsoever in the wake of the case. The most notable subsequent national development began in 1981 in California. Members of the California State Department of Education attempted to forestall the possibility of litigation by students who spoke AAVE, and it implemented an optional educational program titled “Proficiency in Standard English Program for Speakers of Black Language.” The program was adopted in several school districts throughout the state, particularly those school districts that had large numbers of African American students. The adoption of the phrase “Black Language,” rather than “Black English Vernacular” or “Ebonics,” was intended to avoid any potential controversy over nomenclature; proponents of this program were trying to avoid some of the politicized problems that were associated with different terminology that had been used to refer to language usage among Black students. Other programs in DeKalb County, Georgia, were initiated to address many of the same 1

The issue of “acting White” was described extensively by Fordham and Ogbu (1986) in terms that included and exceeded language usage. For many inner-city students, their use of language is strongly associated with their own cultural identity, and, by extension, cultural loyalties in many instances. The belief that attempts to embrace mainstream Standard American English could give the impression that the students are “acting White” is also integral to their personal identity, particularly if they are proud of their cultural background and recognize that their manner of speaking will be perceived as a badge of racial or ethnic loyalty.

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educational concerns, albeit with emphasis on alternative pedagogical strategies. Linguists and speech pathologists began to devote more attention to the linguistic circumstances and the educational plight of African American students (Wolfram and Fasold 1969; Labov 1972a; Baugh 1983; Rickford 1999; Craig and Washington 2000; Seymour 2004). Despite many of these laudable efforts to enhance educational outcomes for African American students, few ventures resulted in improvements that substantially closed academic achievement gaps between Black and White students. These performance discrepancies became so pronounced in Oakland, California, during the early 1990s that educational leaders in that city created an African American Educational Task Force to devise strategies to overcome these seemingly intractable problems. After devoting considerable energy to creating new solutions to this age-old dilemma, Oakland’s African American Educational Task Force developed a resolution to declare Ebonics to be the language spoken by the 28,000 Black students who were enrolled in that school district in 1996. The Oakland School Board adopted the resolution at the end of that year, and a huge controversy immediately ensued regarding its decision, which essentially argued that Oakland’s African American students did not speak a language that was genetically related to English. Notwithstanding the fact that many problems were associated with Oakland’s Ebonics resolution, including that the vast majority of the Black students in that district were speakers of English, albeit vernacular African American English, the motivation behind the resolution was driven, at least in part, by the fact that Black students were not eligible to receive any of the funds utilized for the teaching of English as a second language. Thus, any educational declaration that would define Black speech as a non-English entity would arguably overcome the legal hurdle that had otherwise blocked federal bilingual education funding from being used to promote language arts in schools for Black students, not only in Oakland, but also potentially across the country. Although linguists were quick to point out that Oakland’s Ebonics resolution had intellectual merit (Rickford and Rickford 2000; Smitherman 2000), public outcries against Ebonics were overwhelming, and the Oakland School District soon suspended plans to continue this effort. Within a year, the city’s school superintendent had been replaced, and Ebonics was also stricken from all of the educational efforts to promote African American education in that city and others across the country. The backlash against Ebonics was so great, in fact, that it helped to fuel other legislation that would disallow educational programs based on race. Californians passed Proposition 209 in 1996 as an amendment to the state constitution to prohibit state governmental agencies from considering race, ethnicity, or sex regarding matters of public contracting, public employment, or public education. Proposition 209 was also known as the California Civil

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Rights Initiative (CCRI) and it passed overwhelmingly, which, in turn, disallowed all of the educational support for school districts that had previously been promoted through the Proficiency in Standard English Program for speakers of Black language, because that educational enterprise was explicit in its racial specification.2 Since that time, educators have been loath to embrace Ebonics, nor have many programs been launched to address the special literacy needs of African American students. Two exceptions are noteworthy and deserving of additional commentary. William Labov and Robert Williams – who coined the term “Ebonics” – testified before a committee of the US Senate shortly after the Ebonics episode in Oakland. Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, a former attorney, chaired the committee and was aware of the Black English Trial, as well as the fact that the plaintiffs prevailed in that case. As a result of this awareness, and some additional insights that Senator Specter described regarding his own linguistic heritage as a Jewish child living within a family of Yiddish speakers who had encountered discrimination, he proved to be sympathetic to the educational goals espoused by Oakland’s African American Educational Task Force. He eventually provided funding to Labov and other scholars affiliated with California State University at Hayward (near Oakland, California) to develop new educational materials designed to enhance reading, writing, and speaking for African American students. Prior to that time, Noma LeMoine, an educator working for the Los Angeles Unified School District, had developed a program titled “Language Development Program for African American Students” (LDPAAS). She recognized that literacy development for many Black students could benefit from special attention to their unique linguistic circumstances as speakers of a native vernacular that, while clearly an English dialect, differed substantially from the academic varieties of English that are necessary for educational success. She and her colleague Sharroky Hollie introduced this program into several Los Angeles inner-city schools with significant populations of Black students, that is, until the passage of Proposition 209. Once that had occurred, LDPAAS was not in compliance with the new law, simply because it was designed specifically to support African American students. Since Proposition 209 made it illegal to promote public programs based on race, LeMoine and Hollie modified their program. Indeed, they expanded it under a new title, namely, 2

Proposition 209, while clearly relevant to educational programs intended for African American students, exceeded Black populations. Latinxs and other people of color who could be classified in terms of race were also subject to these new legal provisions. In addition, voters in California passed Proposition 187 that criminalized undocumented immigrants, and they overwhelmingly supported Proposition 227, outlawing bilingual education. Thus, while my remarks have concentrated on the educational plight of African American students, it is important to note that California voters approved other propositions that were targeting undocumented immigrants and students who were previously eligible for special bilingual education programs.

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“Academic English Mastery Program” (AEMP). Moreover, they did not restrict enrollment to Black students; rather, they promoted the acquisition of English for academic purposes in support of any student who lacked proficiency in mainstream Standard American English. They also abandoned any procedures that relied on race, focusing instead on those students who were experiencing the greatest academic difficulties. These modifications did more than comply with Proposition 209; they allowed new language arts classes to emphasize greater academic success for students in need, regardless of race. Many educators now utilize Labov’s reading materials and others have adopted many of the methods developed by LeMoine and Hollie (2007) to increase literacy skills without calling explicit attention to the racial backgrounds of students. Beyond the field of education, evidence of linguistic discrimination existed in other social domains. Many instances of employment discrimination are the result of related linguistic discrimination against employees who do not speak mainstream varieties of American English. Some of these cases are the result of linguistic intolerance against employees with little or no English proficiency. As mentioned in Chapter 3, some employers insist that English be used exclusively at their place of business, even if some of the employees are native speakers of languages other than English. The employers argue, often forcefully, that an English-only work environment is one that promotes cohesion, and they also believe that should employees use languages other than English, this would be divisive and potentially detrimental to a unified workforce. Zentella (2014) has challenged these claims, demonstrating that employees should be free to communicate effectively, drawing upon the languages they know, without fear that they will be in violation of an employment mandate that could be punitive and unnecessarily divisive. This trend is not universal because many employers have found it to be beneficial to hire employees who can speak more than one language. Nevertheless, there are employers who are intolerant of languages other than English on the job, and they occasionally admonish employees who have been observed speaking languages other than English at work (Zentella 2005). Henderson (2001) observed a somewhat different trend regarding language usage among African American men in white-collar professions. She found that they were encouraged to speak mainstream Standard American English and strongly discouraged from using vernacular forms of African American English. In this instance, any potential linguistic discrimination that might occur on the job was not the result of an employee’s inability to speak English, but the fact that the variety of English the employee may use was deemed inappropriate by his (or her) employer. Americans who know little of linguistic research on these topics often make reference to styles of speaking that they associate with people from different racial backgrounds, and it is

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common to hear members of the public, and some employers, refer to people as “talking Black” or “talking White.” Although linguists are mindful that any racial attribution to speech styles is not accurate, because a person’s race does not necessarily determine his or her speech patterns, some racial stereotypes about language persist, even though members of every racial group, be they speakers of English or some other language, exhibit dialect variability that is socially stratified. Those who are well-educated members of affluent upper classes speak very differently from members of their same racial group who are less well educated and who live in poverty. Regardless of these facts, racial stereotypes about speech persist and are likely to continue into the foreseeable future. The social stratification of linguistic diversity is common in nearly every speech community throughout the world, as attested by research by Labov (1966), Fishman (2006), and Wolfram and Schilling (2006). Moreover, this type of linguistic stratification frequently exceeds race, and reveals that – within a specific racial or ethnic group – speakers vary greatly based on their personal circumstances. Those who have benefited from access to superior schools and neighborhoods that are relatively free of crime are likely to speak differently than members of their same racial or ethnic group who have attended inferior schools and suffer the ill effects associated with communities where poverty and higher crime rates prevail. 5.6

Future Perspectives

As previously indicated, linguistic profiling and discrimination based on language are not limited to the United States. Depending upon the country in question, discrimination based on speech takes on different forms. Some countries, such as France, Canada, and South Africa, have specified official languages in support of their national interests, which occasionally reflect policies promoting the language(s) used by the majority of citizens residing in that country.3 3

While there are instances where the official national language(s) reflects the majority of speakers in that country, such as France or Spain, there are noteworthy exceptions to this trend, as vividly illustrated by the national language policy in South Africa, which was created in the aftermath of strict racial apartheid where English and Afrikaans were previously recognized as the two official languages in that country. Not only did speakers of English and Afrikaans constitute minority groups in South Africa; many of their native speakers were Whites who benefited from statutory privileges that were denied to the majority of Black South Africans. Their new official language policy has added nine additional indigenous South African languages to English and Afrikaans, resulting in a total of eleven official languages. However, other indigenous languages still exist in South Africa and due to their relatively small number of speakers, they did not receive designation as official national languages. The point at hand confirms that political circumstances play an enormous role in the specification of which languages are designated as official national languages, while other languages that may be used, and are perhaps thriving, in the very same nation do not obtain this exalted status.

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Immigration patterns throughout the world continue to evolve, and one important artifact of this trend reflects the fact that many people who leave their homeland in search of a future in another country encounter linguistic barriers as part of that journey. In many instances, new immigrants are greeted with hostility, particularly if they are perceived to be negatively impacting employment prospects for those who are long-standing citizens of the country in question. Despite being a nation composed of many immigrant groups, US public opinion about immigrants and the languages they bring with them other than English has become polarized, especially if those immigrants are undocumented. These opinions are further complicated by the fact that Native Americans, the original occupants of the lands that comprise the continental United States and Alaska, were not only subjugated; they were attacked and put to death routinely. The combination of their drastic population reduction and displacement, as exemplified by the notorious Trail of Tears, reflects woeful suffering that exceeds that of the other voluntary or involuntary immigrants (i.e., slaves) who displaced the indigenous populations since the beginning of European colonization of North America and South America. The ever-changing opinions and circumstances regarding immigrants is paradoxical, because many high-technology industries have urged politicians in the United States to provide employment visas to highly educated immigrants with skills that they consider to be lacking in the available American workforce. At the other end of the spectrum, we find tremendous effort being invested to keep less well-educated immigrants from entering the United States, either legally or illegally. The linguistic consequences of these trends are, in all probability, going to be increasingly complex in the future of the United States, as well as in other countries that attract immigrants who may lack fluency in the dominant language(s) that are used in the respective nations. After the fall of apartheid, many Africans from less affluent countries flocked to South Africa because of the relative strength of the national economy, and the belief that they might find gainful employment there. Others living in North Africa have risked their lives on perilous journeys to Europe for the same reason; they are desperate to escape from homelands where they see no future and are willing to risk their lives in the hope that a brighter future may await them across the sea – even though they will not know the language of the new nation where they hope to reside.4 The Middle East has also witnessed some of these trends, although wealthy nations have often hired laborers who may speak Arabic; however, the dialects 4

There is a great deal of important research on this topic, and readers would be well advised to consult studies by Blommaert (2013), Skutnabb-Kangas (2008), and Fishman (2006), where matters of linguistic discrimination are extensively described in diverse speech communities.

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of Arabic that are imported to Abu Dhabi or Dubai by those who toil as manual laborers are distinctive when compared to those of the wealthy elite citizens of those cities who hire them. China has devoted many resources to the expansion of its language and culture beyond its national boundaries into Africa and South America as China’s economic influence continues to grow internationally. The linguistic stew that results from these demographic changes in a global economy, that finds humanity competing for food and diminished material resources, may result in circumstances where greater linguistic demands lead to greater linguistic discrimination against those who are perceived to lack fluent control of the dominant language(s) or dialect(s) used by those who hold political power. The evidence of linguistic discrimination that we have observed regarding housing, employment, and education within the United States can be found elsewhere, and these trends are likely to increase in countries where the distribution of wealth is lopsided in favor of small elite groups of people who may be able to use their linguistic preferences and prejudices as a means to further control, if not expand, their wealth and political power.5 5.7

Conclusion

Technology is likely to continue to play an important role in the future of linguistic profiling and language discrimination as social media expands. The Internet was in its infancy when evidence of linguistic profiling was discovered, quite by accident, when fair housing advocates happened to notice that many of the minority speakers who were seeking to obtain housing by telephone were systematically denied opportunities to visit properties or obtain rental applications. Since then we have observed many types of linguistic profiling, that is, beyond housing markets, and often inflicted upon groups based on sex, age, region, religion, and sexual orientation, among other factors. Many people, including scholars, attorneys, educators, politicians, and policy makers, have important roles to play to ensure that linguistic diversity does not spawn greater inequality. Indeed, in light of the interconnected nature of the global economy and increasing world trade, it is in the interest of all nations to expand whatever natural linguistic resources may be available to them. The United States is a special case in this regard for many reasons. By comparison to many of the world’s nations, the United States is relatively 5

The concept of “linguistic capital” is clearly relevant to the point at hand and is described extensively by Bourdieu (1991) and Coulmas (1993). They confirm that language skills have direct economic consequences, and those who have strategic linguistic advantages in a given country are likely to fare much better than other citizens (or residents) living in the same speech communities (e.g., nations) who lack fluent control over the languages that dominate the respective local economies.

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young. Nevertheless, the amount of wealth that has been amassed within the United States has been enormous in comparison to nearly every other nation on earth. European colonization of North America and Central and South America has left indelible linguistic imprints on countries where Native American languages once thrived in the lands that now extend from Argentina to Alaska. The linguistic displacement of indigenous languages and the people who spoke them in favor of the language of powerful colonizers, whose linguistic legacy has been solidified, has often resulted in the reduction and loss of potential linguistic resources. When the United States was first founded, and the Declaration of Independence was written, followed by the drafting of the US Constitution, English was the most influential language supporting the birth of a new nation. As wave after wave of immigrants came to the United States, coinciding with geographic and technological expansion that witnessed the invention of the railroad, and the eventual mass production of automobiles, many who immigrated to the United States abandoned their heritage language in favor of English in attempts to become “real Americans” as quickly as possible. However, that tendency, which was exacerbated at the conclusion of World War II with the resulting Allied victory, perpetuated linguistic trends where the maintenance of languages other than English in the United States occurred more by accident than by design. Beyond the potential benefits that might accrue from more citizens who are fluent speakers of other languages, the future security and well-being of the United States, England, France, Germany, Russia, China, and others may depend in large measure upon the number of people who can comprehend languages other than those that dominate their respective homelands.6 Linguistic profiling and discrimination based on language are antithetical to the future well-being of any society that strives to advance to global leadership; any nation capable of promoting policies that increase the ways in which its citizens use languages will have clear advantages over countries where the populace is linguistically constrained. It would be much more beneficial if nations could successfully reduce or eliminate linguistic discrimination in favor of linguistic enlightenment among diverse populations residing within their borders. It is in the interest of the potential for greater social harmony throughout humanity that we may all ultimately benefit from more people who are accepting of others whose speech is substantially different from their own.

6

Ricento (2006) has noted the need for some caution in this regard, because the potential for political overreaching may be heightened in pursuit of greater homeland security that could inadvertently reduce or restrict rights of privacy that citizens in various democratic nations value greatly.

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6

Earwitness Testimony and Unbiased Formulation of Auditory Lineups

In light of some of the legal issues we have considered when instances of linguistic profiling occur, particularly if the discriminatory behavior is based upon reactions to the way someone speaks, it is important to consider matters pertaining to earwitness testimony. The concept of an eyewitness is well known; that is, a person who has seen an event with his/her own eyes can serve as a credible witness, based on actual visual observations, typically recounting what s/he saw in a court of law. The notion of an earwitness has received less attention for a combination of reasons. Nevertheless, many crimes or other injustices derived from language usage may depend on observations by earwitnesses who can describe precisely what they heard as it pertains to the specific facts of alleged linguistic discrimination, or worse. Smalls (2004) points out that the accuracy of earwitnesses is likely to vary depending upon the facts surrounding any incident where a person has heard another person speak and then tries – to the best of his/her ability – to confirm the identity of that speaker at a later date upon hearing the voice again.1 Consider, for example, a hypothetical bank robbery where the thief has concealed his or her face prior to entering a bank and then, after threatening bank employees with a gun, says, “Hand over the money.” If the bank teller complies then s/he has not only comprehended what was said but has also heard the voice of the bank robber. The issue of earwitness testimony might come into play when a suspect is captured; since the bank robber’s face was concealed during the holdup, his or her voice may be the best available evidence that can be used to confirm the robber’s identity. In cases of this kind, judges typically compel the defendant to utter the same phrase that was said at the scene of the crime; the earwitness can then either confirm or deny that the person making the statement in court is the robber.2 1

2

Smalls (2004) provides a comprehensive evaluation of linguistic profiling in legal contexts, including a substantial survey of various civil and criminal cases where accurate voice identification was relevant to the case, as well as to the validity of the final ruling. Although the hypothetical illustration being described is a bank robbery, many of the cases that require voice identification to apprehend a suspect involve rape, where the rapist has concealed

82

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If more than one person has heard the voice, and more than one earwitness agrees that the voice belongs to the person who committed the crime, then the likelihood of an ensuing conviction increases. Smalls (2004) raises important concerns about the accuracy of those who claim, often with strong conviction, that a specific speaker is the same person who made statements that they heard at the scene of a crime. Moreover, she does so by contemplating the experience and qualifications that might either increase or decrease the accuracy of voice identification by a witness, who may or may not be considered an “expert.” The case of People v. Sanchez (1985), cited by Justice William S. Cooper who presided during Clifford v. Kentucky (1999), is illustrative because the witness claimed that the murderer spoke with a Dominican accent. A claim of this sort relies on two facts that may not be explicit: the witness making this claim must speak Spanish and must also be sufficiently familiar with different Spanish accents to be able to assert that the speaker heard at the scene of the crime was likely a Dominican based on his speech. Awitness who did not speak Spanish could not make this same observation, thereby illustrating that some people may be more expert about specific languages, dialects, or accents, while others would be completely unreliable. Smalls (2004) observed that such differences in personal linguistic experience may prove to be crucial in legal proceedings where claims of identity based on speech are being made. It is largely due to her insightful studies of civil and criminal cases where speech was central that the importance of accurate earwitness identification has come to the fore. How, then, might we determine the relative accuracy of earwitnesses who have heard critical evidence pertaining to a crime? Is it always necessary for a witness to speak the same language as the alleged perpetrator of a crime to serve as a credible witness? The answers to these questions are more complicated than might appear at first glance. Many people can, with fairly high accuracy, determine the difference between a man’s voice in contrast to that of a woman, even if the person hearing the relevant speech does not share knowledge of the language that was spoken. An earwitness in this instance might reliably be able to identify the sex of a speaker, although he or she would be unable to discuss the content of what was said. Smalls (2004) describes differences in the relative expertise that a witness can bring to bear regarding voices heard during the commission of a crime. Of utmost importance is the following: did the witness actually hear the utterance, and if so, under what circumstances? There is a significant difference between the testimony of a lay witness who was at the scene of the his face from the victim. Comments made by rapists during their attacks are sometimes among the best available evidence needed to obtain a conviction – when victims believe they can reliably identify the voice of their attacker.

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crime and that of a trained expert who may have evaluated a recording of the voice, ideally one that was made when the crime was committed. Any given lay witness could exhibit varying degrees of reliability based on his or her familiarity with the languages and/or dialects in question. Witnesses who are less familiar with the crucial language or dialect are less likely to be as reliable as witnesses who are much more familiar with the languages or dialects spoken by suspects or defendants. Matters of voice identification also depend substantially upon personal relationships. Most of us easily recognize the voice of family members, close friends, or fellow employees due to the frequency with which we speak to them. Highly visible political figures or celebrities may also be readily identified based on the sound of their voices. However, when it comes to the accurate identification of the voice of a stranger, or a person who is less well known to a listener, the relative accuracy of an identification can drop precipitously. The advent of DNA evidence has resulted in numerous overturned convictions where prisoners have been released because eyewitnesses were mistaken regarding their identity. A similar problem exists regarding prospective misidentification by earwitnesses, especially if they are not familiar with the speech of the person whom they heard. In an attempt to overcome this problem, and to find ways that might benefit law enforcement agencies or attorneys seeking to defend clients when earwitness testimony is involved, we conducted a series of experiments to determine the extent to which lay witnesses might accurately, or inaccurately, identify various personal traits of an individual speaker based on recordings that were carefully controlled. Before turning to the results of some of these findings, it is important to appreciate some of the legal considerations that influenced our research design, because we were mindful that our experiments were being developed to help determine the value of earwitness testimony during trials. Inspired by Smalls’s (2004) findings, and those of Massey and Lundy (2001) who exposed racial bias in housing markets where Black and White callers were treated differently during requests to rent property, we attempted to determine if various listeners would either agree or disagree about the individual characteristics of the same speaker. 6.1

(Un)reliable Voice Identification

As previously mentioned, the evidence shows that potential, or relative, reliability of voice identification can vary widely from person to person for many reasons. For example, the conditions under which one or more people hear a voice may be such that background noise, or simple lapses of attention, influence what was heard, and how well it was heard. We have already mentioned that familiarity with the language and dialect to be identified is

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beneficial, although some individuals can deduce certain personal characteristics – such as the sex of a speaker – with high levels of reliability even if they do not speak the same language as that being identified. These inhibiting factors regarding the relative reliability of voice identification loom larger in legal contexts where defendants may be convicted by earwitnesses; to determine the dependability of voice identification, we have worked closely with various fair housing agencies across the United States, conducting experiments using the voices of various women and men who work as housing testers. These individuals are intentionally drawn from diverse linguistic, cultural, and sexual backgrounds for comparative purposes. In other words, if housing testers were all drawn from a homogeneous linguistic pool, it would be very difficult to detect discrimination based on speech. However, by enlisting help from speakers who display a wide range of regional, ethnic, racial, and sexual differences in their speech, the likelihood of being able to detect bias in favor of one speaking style over another increases greatly. Since many fair housing agencies were able to detect patterns of linguistic bias in different localities across the United States, based on telephone inquiries to look at rental properties by various housing testers, it became evident that it would be beneficial to know the extent to which individual testers were presumed to be identifiable based on different speech characteristics, such as their sex, age, race, native language, and more. To evaluate the relative reliability with which lay earwitnesses could accurately determine some of these demographic traits, we worked in cooperation with several fair housing agencies and their testers by first recording their voices. Our procedure was strongly influenced by that of Henderson (2001), who studied perceptions of speech of Black male employees in executive positions. She conducted recordings with her consultants that included a combination of speech passages, as well as recordings of each individual counting to twenty. Our procedure was slightly different: housing testers began by providing some demographic information about themselves, although those who evaluated the voices never heard this information. The crucial evidence to be evaluated consisted of three components: each speaker recited the alphabet, each speaker counted to twenty, and each speaker either recited or read the nursery rhyme “Mary Had a Little Lamb.”3 The recordings were produced under controlled conditions with no background noise, and speakers (i.e., the testers) were instructed to speak in a normal tone of voice at a normal rate of speech. Recordings that were produced either with 3

Those who chose to read the nursery rhyme, rather than recite it from memory, were typically housing testers who were not native speakers of English. In several instances, although they may have heard of the nursery rhyme, they had not memorized it and therefore provided a recording derived from reading “Mary Had a Little Lamb.”

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rapid or delayed speech were rerecorded so that the pacing of each recording was more or less comparable. To enhance the motivation of consultants who were evaluating the speech, as well as to conceal the legal goals of the findings, listeners were told – quite honestly – that they were participating in a “linguistic detection experiment” in which they would hear voices of people unknown to them and would in turn be asked to speculate about various speaking traits associated with each voice. An illustration of the task would then be performed prior to the collection of any results, which also provided opportunities for listeners to ask any clarifying questions in advance of the experiment. Thus, prior to conducting the experiment, a voice with a highly distinctive, if not stereotypical, regional or racial dialect was played, along with instructions about how the listener should identify as many personal traits as accurately as their experience would allow. The various characteristics that were evaluated included sex, age, education, race, regional dialect, and the native language of the speaker. Sex was binary – male or female. Age was divided into five categories: (18–29), (30–39), (40–49), (50–59), and (over 60). Education consisted of four categories: no high school, a high school graduate, a college graduate, and someone who had pursued professional graduate education (e.g., MBA, law school, graduate school, medical school). Four racial groups were provided: Asian, European American (White), African American (Black), Latinx; another category – namely, “other” – was provided along with a space to describe any perceived racial anomalies. Regional dialects consisted of (1) the Northeast, (2) the Southeast, (3) the Midwest, (4) the Southwest, (5) Southern, and (6) National Standard English; an extra optional category was provided to allow listeners to indicate that they believed the speaker was not born in the United States. The final category regarding the speaker’s native language was also binary; that is, were they a native speaker of English, or not? Once the illustrative case was demonstrated, and any questions regarding the experimental task were answered, the listeners heard no more than six speakers on any one occasion, so as not to saturate their evaluations, and the order in which the speakers were presented was randomized so that listeners heard the same speakers in different sequences. This randomization was implemented to help ensure that the order in which speakers were heard did not bias the final results. Each speaker’s voice was played for listeners three times, back to back. Some listeners would begin to complete their evaluation while listening to the recordings; others chose to wait until hearing all three repetitions of the recorded voice prior to completing their assessments. As might be anticipated, some of the personal traits were identified with greater reliability than others, which in turn varied from speaker to speaker depending upon the specific speech characteristics of that individual.

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We completed these experiments with two goals in mind: the first goal was to determine the relative accuracy with which listeners could reliably identify the specified characteristics, and, second, to determine if listeners from specific linguistic or cultural backgrounds exhibited similar evaluative patterns. The second goal anticipated potential litigation that could involve various housing testers. To what extent, if any, did listeners reliably identify the speaking characteristics of each housing tester? Moreover, were these identification profiles statistically significant? In those instances, for example, where the vast majority of listeners identified a tester accurately, say, as a male African American in his 30s who had graduated from high school and was a native speaker of English who had likely been raised in the South, then that evidence could potentially be introduced in a court of law. Furthermore, if a defendant in a housing discrimination case claimed that s/he could not reliably identify the voice of that very same housing tester as a Black American man, our experimental findings would indicate that the testimony of that defendant was atypical in comparison to the statistically reliable sample of listeners who had already accurately identified that same tester in ways that the defendant had testified (typically under oath) that s/he could not detect.4 6.2

Illustrative Results

The results presented here were originally obtained at the request of a fair housing agency in a large urban American city, and sixty people evaluated the speech of four housing testers. With the exception of three of the sixty evaluators, all are native speakers of American English who were born and raised in different regions of the continental United States. All sixty evaluators are fluent speakers of English, and the three men who are not native speakers of English are all undergraduate students at a major university in the United States: one was born in Thailand and has been educated in English since he first entered school; the other two are native speakers of Chinese who learned English as a second language, both beginning their English studies at the age of 7. Thirty-three of the evaluators are women, and the remaining twentyseven evaluators are men. The women range in age from 19 to 63, including 21 women younger than 25. The remaining twelve women range in age from 29 to 63, and they grew up in different urban and rural communities 4

Our findings cannot be used to suggest or verify that a defendant who claims that s/he could not determine the demographic background of a speaker is either lying or telling the truth. Rather, we can only demonstrate that the defendant’s assertion (perhaps testimony under oath) is a statistical anomaly when compared to the vast majority of listeners who heard and evaluated the very same voice without similar confusion or difficulty. Attorneys, judges, and jurists must ultimately decide whether or not the entire evidence pertaining to the case in question constitutes an illegal discriminatory act.

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from the North to the South, extending from the East to the West Coasts; they represent a national sampling of adult American women. All but two of the women have completed college or graduate education (including law and medicine). The two women who did not enter college are both high school graduates; one is within the younger group of evaluators; the other is age 37. The men who evaluated the speakers also reflect a national sampling of adult American speakers – that is, in addition to the three nonnative speakers of English previously described. They range in age from 18 to 67, with eighteen of the American-born men younger than age 25, and the remaining six men who were born in America are between the ages of 31 and 67. The three men who were not born within the United States are 24 years old or younger. All but three of the men have graduated from college or professional school. The three who did not complete college are high school graduates, with one younger man (i.e., not older than 25) and the other two are 47 and 58. As was the case with the women, the American-born men include urban and rural residents from all corners of the United States. 6.2.1

Results: Presented in a Series of Graphs and Tables

The findings associated with each evaluation are displayed in a series of graphs and corresponding tables. In every instance, we have observed a combination of prevailing trends, as well as instances where opinions regarding a particular personal trait (e.g., age) are inconsistent. Depending upon the individual speaker, there are some instances of unique evaluation, which are described for each speaker. Speakers are not identified by name in this chapter and are presented in the same order as the recordings that were provided by the fair housing agency for analyses. Similarly, the sex of each speaker has not been specified on the graphs or tables; however, in every case all sixty evaluators have accurately deduced the sex of each speaker. Accounts of specific interpretations follow the presentation of the entire results for all four speakers. 6.2.2

Interpretations of the Results

6.2.2.1 Speaker #1 The first voice that was evaluated was perceived to be a woman who was a native speaker of English. Moreover, she was overwhelmingly perceived to be an African American woman with one lone exception, who perceived her to be Latina. A great deal of agreement existed about her education, with a majority of forty-seven evaluators believing she had attended or completed college, with an additional ten evaluators who believed she had

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100% Not English 90%

English

80%

Natl. Standard South

70%

Southwest 60%

Midwest

50%

Southeast Northeast

40%

Black

30%

Latina Professional

20%

College 10%

High School

0% Sex

Age

Education

Race

Region

Language

Figure 6.1 Graphic illustration of evaluations of Speaker #1 The legends corresponding to each graph are not entirely complete due to space limitations. Columns in each graph should be compared with the values presented in the corresponding table for a complete and thorough account of the results.

Table 6.1 Values associated with evaluations of Speaker #1 Sex: Male__________ Female ______60______ Age: 18–29_(30)__ 30–39_(23)_ 40–49__(7)_ 50–59_________ 60+__________ Education: No High School ___________ High School______3_____ College _____47_____ Professional_____10______ Race: Asian ________ Latinx __1____ Black 59____ White ________ Other ______ Region: Northeast _8___ Southeast ___2_____ Midwest_____28_____ Southwest___4___ Southern_______7____ National Standard_______11____ Native Language: English____60______ Not English ____________

attended graduate or professional school. Only three evaluators portrayed her as a high school graduate. Most evaluators considered her to be a younger speaker, with only seven evaluators perceiving her speech to be that of someone between the ages of 40 and 49. No one considered her to be older than that, and it is also noteworthy that none of the evaluators considered her to be White. Although there is some disagreement about the region of the United States where she learned English, a significant majority believe she is from the Midwest (i.e., 28) and eleven

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evaluators believe she speaks mainstream Standard American English, as depicted by their decision to classify Speaker #1 as a native speaker of the National Standard. Speaker #1 is a rare person in the sense that she is not perceived to be White; however, she is also strongly perceived to be well educated and well spoken – that is, in the sense that she is not perceived to speak with a strong or noticeable regional accent. In light of these findings, perceptions regarding her age, native language, and race are most reliable, followed by education, and perceptions of where she learned English. She is indeed an African American woman who is a native speaker of English. She also attended college and was age 27 when she recorded her voice. She was born in South Philadelphia, which is a racially mixed working-class and middle-class neighborhood, with many residents of Italian descent, in addition to a substantial African American population of long standing. 6.2.2.2 Speaker #2 As is the case for the first speaker, the second speaker is also perceived to be a woman who is a native speaker of English by 100 percent of the evaluators. In this instance, she is overwhelmingly perceived to be White, with four exceptions: one evaluator has classified her as “other,” indicating that the evaluator was unable to make a clear judgment about her race, while the other three outliers, which included one of the men who was born in China, perceived her to be Asian. Similarly to the first speaker, Speaker #2 is perceived to be well educated, but slightly less so than the preceding speaker, with seven evaluators believing she had not attended either college or graduate/professional school. The second voice was also perceived to be the youngest speaker within the entire group, with thirty-seven evaluators concluding she is younger than age 29, and the remaining twenty-three considering her to be between the ages of 30 and 39. The greatest disagreement is found regarding perceptions of where she learned English, with a rare distribution of opinion that she was raised in different parts of the country. It is atypical for a speaker to be perceived by nearly 25 percent or more of the evaluators as having learned English in very different regions; however, Speaker #2 is believed by several evaluators to have grown up in the Northeast, or Midwest, or the South – again, this is rare. It is also noteworthy that seven evaluators consider her to be a native speaker of the National Standard. Perhaps the best way to interpret the regional dialect perceptions is to assume that many evaluators detected some hint of an accent, but they had difficulty placing the speaker. In addition, because she is perceived to be well educated, the diverse opinions about where she grew up do not reflect negatively upon perceptions of her speech.

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100%

English

90%

National Standard

80%

Southern Southwest

70%

Midwest

60%

Southeast

50%

Northeast

40%

Other White

30%

Asian

20%

Professional

10%

College High School

0% Sex

Age

Education

Race

Region

Langauge

Figure 6.2 Graphic illustration of evaluations of Speaker #2

Table 6.2 Values associated with evaluations of Speaker #2 Sex: Male__________ Female ______60______ Age: 18–29 _(37) 30–39 _(23)_ 40–49________ 50–59_________ 60+__________ Education: No High School ___________ High School____7_____ College _____44______ Professional_______9_______ Race: Asian ___3____ Latinx ________ Black ________ White ___56___ Other ___1__ Region: Northeast __16___ Southeast _____5___ Midwest____18______ Southwest___1____ Southern__13_____ National Standard_____7______ Native Language: English______60____ Not English _____________

This speaker, who is a woman, was born in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, where she learned English natively, and lived there for the early part of her life before moving to suburban communities outside of Philadelphia. She was age 23 when she provided the recording of her voice and had just graduated from college. 6.2.2.3 Speaker #3 The trend toward 100 percent classification regarding perceptions of sex and native language is maintained in the case of Speaker #3; he is categorically perceived to be a man, and more than 90 percent of the evaluators consider him to be a Black man. In three instances, evaluators who consider Speaker #3 to be White also portray him as a person who spoke with a Southern dialect. Speaker #3 is perceived to be older, with only two evaluators classifying him within the 30–39 age range, and all of the remaining evaluators considering him to be significantly older (e.g., thirty-two classify him as being older than

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100%

English

90%

National Standard

80%

Southern Southwest

70%

Midwest

60%

Southeast

50%

Northeast

40%

White Black

30%

Professional 20%

College

10%

High School 60+

0% Sex

Age

Education

Race

Region

Native Language

Figure 6.3 Graphic illustration of evaluations of Speaker #3

Table 6.3 Values associated with evaluations of Speaker #3 Sex: Male___60____ Female ______________ Age: 18–29 _____ 30–39_(2)__ 40–49_(26)_ 50–59_(30)_ 60+__(2)_____ Education: No High School ___________ High School___26_____ College ___19_________ Professional________15_____ Race: Asian ________ Latinx ________ Black ____55__ White __5_____ Other ______ Region: Northeast ___8___ Southeast ____6____ Midwest____16______ Southwest____1___ Southern______23_____ National Standard________6___ Native Language: English_____60_____ Not English _____________

age 50). Speaker #3 is clearly perceived to be the oldest person evaluated in this chapter, and, as will be noted momentarily when we consider Speaker #4, the men who have been evaluated are perceived to be significantly older than the women (i.e., the first two speakers). Although there are differences of opinion regarding the educational attainment of Speaker #3, evaluators are nearly evenly divided with respect to their belief that he either graduated from high school or college or that he has completed graduate or professional school. However, it is noteworthy that nearly half of the evaluators have diminished Speaker #3’s education, which may be attributed to racial stereotypes; that is, since Speaker #3 is the only voice that is perceived to be a Black male, and a great deal of sociological research confirms that there are prevailing beliefs among many Americans that Black men tend to be less well educated.

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Also consistent with some prevailing linguistic stereotypes regarding Black men, Speaker #3 has the greatest number of evaluators (i.e., twenty-three) who believe he was raised in the South, or that he grew up in a region where he spoke a Southern variety of English. However, although this number is significant, the opinions about his regional linguistic origins are more broadly distributed, including sixteen evaluators who believe he grew up in the Midwest, with six believing that his speech depicts the National Standard variety of American English. The third speaker can most reliably be identified as a man who is a native speaker of English who is most likely to be a middle-aged or older African American. Demographic opinions regarding his education and the region where he learned English are less reliable. These perceptions are fairly accurate. He is indeed an African American who learned English as his first and only language in Wilmington, Delaware, where he spent most of his life before attending and graduating from college. He was age 63 when he produced the recording of his voice. 6.2.2.4 Speaker #4 The final speaker, #4, has also been correctly classified by 100 percent of the evaluators regarding his sexual status as a man. However, he is the only speaker who is believed, by one evaluator, not to be a native speaker of English; this outlier was also one of the nonnative speakers of English from China, who has also classified this man as “Asian.” Nevertheless, for the vast majority of evaluators Speaker #4 is perceived to be a man who is a native speaker of English. In this instance, a clear majority of evaluators consider him to be White. All three of the nonnative English speakers from Asia consider him to be a fellow Asian; however, three of the American-born evaluators think he is an African American. There are significant differences of opinion regarding his age, and Speaker #4 is the only voice that triggered classification in each of the age categories, with the majority (i.e., twenty-six) believing that he is somewhere between the ages of 40 and 49. Speaker #4 is also the only person who is perceived to cover the entire spectrum of options regarding education, with two evaluators believing that he did not complete high school, and a total of six evaluators perceiving that he did complete high school. A significant majority (i.e., thirty-one) believe that he has either graduated from college or that he has attended graduate or professional school (twenty-one). As has been the case for each speaker, the greatest difference of opinion exists regarding the region of the country where he learned English. Be that as it may, the fourth speaker has the distinction of being given the highest evaluations regarding his status as a native speaker of the National Standard, along with several evaluators believing that he grew up in the Midwest (i.e., sixteen)

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100%

Not English

90%

English

80%

National Standard Southern

70%

Southwest 60%

Midwest

50%

Northeast

40%

Black

30%

White Asian

20%

Professional 10%

College

0%

High School Sex

Age

Education

Race

Region

Native Language

Figure 6.4 Graphic illustration of evaluations of Speaker #4

Table 6.4 Values associated with evaluations of Speaker # 4 Sex: Male____60____ Female ______________ Age: 18–29 _(4)__ 30–39_(18)__ 40–49_(26)_ 50–59__(11)__ 60+___(1)____ Education: No High School _____2_____ High School____6_____ College _____31_______ Professional_______21______ Race: Asian ___5___ Latinx ________ Black __3_____ White ___52___ Other ______ Region: Northeast ___14__ Southeast _________ Midwest____16_______ Southwest____5___ Southern______2______ National Standard_____23_______ Native Language: English____59______ Not English ______1_____

or the Northeast (i.e., fourteen). By contrast, a very small number believe that he was raised in the South or the Southwest (i.e., two and five, respectively). Speaker #4 is most reliably perceived to be a well-educated White man who is a native speaker of English, with many believing him to be a native speaker of the national variety of mainstream Standard American English. Of all of the speakers, Speaker #4 spoke most slowly and took great care to fully articulate most of his expressions. Indeed, it may be (at least in part) for this reason that the nonnative speakers of English from Asia considered him to share a similar linguistic background with them. Despite slight differences of opinion regarding his racial background, or his educational attainment, it is clear that the vast majority of American-born evaluators consider this speaker to be a welleducated White man. Once again, the perceptions are quite close to the demographic truth for this speaker, who was age 51 when he provided the recording.

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He is a native speaker of English who was born and raised in Akron, Ohio, and he successfully graduate college in his early 20s. 6.3

Implications for the Creation and Utilization of Auditory Lineups

The preceding experimental findings indicate that listeners can, for the most part, draw reasonably reliable demographic inferences about a speaker whom they do not know and hear for the first time. However, the variability of these findings, especially with respect to the age or education of a speaker, suggests that the reliability with which any given listener might accurately identify the voice of a stranger should be tested if possible, to increase – if not ensure – the reliability of any attempts to accurately identify a person based exclusively upon hearing that person speak. Matters of accuracy regarding voice identification are paramount in legal cases where speech evaluation is central to the case. We envision the possibility of creating auditory lineups that would consist of recordings that could include suspects, along with other speakers whose backgrounds – linguistically and sexually – were sufficiently similar to the suspect that an earwitness could hear, compare, and evaluate six voices to determine if they might be able to accurately identify the speaker whom they believe they overheard during the commission of a crime. It is therefore our opinion that legal cases where voice recognition is called for would benefit from tests that help to confirm or refute the linguistic reliability and veracity of individual witnesses, ideally through the use of auditory lineups. Similar opinions have been espoused elsewhere by proponents of voice lineups, variously called voice parades, which have been employed by police departments throughout the world (de Jong-Lindle et al. 2015; McGorrery and McMahon 2017). Many of these studies strive to employ detailed phonetic analyses in support of efforts to enhance the reliability with which police investigations can utilize voice parades to identify prospective offenders (Broeders and van Amelsvoort 2001). However, McGorrery and McMahon (2017:262) share concerns expressed herein that many of these well-intended efforts suffer from “practices that are inconsistent with current scientific understandings about auditory memory and voice identifications.” In much the same manner that eyewitness testimony commonly employs the use of visual lineups to test the veracity of eyewitnesses, so too should judges and attorneys utilize auditory lineups to test the reliability of earwitness testimony. Ironically, and perhaps unfortunately, procedures for conducting visual lineups are not codified in law. Those who use lineups to enhance the validity of eyewitnesses must do so in a way that does not leave them open to accusations of bias. How, then, should we conduct auditory lineups in ways that

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are likewise unbiased? Surely, if a suspect’s speech is associated with a particular dialect, the auditory lineup should consist of other speakers who share many comparable linguistic characteristics. Our research and experiments, conducted substantially in collaboration with various fair housing agencies across the United States, help to identify potential procedures for conducting linguistically unbiased auditory lineups for every linguistic group, whether in the United States or in any nation where diverse dialects of the same language coexist. As of this writing, attorneys and judges would be well advised to draw their own analogies between tests for scrutinizing eyewitness testimony and potential tests for reliable earwitness testimony. The need for reliable earwitness procedures is abundantly evident whenever testimony regarding a suspect or defendant, whose voice is being used as the primary means to identify him/her by an earwitness, comes into play. As we have seen with the advent of DNA evidence that has been used to overturn eyewitness convictions, earwitness testimony must be used with great care to ensure that false convictions are avoided as much as humanly possible. Thankfully, many legal cases do not rely upon earwitness testimony alone; however, the potential significance of earwitness testimony during various legal proceedings can result in convictions and criminal records that will either serve or distort the pursuit of justice and the goal of fair jurisprudence throughout the world.

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7

Dialect Identification and Discrimination in the United States

Whereas the experimental results presented in Chapter 6 were produced at the request of a fair housing agency, we now turn to results from four other experiments that were designed independently to determine the extent to which a native speaker of American English might reliably identify the race of a speaker.1 The inspiration for these experiments grew from evidence that some landlords were denying appointments to minority callers, while granting requests to Whites who called for appointments to see the very same properties. Before turning to the experimental designs, methods, and results, it is beneficial to examine wealth disparities among different racial groups in the United States, as well as some of the historical circumstances that created these unequal economic conditions. We then return to evidence showing how linguistic evaluation can be enlisted to help expose, if not eliminate, linguistic profiling in housing markets and other social circumstances. 7.1

Wealth Disparities in the United States

Long before the United States existed, European colonization of North and South America displaced indigenous populations and their languages to make way for extensive European settlement. The legacy of wealth disparities of which we now speak traces its origin to the collective colonial conquests that were conducted at the behest of European royalty. Empire expansion was profitable and always came at the expense of those who previously lived wherever European explorers planted flags in the names of the kings and queens who sponsored them. A combination of the economic and linguistic consequences of these conquests occupies our attention in this chapter, albeit 1

This chapter is an updated and revised version of “Perceptual and Phonetic Experiments on American English Dialect Identification,” an article that was originally written in collaboration with Thomas Purnell and William Idsardi. The findings presented here include some of the original experimental findings, as well as new discoveries. My intellectual debt to both linguists cannot be overstated; they strongly encouraged me to pursue this line of inquiry based on previous efforts to detect linguistic profiling in various American housing markets.

97

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with primary focus on the United States, despite somewhat similar historical circumstances and outcomes in Brazil, Argentina, and Mexico, among other nations. Colonization also gave rise to growing demands for cheap labor, and enormous fortunes were made by slave traders who obtained their vast wealth through the capture and sale of human cargo, primarily from Africa. Linguists were unavailable to evaluate the linguistic impact of slavery on various European colonies. Despite enormous gaps in the available linguistic evidence, it is clear that enslaved Africans could not speak Portuguese, or French, or English, or Spanish, and their ability to communicate with those who had enslaved them was greatly constrained, resulting in new contact languages born as pidgins that gradually transformed into creoles. These incontrovertible historical facts are largely responsible for the combination of economic and linguistic inertia that accounts for many of the racially motivated wealth disparities that still exist despite the passage of time. Moreover, the experimental findings that are presented herein suggest that racism still lingers even though it is less overt than was the case during America’s Jim Crow era. Nationally, African Americans still lag far behind Whites in median home value.2 This disparity, in all likelihood, follows from an array of interconnected issues, such as lower-paying employment (as indicated by a national average median family income of $43,364 for Black families, in comparison to $66,632 for White families),3 self-segregation, and housing discrimination. The segregation of neighborhoods can be attributed to discrimination in varying levels of influence, from a prominent role where discrimination accounts for 20 percent to 30 percent of segregation (Charles 2003; Courant 1978; Tobin 1982; Yinger 1986) to a minor role of no more than 15 percent (Clark 1986, 1993; Galster and Keeney 1988; Krysan 2009). Myers and Chan (1995) placed race as a reliable indicator of discriminatory mortgage lending, accounting for 70 percent of the gap in rejection rates while controlling for other factors. More recently, predatory lending exacerbated these trends, where disproportionately high percentages of minority borrowers were approved for untenable loans that were then bundled and sold, resulting in massive foreclosures and short sales of homes that further stripped minority wealth across the United States (Burd-Sharps and Rasch 2015; Squires 2005). Regardless of the size of the effect, discrimination is indisputably present in American society and led Congress in 1988 to amend laws protecting against housing discrimination. 2

3

Based on the 2010 US Census, the median home value for Whites is $187,800, which is slightly above the national median home value of $175,700. By contrast, Black median home values are 23 percent below the national average at $135,281. These median family income values are based on 2014 data from the US Census Bureau.

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Intentional discrimination is fomented when an applicant’s race (or gender) is evident to a potential home seller (or apartment renter, or employer, etc.). At least two cues to race and gender act as triggers – visual and auditory manifestations. These two stimuli influence a minority’s success when entering into, and advancing within, the housing market. This chapter complements the evidence presented in the previous chapter by further examining the linguistic nature of housing discrimination against minority groups, by studying the nature of auditory discrimination of racial speech cues. Of particular interest is the possibility of auditory discrimination in the absence of any visual cues and in determining the existence of micro-linguistic (i.e., phonetic) markers of dialect (Labov 1972b). The results of the four experiments described in this chapter indicated that (a) dialect-based discrimination takes place, (b) ethnic group affiliation is recoverable from speech, (c) very little speech is needed to discriminate between dialects, and (d) some phonetic correlates or markers of dialects are recoverable from a very small amount of speech. Throughout this chapter, three broad dialects of American English are considered: African American Vernacular English (AAVE), Chicanx English (ChE),4 and Standard American English (SAE). These dialects have been chosen because of data availability and the fairly strong ethnic group affiliation tied to the dialects (confirmed in the second experiment, described momentarily). The experimental results suggest the presence of parameters for phonetic articulation of each dialect learned alongside phonological contrasts. Because dialects consist, in part, of accents that constitute learned features of the phonological and phonetic systems of a language variety, holding phonology constant while comparing phonetic implementation across dialects provides a method to reveal the prominent phonetic features of each dialect. It is therefore important to determine whether dialect discrimination is possible by using phonetic cues alone, and if it is possible, what cues trigger discrimination (i.e., linguistic profiling)? Given that discrimination according to race or national origin is illegal under the Fair Housing Act and the Civil Rights Act of 1968 as amended, it will be important to demonstrate that the identity of race (or national origin) is reflected not only visually but also auditorily in an individual’s speech. In addition, it will be necessary to establish that listeners hear and positively identify a speaker’s dialect with great accuracy. The following experiments reveal the possibility of auditory discrimination and the probability of social discrimination by auditory identification of dialects. Auditory cues thus comprise a significant factor in establishing 4

Chicanx English is associated with Mexican Americans who have lived in the United States for long periods of time, including many who were born in the United States.

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evidence in effecting a prima facie case where the Fair Housing and Civil Rights Acts are involved.5 7.2

Housing Discrimination without Visual Cues: Experiment 1

Our first collaborative experiment grew from my own experience with housing discrimination, described previously; that experience – and the evidence derived from it – provided an impetus and opportunity to study dialect identification and discrimination. The initial portion of this research addresses the issue of whether housing discrimination is exhibited in the absence of visual cues. Most legal cases appealing to the Fair Housing and the Civil Rights Acts try to establish that the defendant discriminated against the plaintiff because of obvious visual cues. In addition to this existing standard of proof, this experiment indicates that housing discrimination arises in the absence of these visual cues. In predominantly White geographic locales where discrimination against minorities would potentially be the greatest, the percentage of appointments secured to view housing is less than chance for callers using nonstandard dialects, a finding that was confirmed by Massey and Lundy (2001). Projecting this to the population at large, the evidence shows that a member of a minority group is much less likely to get an appointment to see an apartment in these White locales, even when s/he is qualified to purchase or rent in those areas. In these examples, auditory discrimination arises without visual contact. Our research pertains to discrimination litigation by addressing issues that might be raised in the burden-of-proof tests that the plaintiff has to meet (established in McDonnell Douglas Corporation v. Green [1973]). The plaintiff has to prove the following: (a) “discrimination by a preponderance of the evidence,” and (b) once the defendant has shown that s/he behaved toward the plaintiff in a nondiscriminatory fashion, that this behavior was simply pretext and false. In building the evidence against the accused, a plaintiff establishes a prima facie case under the Fair Housing and Civil Rights Acts in several ways. The first item the plaintiff must prove is that s/he is a member of a racial minority. In addition, the plaintiff must verify that s/he applied for and was qualified to rent or purchase certain property or housing. The plaintiff must also demonstrate that s/he was rejected in some manner. The last proof that a plaintiff must provide is that the housing or rental property remained unrented thereafter. 5

This effort exceeds what is covered under rules of evidence (Graham, 1987). Rule 901 (b)(5) states that voice identification is permissible as evidence to identify the voice. We propose that rules of evidence govern the identification of race by way of a speaker’s voice. Thus, if a plaintiff shows that s/he has a voice representative of a nonstandard dialect and that the defendant can ascertain when any voice possesses characteristics of the dialect under consideration, then evidence is established in favor of the plaintiff.

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We are compelled to understand the possibility of auditory discrimination by cases such as HUD v. Ross (1994). In this suit, Judge William C. Cregar notes the role accent played in the outcome of the case: It is undisputed that Magaly Dejesus and Theresa Sanchez are Hispanic. Their distinct Hispanic accents clearly revealed their national origin to Mr. Ross. Although neither filled out a rental application, Mr. Ross did not afford them the opportunity to do so. He hung up on Ms. Dejesus when he learned that she received AFDC, and he never returned the message Ms. Sanchez left with Mr. Ross’ secretary. (p. 8)

This example and a few others (e.g., City of Chicago v. Matchmaker Real Estate Sales Center [1992] with respect to Ms. Frazier’s “accent”) demonstrate that individuals are capable of being held liable because of their auditory assessment of a speaker. However, not all jurists agree that racial identity is ascertained in the absence of visual prompting. Judge Alan W. Heifetz in his discussion of HUD v. Cox (1991) notes:6 Even if Ms. Rancatti did not see Mr. Edwards, Ms. Oliver, or her daughter, the Secretary conjectures that Ms. Rancatti knew Mr. Edwards’ race from his “distinctive vocal characteristics.” However, while his voice may have a distinctive timbre, upon hearing his testimony I was unable to discern, nor was there any other evidence upon which to conclude, that his voice or speech was characteristic of any particular racial or ethnic background. All that can be said about any distinction in his speech is that an occasional word revealed his Brooklyn heritage. (pp. 10–11) Even if [Edward’s] voice revealed an ethnic or racial background, it is questionable whether such lineage could have been distinguished, given the intercom’s poor quality. (p. 11, note 10)

For this first experiment, the null hypothesis is that there is no significant difference in appointments made by locale by dialect. The test hypothesis entails a relationship between the racial and ethnic constituency of a geographic area and the success in establishing an appointment by dialect type. Census figures indicate that in the San Francisco metropolitan area, which ranks forty-fourth in the percentage of African American households in the nation, the African American to White ratio in the value of homes was 0.64 when we first conducted this experiment (US Census Bureau 1990). Since then the San Francisco housing market has tightened tremendously due to the advent of younger White professionals who work in fields of advanced technology that are prevalent in the region (Zuk and Chapple 2015). This shift in high-tech employment opportunities has exacerbated the pressure on 6

In fairness to the parties involved, the judge ruled in favor of the defendants because of a preponderance of evidence indicating that Ms. Rancatti had neither acted in a racist fashion nor acted habitually in such a manner.

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real estate markets for lower-income minorities that was first observed more than twenty years ago. At that time African Americans had a median home value of $233,200, while Whites had a median home value of $348,200. Those median home values were, and remain, among the highest of the top fifty metropolitan areas. Ultimately, a local, city-by-city examination of segregation proved to be more profitable than a more general one. 7.2.1

Method for Experiment 1

I began work on this experiment alone in 1988 by conducting telephone interviews in person. Having grown up as an African American male in inner-city communities in Philadelphia and Los Angeles, I was personally familiar with AAVE, ChE, and SAE dialects. As a result, I developed a high degree of linguistic dexterity in my youth, with the ability to accommodate my speech toward that of my interlocutors, who were typically fellow African Americans, Mexican Americans, or Whites. The ability to employ my tridialectal abilities provided speaker controls from cross-speaker variation. In this respect, the present evaluation differs from other such guise studies as Lambert and Tucker (1972) and Tucker and Lambert (1975), which use different individual speakers in experiments determining attitudes toward dialects. Prospective landlords in five distinct locales were identified by classified advertisements in regional newspapers. The number of calls for the geographic areas is unbalanced and was determined by housing availability over time for each locale. The geographic location of each property was noted. I telephoned the landlords on three separate occasions, randomly using either minority dialect initially, which was determined by a coin toss. Ensuing phone calls would utilize the other minority dialect prior to a final call that employed SAE. This sequence of partially randomized calls was implemented to avoid a situation where a request for an appointment in SAE would be followed by a request employing a minority dialect that might be declined. A declination under these circumstances might be understandable because a previous caller would have already scheduled an appointment. By always beginning with either AAVE or ChE, I was attempting to determine if I could detect a pattern where only SAE would be treated favorably, while preceding attempts that had utilized the minority dialects were previously rebuffed. Each call began with the phrase, “Hello, I’m calling about the apartment you have advertised in the paper.” Different return telephone numbers were used for each dialect, along with different pseudonyms. This procedure of anonymity parallels legally approved practices of testers used by the Department of Housing and Urban Development and similar organizations when suspecting discriminatory practices by landlords (e.g., City of Chicago v. Matchmaker

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Table 7.1 Confirmed appointments to view apartments advertised for rent in different Greater San Francisco geographic areas (in percentages) Geographic Area Dialect Guise

East Palo Alto

Oakland

San Francisco

Palo Alto

Woodside

AAVE ChE SAE Total number of calls for each locale

79.3 61.9 57.6 118

72.0 58.3 68.7 211

63.5 53.2 71.9 310

48.3 31.9 63.1 263

28.7 21.8 70.1 87

Note. AAVE = African American Vernacular English; ChE = Chicanx English; SAE = Standard American English.

Table 7.2 Population in different Greater San Francisco geographic areas by race and ethnicity (in percentages) Geographic Area Population

East Palo Alto

Oakland

San Francisco

Palo Alto

Woodside

African American Hispanic White

42.9 36.4 31.7

43.9 13.9 32.5

10.9 13.9 53.6

2.9 5.0 84.9

0.3 3.8 94.7

Source: US Census Bureau (1990).

Real Estate Sales Center [1992]; Johnson v. Jerry Pals Real Estate [1973]; United States v. Youritan Construction Company [1975]). 7.2.2

Results and Discussion for Experiment 1

The results show a clear pattern of potential discrimination associated with the three dialects by geographic area. Thus, we reject the null hypothesis and accept the experimental hypothesis. Tables 7.1, 7.2, and 7.3 show that the percentage of appointments made in each locale corresponds approximately with the ethnic makeup of the geographic area. Tables 7.2 and 7.3 display 1990 census data for percentage of population and percentage of householders who belong to particular racial and ethnic groups (US Census Bureau 1990).7 The 7

Population figures that are provided by the US Census are estimates and not truly representative of exact population figures. While the changing racial trends in population distribution are clear, the fact that some cities, such as East Palo Alto and Oakland, register population percentages that exceed 100 percent is due to a combination of flaws in data collection, as well as inaccuracies provided to the US Census Bureau by those who complete the decennial population surveys.

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Table 7.3 Householders in different Greater San Francisco geographic areas by race and ethnicity (in percentages) Geographic Area Householder

East Palo Alto

Oakland

San Francisco

Palo Alto

Woodside

African American Hispanic White

47.1 23.4 34.6

43.2 9.6 39.7

10.0 10.1 64.9

2.4 3.7 88.1

0.2 1.8 97.0

Source: US Census Bureau (1990).

Table 7.4 Population in different Greater San Francisco in 2010: Geographic areas by race and ethnicity (in percentages) Population

EPA

Oakland

SF.

Palo Alto

Woodside

African American Hispanic White

15.2 63.5 28.8

28 25.4 34.5

6.1 15.1 48.5

1.9 5.7 64.2

0.4 4.6 89.2

Source: US Census Bureau (2010).

demographic makeup of these communities has changed considerably since this study was first conducted. Gentrification and other social, political, and economic pressures have displaced many lower-income populations living in the San Francisco region. Table 7.4 presents more recent population trends, confirming that the pressure on the regional housing market has increased, potentially exacerbating the trends that we originally observed. Returning, then, to our early observations: if the null hypothesis was accepted (i.e., if the positive appointment rate hovered around chance), then we would have expected a 50 percent success rate for each cell in Table 7.1. Percentages above and below the 50 percent mark indicate a variance from chance. By examining the first three tables, we observe that in the traditionally White areas, including Woodside and Palo Alto, the strongest bias was against the nonstandard dialects. Distinct patterns appear when we compare the population of each locale with the number of householders with appointments secured by dialect type. Where SAE is concerned (see Figure 7.1), we see a relatively level pattern across the locales regardless of population and householder density (60 percent to 70 percent). For the nonstandard dialects – AAVE (see Figure 7.2) and ChE (see Figure 7.3) – minority population and householder information are paralleled by the percentage of housing appointments.

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White Population v. SAE Appointments

Percentages

100

Appointment

90

Population

80

Householder

70 60 50 40 30 EPA

O

SF

PA

W

Geographic Area EPA - East Palo Alto, O - Oakland, SF - San Francisco PA - Palo Alto, W - Woodside

Figure 7.1 Comparison of White population and householder data to percentage positive SAE appointments Note. SAE = Standard American English.

Percentages

Black Population v. AAVE Appointments

80

Appointment

70

Population

60

Householder

50 40 30 20 10 0 EPA

O

SF

PA

W

Geographic Area EPA - East Palo Alto, O - Oakland, SF - San Francisco PA - Palo Alto, W - Woodside

Figure 7.2 Comparison of African American population and householder data to percentage positive AAVE appointments Note. AAVE = African American Vernacular English.

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Percentages

Hispanic Population v. ChE Appointments

70

Appointment

60

Population

50

Householder

40 30 20 10 0 EPA

O

SF

PA

W

Geographical Area EPA - East Palo Alto, O - Oakland, SF - San Francisco PA - Palo Alto, W - Woodside

Figure 7.3 Comparison of Hispanic population and householder data to percentage positive ChE appointments Note. ChE = Chicano English.

Compared to a segregation study using 1980 census data of the San Francisco area (Massey and Fong 1990), the AAVE dialect pattern is understandable given the index of dissimilarity of African Americans to Whites (0.717, where 0 represents similarity and 1 represents dissimilarity). However, whereas Hispanics were found to be more similar to Whites (0.402) than African Americans, in the present experiment ChE guises not only follow the general trend of AAVE guises but also have the lowest percentage success rate in securing an appointment. This was even true in the geographic areas where the number of Hispanics exceeded the number of African Americans (i.e., San Francisco, Palo Alto, and Woodside). We therefore concluded, given the evidence derived from the first experiment, that auditory cues constitute stimuli for disparate impact and non-accidental disparate treatment cases. Disparate treatment discrimination cases involve “discriminatory motives” established through the discriminator’s knowledge of the complainant’s minority status, the very factor on which discriminatory animus relies. Disparate treatment is volitional, not accidental. It is an action of the will having as its end a conscious choice among known alternatives. Therefore, knowledge of the alternatives is a necessary predicate for the exercise of that will. (HUD v. Cox [1991] at 9–10)

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Disparate impact cases involve indirect, and often unintentional, cases of discrimination. There may be reasons for the paucity of civil rights cases in which the burden of proof rests at least indirectly on auditory cues, as compared to the preponderance of cases that involve visual ones. One possibility is that the auditory kinds of discrimination are difficult to monitor. In addition, potential householders may scarcely suspect that they are being discriminated against; the landlord subtly discriminates by informing the minority speaker that there are no vacant apartments. This is supported by a survey reported in Clark (1993), indicating that the primary source of discrimination is the individual landlord. The upshot of variation by neighborhood within a general metropolitan area is that it corroborates evidence that segregation is fairly local (Massey and Hajnal 1995). 7.3

Ethnic Identification: Experiment 2

As already indicated, due to growing up in Los Angeles I had extensive exposure to African Americans and Mexican Americans, and, because my parents were well-educated professionals, I also had considerable exposure to upper-middle-class Whites who were native speakers of Standard American English. The early exposure in my childhood to these three dialects, which I would often employ or mimic in my youth, accounts for my tridialectal abilities. My collaborators were initially concerned that I might favor one dialect over the others as a default dialect, so they proposed that we engage in a second experiment to determine if the guises employed in the first experiment were representative of the appropriate racial groups and not exaggerated stereotypes of the dialects I might employ less frequently. Following the first experiment, a series of experiments on “ethnic identification” evaluations was conducted. The ensuing experiment was developed in an attempt to understand whether dialect identification is possible at the macro-linguistic or sentential level. In contrast, subsequent experiments explore identification at the microlinguistic level. Much is already known about the sentence- and morpheme-level differences between SAE and AAVE, along with the phonemic and lexical alternations (Baugh 1983; Dayton 1996; Dillard 1972; Green 2002; Labov 1969, 1972a; Rickford and Rickford 2000; Smitherman 1978, 2000; Wolfram 1969). Several of these phonological and morphophonemic differences could possibly affect our analyses. One of the notable characteristics of AAVE that is different from SAE is the absence in AAVE of certain sonorants, /r, l, n/, in syllable coda position. Other sounds, as well, may be absent from AAVE, for example, /-s/ suffixes (plural, third person singular, possessive) and consonants (particularly /t, d/) from consonant clusters. AAVE also exhibits final obstruent devoicing and consonant mergers, such as [θ~f].

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Another important nonstandard dialect in the United States is Chicanx English (ChE), which was also part of our investigation. Several studies examine the linguistic differences between ChE and SAE (González 1988; Penfield 1984; Penfield and Orstein-Galicia 1985; Santa Ana and Bayley 2004; Wald 1984). The phonetic study of Godinez (1984) is particularly important. Again, we were mindful that we needed to pay close attention to the phonological and morphophonemic differences between the dialects. Intonation on utterances of all sizes differs between ChE and SAE. For example, utterances in ChE begin at a higher pitch, although ChE intonations pattern more closely with English than with Spanish. Segmental changes differentiate SAE and ChE – for example, palatal interchange, fricative and affricate devoicing, and labiodental fricatives merging into coronal stops. Like AAVE, ChE modifies certain consonant clusters, especially initial and final clusters involving /s/. Unexpectedly, however, the mean duration of ChE vowels is more closely aligned with SAE vowels than with Spanish vowels. 7.3.1

Method for Experiment 2

Stimulus tokens for this experiment were recorded by speakers of the three target dialects. The number of speakers, totaling twenty, varied across the racial and ethnic groups. In addition, I also recorded tokens in each of the three dialects. Each token consisted of the sentence, “Hello, I’m calling to see about the apartment you have advertised in the paper.” The tokens were then randomized for presentation. In the experimental stage, 421 undergraduate and graduate students at Stanford (382 native speakers of English, 39 nonnative speakers) listened to each token once without response. The students then listened to the tokens a second and a third time, indicating two presumed traits in a forced-choice experiment. The two traits students were asked to evaluate were race/ethnicity and gender. The possible answers for race and ethnicity were “African American,” “Hispanic American,” and “European American.” Combined with the two choices of gender, participants selected one of six possible responses for each token. Given that each token has the possibility of being assigned one of the six choices, the null hypothesis is that each guise should be identified correctly 16.6 percent of the time. We predicted instead that tridialectalism is likely and that these guises are identifiable at the same rate as nontridialectal ones. 7.3.2

Results and Discussion for Experiment 2

The results of this study indicate that participants systematically identify my guises as being produced by an African American male (when using AAVE), a

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Table 7.5 Dialect and racial identification

Dominant Dialect/Racial Identification

Guise or Gender

Percentage Correct Identification

AAVE/African American

Male Male Female Baugh (AAVE) Male Baugh (ChE) Male Female Male Female Baugh (SAE) Female Female Male

97 95 85 84 77 91 86 79 92 87 86 86 83 81

ChE/Hispanic American

SAE/European American

Note. AAVE = African American Vernacular English; ChE = Chicanx English; SAE Standard American English.

Latinx (when using ChE), or a White male (when using SAE) (see Table 7.5). Thus, we rejected the null hypothesis and accepted the test hypothesis. Guise identification, as expected, is possible at the macro-linguistic level. All three guises were judged as being representative of the target dialects (slightly more than four out of five times for the least-identified guise). These macro-linguistic cues to dialect present an advantage as they are overt indicators of a speaker’s ethnic identity. The problem, though, that our study faced was in explaining micro-linguistic, or subtler, cues – hence the need for some additional experimentation. 7.4

Dialect Perceptions of “Hello”: Experiment 3

To determine the feasibility of investigating the phonetics of dialects, a second perceptual experiment was conducted in which we tested listeners’ ability to recognize dialects at the micro-linguistic or phonetic level. The results are intended to contribute to our understanding of the psychological processes enabling phonetic distinctions. This third experiment deals with two basic issues of dialect production and perception. Dialects differ in their syntactic, morphological, or semantic subcomponents, but our concern is to understand the role played by phonetics and phonology. First we asked, “How do dialects differ in pronunciation?” and second, “How do listeners identify dialects by pronunciation?” Because

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discrimination may crop up in telephone conversations, this experiment helps us better understand the cognitive role phonetics plays in establishing listeners’ beliefs about a speaker’s racial identity. Phonetic features in the speech stream not distinguishing words (the “noncontrastive” features) are used for speaker and dialect recognition. Whether a given feature is contrastive or non-contrastive is a language-particular (and dialect-particular) choice and therefore must be learned. The learning results in shared knowledge about society in general, interlocutors’ positions in society, and appropriate discourse norms given the discourse situation (Baugh 1983). Therefore, the particular acoustic features signaling a dialect distinction cannot be predicted by racial genetics. In other words, the dialect features are learned speech characteristics, rather than being anatomically determined. One consequence of having to learn the phonetic grammar of a dialect is that individual speakers can control several dialects. Competency in more than one dialect is quite common, especially among speakers of nonstandard varieties. Thus, among speakers of AAVE, the presence or absence of /-s/ suffixes is tied to familiarity and dialect group membership, rather than to racial characteristics of the speaker (Baugh 1983). Breathiness is one example of a phonetic feature that serves a contrastive grammatical function or, when non-contrastive, behaves as a sociolinguistic marker. Breathiness is used contrastively in such languages as Hindi and Marathi to distinguish different words but is not used contrastively in SAE (Ladefoged and Maddieson 1996). Klatt and Klatt (1990) found, however, that female SAE speakers are on average breathier than male speakers. Therefore, breathiness has different statuses in different languages; that is, breathiness has potentially different cognitive functions across languages. The breathy voice of female speakers of SAE is a learned social behavior and is a marker of gender in SAE. The acoustic signal carries a variety of information about the individual speaker beyond just the phonemic content of the signal. Some of the acoustic features of the signal are produced by the gross anatomical characteristics of the speaker’s vocal tract. For example, differences in physiology, such as vocal tract length and vocal fold density, influence the average fundamental frequencies of men and women. The effects of such gender differences entail higher fundamental and formant frequencies for women as compared with men (Hollien 1962; Klatt and Klatt 1990; Peterson and Barney 1952). These physiological features are not controlled by the speaker and therefore do not represent different learned dialects. Regarding the physiology of African Americans and Whites, Sapienza (1997) – in contrast to Boshoff (1945, cited in Walton and Orlikoff 1994) – found that there is no significant difference between the groups for many laryngeal aerodynamic and acoustic characteristics.

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The null hypothesis in this experiment is that there is no difference between the dialects based on auditory identification. That is, each dialect should display recognition at the level of chance. Instead, we predict that the phonetic characteristics in a short portion of speech are sufficient to trigger identification across the dialects. 7.4.1

Method for Experiment 3

For this experiment, only the word hello from my speech was used, derived from word-initial single-sentence utterances that contrasted my renditions of identical sentences produced in AAVE, ChE, and SAE. Again, the sentence was the same as that used in the first experiment: “Hello, I’m calling to see about the apartment you have advertised in the paper.” There were several reasons for examining one word. This allowed us to hold external factors to a minimum. Second, it illustrates how little speech might be needed for dialect identification. “Hello” is a self-contained utterance, making perceptual studies more natural. By focusing on one short word, we are able to hold utterance duration well below one second (x = 414 msec on average), making it comparable to other studies (e.g., Walton and Orlikoff 1994). The word hello neutralizes lexical, syntactic, and phonological differences across dialects. In other words, it lacks the environment in which we expect other dialect variations. This experiment was originally conducted during spring and fall semesters in 1997. For this study, we used fifty undergraduates who attended the University of Delaware (Spring 1997: 30; Fall 1997: 20). All of the participants were Caucasian native speakers of SAE. Ten instances of “hello” repeated twice for each of the three dialects comprised one block of data. These 60 tokens were randomized. Each participant was twice presented with the block of data so that a total of 120 tokens was presented to each participant. During a two-second pause, participants indicated, for each token, which dialect they believed they heard. The data that follow are combined from the two iterations of the experiment. 7.4.2

Results and Discussion for Experiment 3

Statistical procedures reject the null hypothesis in this experiment. First, the Accuracy Index (AI) reflects the overall pattern where more responses lie on the diagonal of a 3 × 3 matrix (represented by the 3 × 3 matrix as presented in Table 7.6). In the following confusion matrices, the AI is the sum of the diagonal cells, divided by the sum of all cells. Thus, the higher the AI value is, the better the responses reflect an ability to identify tokens among the dialect types, whereas the lower the AI value is, the responses become closer to chance. Second, we reject the null hypothesis by examining each of the

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Table 7.6 General confusion matrices Stimuli Response

AAVE

ChE

SAE

AAVE ChE SAE

a d g

b e h

с f i

“Chance” 11 11 11

11 11 11

“Perfect” 11 11 11

33 0 0

0 33 0

0 0 33

Note. AAVE = African American Vernacular English; ChE = Chicanx English; SAE Standard American English.

Table 7.7 Confusion matrix and summary statistics by dialect Stimuli Response AAVE ChE SAE

AAVE a d g

923 235 842

(15%) (4%) (14%)

ChE b e h

280 1,607 113

SAE (5%) (27%) (2%)

c f i

196 41 1,763

Row Total (3%) (1%) (29%)

1,399 1,883 2,718

(23%) (31%) (45%)

Note. AAVE = African American Vernacular English; ChE = Chicanx English; SAE = Standard American English, χ2 = 4,510, df = 4, p < .001; Accuracy Index (AI) = .72; percentages = percentage of total for that cell.

individual cells relative to the total number of tokens. For reference, Table 7.6 shows that when identification is by chance, each stimulus category receives an equal number of responses (11 percent); when identification is “perfect,” cells (a), (e), and (i) receive the maximum number for that stimulus (33 percent). The results show that, overall, participants are able to successfully identify tokens among the dialects when only hearing the word hello. We reject the null hypothesis in favor of the experimental hypothesis because in Table 7.7 the overall AI is .72, significantly better than chance. In other words, respondents correctly distinguished between the dialects more than 70 percent of the time. The individual cells do not reflect a response by chance either. Diagonal cells display response rates of 15 percent, 27 percent, and 29 percent across the three dialects. The cells displaying a response closest to chance are the AAVE tokens identified as AAVE (15 percent) and as SAE (14 percent). A comparison of the misidentification cells (cells [b], [c], [d], [f], [g], [h] in Table 7.7) shows two things. (The pattern of misidentification is shown in Table 7.8.) First, when AAVE tokens were misidentified, they tended to be misidentified as SAE tokens. Second, CHE and SAE tokens were misidentified as AAVE tokens. In general, however, the rates of misidentification differ, with AAVE exhibiting the highest misidentification of the three dialects.

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7.4 Dialect Perceptions of “Hello”: Experiment 3

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Table 7.8 Stimulus and response misidentifications Stimuli Response AAVE ChE SAE

AAVE a d g

#

ChE

"

b e h

SAE c f i

"

Note. AAVE = African American Vernacular English; ChE = Chicanx English; SAE Standard American English.

Table 7.9 Row-adjusted confusion matrix Stimuli Response

AAVE

ChE

SAE

AAVE ChE SAE

8 10 15

8 10 15

8 10 15

Note. AAVE = African American Vernacular English; ChE = Chicanx English; SAE Standard American English.

More than one factor, then, must account for these misidentification patterns. Factors might include (a) a response bias toward the SAE dialect as a neutral, default dialect; (b) a standard versus nonstandard bias favoring the AAVE-ChE misidentification; or (c) a phonetic similarity favoring the AAVE-SAE misidentification. If we take a response bias into account, the expected values necessary for computing the chi-square value are adjusted (see Table 7.9). In standard statistical packages, the response bias correction is calculated automatically (adjusted by “marginal values,” i.e., the sum of each column and row). With these adjusted expected values, only the AAVE tokens misidentified as SAE tokens (14 percent in cell [g]) come close to chance. The response rate for AAVE tokens perceived correctly as AAVE tokens is almost twice chance (15 percent v. 8 percent). To account for this, we applied a response bias adjustment. Furthermore, the standard dialect contrasts with the nonstandard dialects. The comparison shown in Table 7.10 highlights a response bias by grouping AAVE and ChE, and comparing the nonstandard group with the more standard SAE dialect. At this point, we have established that listeners are capable of discriminating among dialects and that this discrimination is eased by a low-level

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Table 7.10 Confusion matrix and summary statistics for standard and nonstandard dialects Stimuli Response Nonstandard Standard

Nonstandard 3,045 955

(51/36%) (16/30%)

Standard 237 1,763

(4/18%) (29/15%)

Note. x2 = 2.223, df = 1, p < .001; Accuracy Index (AI) = 80; percentages = percentage of total responses and the expected percentage including the adjustment for response bias (see text).

identification of the dialects in a short amount of time. What still remains is at least a partial explanation of which phonetic features of the speech stream act as sociolinguistic markers. 7.5

Harmonic-to-noise Ratio: Experiment 4

We performed a variety of acoustic measurements of the same “hello” data used in the perceptual experiment (Experiment 3). In this acoustic experiment, we looked for acoustic differences between the dialects to determine cues listeners use to identify dialects. Our answer, from the acoustic measurements, is that at least four acoustic cues are viable for distinguishing at least one dialect from the other two: (a) the frequency of the second formant in the /ε/, (b) the location in the word where the pitch reaches a peak, (c) the duration of the first syllable /hε/, and (d) the harmonic-to-noise ratio (HNR). In this acoustic experiment, the null hypothesis is that there is no difference between the dialects for any of the phonetic measurements we perform. We predict, instead, that there is a significant distinction among the dialects accounting for why the tokens are recognized so well. 7.5.1

Method for Experiment 4

Following other studies (Klatt and Klatt 1990; Stevens and Hanson 1995; Walton and Orlikoff 1994), we measured each instance of “hello” for several acoustic characteristics. We measured the segment, syllable, and word durations (and ratio of these durations to the duration of the word). Next, we measured the midpoint formant frequencies (F1, F2) for each vowel. The amplitudes of the first two harmonics for each vowel (|H1|, H2|) and the ratio of |H1| to |H2| were also measured and computed. We then measured the midpoint pitch of each vowel and the location in the word of the highest F0

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7.5 Harmonic-to-noise Ratio: Experiment 4

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Table 7.11 Acoustic measures differentiating dialects F2 in /ε/ ChE versus SAE AAVE versus ChE AAVE versus SAE

F0 Peak Ratio

/hε/ Duration

HNR

*

* *

* *

* *

Misidentification

Cell

Least misidentified

(cells f, h) (cells b, d) (cells c, g)

Most misidentified

Note. HNR = harmonic-to-noise ratio; AAVE = African American Vernacular English; ChE = Chicanx English; SAE = Standard American English. *p < .05.

Table 7.12 ANOVA for F2 in /e/ Source

df

SS

MSS

F-Value

Between groups Within groups Total

2 27 29

525,391.27 724,796.60 1,250,187.87

262,695.63 26,844.32

9.79*

Note. ANOVA = analysis of variance; SS = sum of squares; MSS = mean sum of squares; *p < .05.

peak. A ratio of the duration from the beginning of the word to the location of the pitch peak was computed. The final calculation for each word was the HNR. The thirty tokens (ten for each dialect) were compared on twenty-eight variables by running a three-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) for different variables. 7.5.2

Results and Discussion for Experiment 4

Four measurements are significant in distinguishing the three dialects: the frequency of the second formant in /ε/, the pitch peak ratio, the duration of the first syllable, and HNR. However, none of these features reliably differentiates all three dialects. Table 7.11 shows the matching results of the Duncan and Tukey post hoc test. Only the value for F2 in /ε/ is found to be significantly different in a Scheffé test for distinguishing ChE and AAVE from SAE. Therefore, the value of F2 in /ε/ is the best cue we found. Nevertheless, the analysis remains incomplete because no factor accounts for the misidentification of AAVE tokens as SAE (the shift from cell [a] to [g] in Table 7.8) or SAE tokens as AAVE (the shift from cell [i] to [c] in Table 7.8). First, as seen in Table 7.12, we reject the null hypothesis for the frequency of the second formant in /ε/ (SAE = 1.195 Hz, ChE = 1.498 Hz, AAVE = 1.445 Hz). We interpret this characteristic as an indication that the two

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Table 7.13 ANOVA for pitch peak Source

df

SS

MSS

F-Value

Between groups Within groups Total

2 27 29

0.0258953 0.1045779 0.1304732

0.0129476 0.0038733

3.34*

Note. ANOVA = analysis of variance; SS = sum of squares; MSS = mean sum of squares; *p < .05.

nonstandard dialects tend to raise and front the front vowel /ε/ toward /e/. Again, it is worth pointing out that this characteristic is the strongest of the measurements because it is the only one in which the significance pattern is the same in Duncan and Tukey’s honestly significant difference (HSD), and Scheffé post host tests. In addition, this measure of F2 involves a fairly strong relation as indicated by a ω2 value of .369. That is, 36.9 percent of the variance across the dialects is explained by the frequency of the second formant alone. This factor is not without problems, though. Because SAE is significantly different from ChE and AAVE, this factor might explain why ChE tokens are misidentified as AAVE tokens (the shift from cell [e] to [b] in Table 7.8). However, it does not explain the failure of AAVE tokens to be misidentified as ChE tokens. Second, the relative location of the pitch peak in the word proved significantly different across the dialects (ChE = 56 percent, SAE = 53 percent, AAVE = 49 percent). The ANOVA results are shown in Table 7.13. This characteristic reflects an alternate placement of stress from the final syllable (ChE, SAE) to the initial syllable (AAVE). In other words, ChE tokens reflect a final stress ([heló]), whereas the AAVE tokens reflect a more initial stress ([hέlo]). The ω2 value is .135; that is, 13.5 percent of the variance between dialects is accounted for by the location of the pitch peak relative to the word alone. The location of the pitch peak as a defining characteristic across the dialects is uncertain as well. First, it fails to display significance in the Scheffé test. Second, it fails to account for token misidentifications. For instance, if ChE and AAVE are significantly different from each other in the location of the pitch, then the observed pattern of ChE tokens being misidentified as AAVE should be unpreferred by participants. Third, Table 7.14 shows that the duration of the first syllable /hε/ (AAVE = 115 msec, SAE = 90 msec, ChE = 88 msec) is also significant across dialects. The ω2 value is .16; that is, 16.0 percent of the variance between dialects is accounted for by the duration of the first syllable alone. This characteristic has problems, especially because it is an absolute value measurement and not a ratio in reference to the duration of the word. Using the

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7.5 Harmonic-to-noise Ratio: Experiment 4

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Table 7.14 ANOVA for duration of first syllable, /he/ Source

df

SS

MSS

F-Value

Between groups Within groups Total

2 27 29

4,691.1183 16,415.8310 21,106.9492

2,345.5591 607.9937

3.86*

Note. ANOVA = analysis of variance; SS = sum of squares; MSS = mean sum of squares; *p < .05.

Table 7.15 ANOVA for harmonic-to-noise ratio (HNR) Source

df

SS

MSS

F-value

Between groups Within groups Total

2 27 29

17.742325 67.485995 85.228320

8.871163 2.499481

3.55*

Note. ANOVA = analysis of variance; SS =sum of squares; MSS = mean sum of squares; *p < .05.

same logic as in our discussion of the problems with the value of F2 of /ε/ earlier, we might be led to believe that SAE and ChE would be misidentified. On the contrary, these two dialects are misidentified the least. That is, in Table 7.8, we do not observe cells (e) and (i) being misidentified in cells (h) and (f). This is an odd finding because the percentage duration of the first syllable relative to the duration of the word is not significant. Fourth, HNR (AAVE = 12.1 dB, ChE = 13.5 dB, SAE = 13.9 dB) is the ratio of noise relative to the harmonic structure of a wave. It, too, is significantly different across the dialects (see Table 7.15). The ω2 value for HNR is .145, that is, 14.5 percent of the variance between dialects is accounted for by the amplitude of noise in the wave relative to the amplitude of the harmonics. HNR, like the other three features, is difficult to interpret. This feature has many possible articulatory correlates. HNR simply measures the amount of noise, and many factors lead to increased noise. Therefore, HNR does not provide enough information to allow reasonable articulatory interpretations. HNR is used clinically to diagnose a sizable number of laryngeal dysfunctions. These dysfunctions lead to significant morphological differences between normal and abnormal larynges. In our data, HNR does not vary drastically, but it is significantly different for SAE and AAVE voices. Furthermore, the HNR results provide the same dialect separation as the first syllable duration results. Given the choice between the readily interpretable duration difference

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and the much vaguer HNR results, we view the first syllable duration as a more satisfactory sociolinguistic marker of dialect. 7.6

Conclusion

The experiments described in this chapter link housing opportunities with dialect use. Housing discrimination induced by speech characteristics does take place (Massey and Lundy 2001). Dialects are discriminated by normal listeners. Very little speech is required for dialect identification – a single word suffices. Dialects are discriminated with acoustic phonetic measures. Patterns of perceptual misidentification point to a multiplicity of factors for further study. Reflecting upon the experiments as a whole, we should wonder whether the acoustic characteristics of the guises influenced the outcome of the discrimination survey. Consider that in Table 7.1 percentages of appointments made using ChE guises were the lowest in four of the five geographic areas. Although we might be led to believe from this result that Hispanic Americans experience more discrimination than African Americans, we could well be misled. In Table 7.7, however, ChE tokens are identified much better than AAVE tokens. Putting the two observations together, we see a possibility that ChE tokens as I produced them could be more salient as exemplars of nonstandard speech than my AAVE tokens, and they may therefore be less likely to be confused with the SAE tokens that I produced. Table 7.4 also illustrates some of the ways in which patterns of housing discrimination changed over time, creating a wealth-stripping cycle. When this research was initiated, many minority applicants were excluded from home loans, often as a result of linguistic profiling. Squires (2005) observed an inverted process, some of which included linguistic profiling; however, during periods when predatory loans were being marketed to many minority borrowers, linguistic profiling was occasionally employed to ensnare victims rather than exclude them. Once the housing bubble burst nationally, and home foreclosures rose, more stringent home loan policies triggered a reversion back to the type of exclusionary linguistic profiling that we first observed. The original work on linguistic profiling began with these experiments; however, as we see in the next chapter, there are many other potential sources of discrimination that exceed speech, especially during face-to-face interaction when service providers, or others, have an opportunity to see and hear a person at the same time. Dialect identification is clearly significant, but it is only one dimension of a complex array of variables that can account for discriminatory, and perhaps illegal, behavior that often goes undetected by those who have been denied fair access to housing, home equity loans, or certain employment prospects.

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7.6 Conclusion

119

Of greatest significance regarding the quest for justice, and the role that linguistics might play in that regard, the experimental results presented in this chapter demonstrate that people can easily detect dialect difference. Our concern lies not with the ability to discern different dialects, which these findings confirm; rather, how a person reacts to this discernment may determine whether or not linguistic discrimination occurs.

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8

Formulating Discrimination: Dimensions of a Historical Hardship Index

While there can be no doubt that language usage can serve as a basis of discrimination, it would be misleading – indeed, wrong – to somehow suggest that the linguistic dimensions of potentially prejudicial behavior represent the only or primary means by which people fall prey to unfair treatment. This chapter explores some of the alternative criteria by which people, primarily in the United States, become the objects of discriminatory practices. Before turning to the substantive concerns that pertain to various factors that either favor or disfavor biased human treatment, it is important to recognize that each individual is born into a unique set of circumstances that will influence his/ her future prospects. Readers of this book fall into two categories: you are a citizen of the United States, or you are a citizen of some other country. Those of you who live outside of the United States may view many of the historical, political, and social forces that impact the United States with a combination of curiosity and fascination that can easily result in some bewilderment. US citizens are among the most diverse of any nation on earth, and many differences of opinion regarding a wide range of topics exist among the American citizenry. Controversies surrounding the concepts of race and racism are illustrative, particularly when viewed in comparative international contexts. France is also a very diverse country, from the standpoint of the racial and cultural composition of its citizenry, but the French have been reluctant to collect statistics based on race. They prefer to emphasize commonalities among a diverse population of citizens rather than point out differences and social discrepancies that, regrettably, appear to share some unmistakable racial overtones. South Africa, by contrast, is a nation that is ever mindful of its legacy of apartheid and a past where Whites, Coloreds, and Blacks were separated by law and living circumstances, as well as political and educational opportunities. The degree to which any given nation struggles with matters of racial diversity owes much, if not everything, to the historical circumstances of that specific country. Moreover, the extent to which other criteria – such as religious affiliation – have an impact on social harmony or strife will reflect local concerns. To what extent are women who live in a particular country provided with equal rights under the law, and do they receive the same wages as men who perform the same job in the nations in which they live? The defiance of Saudi 120

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Formulating Discrimination: Dimensions of a Historical Hardship Index 121

women who choose to drive is illustrative of a controversial sexual discrepancy that many people would consider to be unjust, and there is no obvious linguistic dimension to these practices other than that female vocal tracts tend to differ from those of men, as mentioned in the preceding chapter. Unequal treatment between people living in the same country has global relevance, and although most of the remaining attention in this chapter concentrates on circumstances within the United States, the Historical Hardship Index that is described could be modified to meet the specific circumstances found in other countries, regardless of their political or religious orientation. Our work on this topic, namely, identifying many of the ways in which people become the objects of discrimination, took root in the wake of Hurricane Katrina and the physical devastation of New Orleans. In the latter part of August 2005, the entire world witnessed the dislocation of thousands of New Orleans residents when the levies designed to protect the city were breached, pumping stations were disabled, and the Lower Ninth Ward became flooded. George W. Bush was then president of the United States, and the arrival of Hurricane Katrina exposed flaws in America’s disaster relief agencies that appeared to have inescapable racial relevance; the vast majority of those who either died or suffered most in the aftermath of the flooding were poor and Black. At that time, as political controversy swirled around those who were responsible for providing emergency relief to those who had been displaced from their homes, Mike Luckovich created the accompanying editorial cartoon.

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While many Americans were fixated upon the stark racial contrasts that were evident in New Orleans, others were concerned that the relevant circumstances that exacerbated this disaster were being oversimplified, particularly so by pundits who accentuated the racial dimension of the problem – which was obvious to anyone who watched news at that time. Long before the slogan “Black Lives Matter” became popularized in the aftermath of Michael Brown’s death in Ferguson, Missouri, at the hands of a White police officer, many wellintended people were quick to point a finger at racism as the primary cause of the disproportionate amount of suffering by Black people during and after Hurricane Katrina, both within and beyond New Orleans. As scholars and pundits pondered the complexity of racial bias surrounding Katrina, this author came to a slightly different conclusion, forecast in Chapter 4: race alone was not the primary cause of the suffering and dislocation that the entire world observed in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.1 To emphasize this point, various students and others were asked to look at the editorial cartoon. They were then asked, “Can you characterize or classify differences between those depicted in the bus who are above or below the waterline without explicitly referring to their race?” Some would indicate that those in the front of the bus, above the waterline, were either “happy” or “content” in contrast to those below the waterline whom they characterized as being “unhappy” or “distressed.” At the conclusion of these discussions and assessments, emphasis was given to Judge Roger B. Taney’s ruling in the Dred Scott case, as described in Chapter 4, suggesting that those above the waterline were unlikely to be the descendants of slaves, while those portrayed below the waterline were, in all likelihood, direct descendants of Africans who were once enslaved in the United States. This exercise was intended to provide a more accurate rubric upon which to formulate and understand the history of racial discrimination against Black people in America; Judge Taney reminds us that it owes a great deal to the visual characteristics of those whose ancestors were brought to the United States against their free will and sold into slavery. Race is not the cause of the discrimination, but a mere side effect because only Africans were once enslaved in the United States.2 South Africa and the United States share a legacy of explicit historical mistreatment of Black people that was once sanctioned by law. Both countries have also passed laws intended to reduce, if not eliminate, the negative social 1

2

This chapter reintroduces a modified version of a Historical Hardship Index that was initially formulated in an article titled “It Ain’t About Race: Some Lingering (Linguistic) Consequences of the African Slave Trade and Their Relevance to Your Personal Historical Hardship Index” (Baugh 2006). Many of the same issues that are pertinent to slave descendants residing in the United States are shared with African slave descendants who reside in Brazil, which imported more African slaves than any other country.

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8.1 Heritage Matters

123

consequences that were once codified based on race. Voluntary Black immigration to South Africa or the United States during the height of their respective mistreatment of Black people was minimal, which is understandable. White people have immigrated to the United States and South Africa on a voluntary basis since the inception of each nation, but Black people tended to avoid moving to either country when explicit laws disfavoring racial equality were operational. Those patterns of voluntary Black immigration changed in the wake of civil rights advances in both countries, thereby creating a growing number of residents – if not naturalized citizens – who believed that racial hostilities were subsiding. Moreover, as a result of the relative strength of the South African and US economies, many Black immigrants began to move to those countries voluntarily and with greater frequency, in search of better employment prospects for themselves, and the hope of improving various opportunities for their posterity. Barack Obama Sr. represents an example of this trend, described at considerable length by his son, who became America’s first Black president (Obama 1995). But, as Judge Taney reminds us, both men named Barack Obama did not descend from anyone who was imported to the United States and sold into slavery. Michele Obama is a slave descendant, but President Obama is not. Both are clearly Black, or African American, but they share dissimilar historical legacies, and their circumstances are illustrative of the growing diversity among Black Americans that is often subsumed when viewed exclusively through the specter of race. 8.1

Heritage Matters

Race alone does not account for the glaring social, economic, and political disparities that exist across the United States. Numerous external factors must also be taken into account – history being one of the most significant. No reasonable person could look at the last 500 years of US history and deny that the combined effects of the African slave trade, segregation, and educational inequality have had profoundly negative consequences for the descendants of African slaves. The legally sanctioned disenfranchisement of US slave descendants is unparalleled among immigrant groups who have come to America. Is it therefore unreasonable to suggest that where the legacy of slavery can still be felt, the inheritors of that legacy deserve some consideration? The matters of racial identity and classification as they intersect with affirmative action policies, as well as the US Census categories for racial classification, make no provision for determining which US citizens are the descendants of women and men who were once enslaved in America. To the best of my knowledge, neither do we have completely accurate records that could identify

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the descendants of former slave owners, a conspicuously silent group to whom we will return in this chapter’s concluding remarks. Nevertheless, if affirmative action programs and other efforts to “level the playing field” are to have any meaning in a country with a history of racial discrimination, then slave ancestry should be taken into account, while displacing racial classifications that could inadvertently offer preferential resources to people whose ancestors were never enslaved. Regrettably, my own work on this subject has often been characterized by the same racial generalizations I now criticize. Despite having written at length about changing terms of self-reference among American slave descendants (Baugh 1991), I have routinely referred to “Black Americans” or “African Americans,” when I should have referred more precisely to “US slave descendants of African origin.” Many African Americans, like Barack Obama, do not trace their history to Blacks who were once enslaved in America. To his credit, President Obama showed considerable sensitivity to the subtle but important distinctions outlined here. In his compelling autobiography, Dreams from My Father, he reports that a (disinterested?) Manhattan publisher convinced him to overlook the myriad differences among Black people in favor of writing more generally about “all our various struggles” (Obama 1995, xvi). President Obama took great and justifiable pride in being the first Black president of the prestigious Harvard Law Review; indeed, he emphasizes that he was “the first African American” to hold that position. He was also the first African American man to have been elected by the Democratic Party to the US Senate, and he was the first to shatter the racial barrier to the American presidency. While these are absolutely marvelous accomplishments, which are worthy of celebration as significant milestones for all Black people, we should not lose sight of the fact that in the high-stakes realms of competitive college admissions, top-level jobs, and national politics, African Americans whose families have been in the United States for generations are still being left behind, with occasional noteworthy rare exceptions. For those who want to resolve the challenges of inequality that have resulted from slavery, a close examination of a person’s family heritage is necessary, as that history is likely to play a significant role in an individual’s prospects for success. Ogbu (1978, 1992) attempted to explore matters of American heritage through caste-like classification of immigrants to the United States. He introduced three classifications: voluntary immigrants, autonomous immigrants, and involuntary immigrants. Voluntary immigrants came to the United States of their own volition, regardless of the relative wealth brought with them. A full range of wealthy-to-impoverished immigrants have come to the United States since the inception of the country. The autonomous immigrants represented a special class of two religious minorities – Jews and Mormons. Ogbu observed that these groups were once ostracized, if not periodically vilified, for their

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religious beliefs; however, despite their religious affiliation they managed to take full economic advantage of the opportunities that America offered to voluntary immigrants. Involuntary immigrants included slaves and indentured servants, that is, people who were forced to move to the United States against their free will.3 Ogbu’s rationale for viewing Americans in terms of their caste-like heritage, rather than race, owes much to his own legacy as an African who became a naturalized US citizen while also achieving considerable professional success despite his obvious racial background as a Black man. He concluded that race alone did not account for the social and economic discrepancies that he observed in America. Ogbu’s caste-like classifications may help to account for some of the historical inertia that differentiated greater access to wealth for the descendants of voluntary immigrants in contrast to the inability to overcome poverty by those whose ancestors were brought to America against their free will. It is important to recall that Whites who were indentured eventually gained their freedom, and if they escaped from bondage they could easily blend in with other voluntary immigrants. By contrast, one of the so-called advantages of enslaving members of an underrepresented race in the fledgling American transition from colonization to nationhood grew from the obvious visual difference between “Caucasians” and “Negroes.” As previously mentioned, the Black American population is no longer exclusively composed of US slave descendants, and therein lies the potential for discrepancies in attempts to allocate resources intended to help slave descendants overcome their collective legacy of economic disenfranchisement. Ogletree (2002) describes ideas for reparations to help close historical economic gaps born of slavery, and many affirmative action programs that have been based on race strive to do the same thing, as did the Brown v. Board (1954) Supreme Court ruling that outlawed racially segregated public schooling throughout the United States. All of the social sciences have important roles to play by creating research that can help to promote equality, and doing so with as much precision as possible. Thus far we have considered many of the linguistic dimensions of social and cultural diversity in the United States, and elsewhere. However, we have yet to identify a broader range of criteria by which policy makers, or judges, might better address matters of injustice and inequality that result from discriminatory practices. This task is complicated by considerable differences in perception about the significance of race, for example, as the basis of discrimination, or in the 3

Ogbu (1978) erroneously classified Native Americans as “involuntary immigrants,” failing to acknowledge that they lived here prior to colonization. The present Historical Hardship Index seeks to rectify this mistake.

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controversial allocation of scarce resources derived from affirmative action policies that incorporate race. Indeed, California voters overwhelmingly rejected educational affirmative action based on race in 1996 when they passed Proposition 209, which prohibited state governmental entities from considering race, sex, or ethnicity in association with public contracting, public employment, or public education. African Americans and many other minority groups residing within the United States represent diverse groups from the standpoint of their national ancestry, and many whose families meet the criteria associated with Ogbu’s (1978) definition for “voluntary immigrants” have not always been able to escape the consequences of racism that race-based affirmative action policies seek to overcome. Be that as it may, when contemplating the historical circumstances associated with Americans of African descent who differ with regard to their legacy as the descendants of voluntary or involuntary immigrants, we have been able, in this instance, to identify color-blind criteria by which to consider affirmative action policies with the potential to avoid racial classification. A brief survey of the ways in which the US Census has evolved with regard to racial categorization is illuminating. The 1790 Census was devoted to free people and slaves, making a distinction between free White people and other free people. For political purposes, the allocation of congressional representatives was based on race, and slaves were considered to be 3/5 of a person. In 1850, slaves were listed in association with their owners, and the “colored” classification that had been used since 1820 was refined, so to speak, by distinguishing between a person who was Black (B) or mulatto (M). It was not until 1870 that classifications for other people of color were incorporated, and they included the Chinese and all East Asians (C) and American Indians (I). The twentieth century witnessed numerous revisions to the US Census, including the first questions about the respondent’s mother tongue in 1910. By 1930, the term “mulatto” was eliminated in favor of “Negro” as a single category for a person with any Black ancestry, that is, the infamous “one-drop rule.”4 Mexicans were also introduced for the first time in 1930, referring to anyone whose parents were born in Mexico. The US Census has been an imperfect instrument from the outset, and it continues to lag behind the changing demographics of a highly diverse population of documented and undocumented residents in the United States. While the 2010 US Census has attempted to overcome some of these limitations, US citizens who trace their ancestry to many Spanish-speaking countries have been classified primarily as either “Hispanic” or “Latino,” which fails to 4

The “one drop rule” came into existence during the nineteenth century and was codified in law during the twentieth century, asserting that any person with a single African ancestor would be classified as a Negro (i.e., Black).

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capture vast differences in national origin. Similarly, Americans of Asian descent cannot specify their national heritage with a sufficient degree of accuracy that affords precision. The inability to specify national origin with exactitude inhibits prospects for formulating policies that can rectify inequality born of historical hardship, which is why the remainder of this chapter is devoted to the creation of a heuristic index that allows an individual the opportunity to identify his/her personal circumstances regarding various attributes and opportunities that accrue from idiosyncratic circumstance. 8.2

The Historical Hardship Index: Some Alternative Dimensions of Discrimination in the United States

The creation of the Historical Hardship Index is based on the hypothesis that individual Americans may be treated differently, and perhaps unfairly, due to several characteristics that vary from child to child based upon the specific circumstances into which they are born; they have no control over these at the earliest stages of their lives, as infants who are incapable of speech and who must rely on parents or caregivers for their well-being. Before proceeding, however, it is important to appreciate that the potential heuristic value of Historical Hardship Indexes exceeds that in the United States. Various nations throughout the world have witnessed differential treatment among their citizens. Some will be members of the privileged classes, while others will be born into poverty. Unequal access to education and discrimination against women and minorities are not the exclusive province of the United States. Thus, despite the US-centric formulation of the proposed Historical Hardship Index, readers should appreciate that it can be adapted to evaluate other countries. Although linguistic background and race have occupied a great deal of attention thus far, we now seek to identify some of the other personal characteristics upon which discrimination might be based. Might one’s sex be a barrier to opportunity? And, as Ogbu suggests, is it possible that a family’s immigrant status impacts their opportunities, or those of their children? What of any physical or mental disability? Could any combination of these account for the likelihood that a given individual might be subject to discrimination? Again, for heuristic purposes, we will set an arbitrary scale, implying that various potential hurdles to equal opportunity share the same impact, when in reality their ultimate impact depends upon a range of circumstances that must be determined locally (see Section 8.3). The collective impact of various dimensions of discrimination in the United States is illustrated in the Historical Hardship Index (HHI) Self-Test in Figure 8.1, which is intended to be illustrative rather than exhaustive.

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Circle number under each attribute that describes you and add to the column on the right. Male 2

Sex Family Heritage Linguistic Heritage Physical Disability Mental Disability

Voluntary Immigrant 1 SEN 1 None 1 None 1

Involuntary Immigrant 2 SENN 2 Mild Disability

Superior 1

2

Residential Status

Own Home 1

Sexual Orientation Former Slave Ownership

Native American 3 ENN 3 Severe Disability 3 Severe Disability 3 Inferior (Little/No School) 3

2 Mild Disability 2

Educational Investment

Family Employment History

Average

1

Rent Home 2 Periodic Unemployment 2

Heterosexual

Bisexual

1 Ancestors Never Owned Slaves

2 Ancestors Enslaved Outside U.S.

Homeless 3 Chronic Unemployment 3 Gay/Lesbian/ Transsexual 3 Ancestors Enslaved in U.S.

1

2

3

Consistent Gainful

POINTS

Female 3

TOTAL OPTIONAL SECTION: Racial Categories Racial Classification Skin Color

White 1 Light 1

Hair Texture (South Africa)

Pencil Falls Out 1

Biracial with One White Parent 2 Neither Light Nor Dark 2 Pencil Sometimes Falls Out 2

Not White 3 Dark 3 Pencil Does Not Fall Out 3 COMBINED TOTAL

Optional Racial Categories Excluded SCORE KEY

11−17 points: Least in Need of Help 18−23 points: Less Fortunate 24−30 points: Most in Need of Help

Optional Racial Categories Included 14−22 points: Least in Need of Help 23−30 points: Less Fortunate 31−39 points: Most in Need of Help

Figure 8.1 Historical Hardship Index Self-Test

Readers are encouraged to calculate their own HHI score, based on the following procedures.5 First, decide which of the categories in the left-hand column are relevant to your life. You need not include any category for which 5

Readers who are not citizens or residents of the United States should make any necessary modifications to the index and related criteria that are more pertinent to the nation in which they now live.

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you personally believe the social playing field is now level and discrimination no longer occurs. Once you have identified all of the categories that you consider relevant, select the corresponding value between [1] and [3] that applies to you, and then write it in the right-hand column. Although values have been assigned to every category, some readers might believe that a more accurate calibration would convert to [0] values currently set at [1], since the lowest values correspond to people who have the greatest (inherited) advantages.6 We discuss the difficulties of confirming empirically accurate calibration in the next section. However, in an effort to calculate a preliminary personal score, consider the following issues for each category: • Sex: Since the category has only two options, values have been arbitrarily set at 2 and 3 for men and women, respectively. However, those with compelling reasons to choose neither or both should do so. • Family Heritage: If your ancestors immigrated to the United States freely and of their own volition, circle 1. If your ancestors were transported to America involuntarily (i.e., as indentured servants or slaves), circle 2. If you are a Native American whose ancestors were either displaced from their land or killed, circle 3. • Linguistic Heritage: If you are a native speaker of Standard American English, circle 1. If you are a native speaker of nonstandard American English, circle 2. If English is not your mother tongue, circle 3.7 • Physical Disability: If you have no physical disability, circle 1. Circle 2 if you suffer from a mild physical impairment, and if you have a severe physical disability, circle 3. • Mental Challenge: Those who have no personal history of mental illness or mental challenges receive 1 point. People with some history of mental illness or cognitive disabilities receive 2 points. Those with severe mental challenges or cognitive impairment receive 3 points. • Educational Investment: In this instance, the allocation of points is based not on your grades in school, but on the relative economic investment (public or private) that was made on behalf of your personal education. Since public education within the United States is decentralized, your impression about 6

7

Recognizing, of course, that historical hardship in one community may not exactly match the historical hardship in a different community, readers are encouraged to experiment with local calibration, and the possible inclusion or exclusion of alternative categories to more accurately reflect potential sources of historical discrimination where they reside. Those who are deaf should circle 3, as well as 3 under the category of physical disability. The dual classification of deaf individuals within this index is intended to overcome their exclusion from government policies pertaining to English language learners. Native users of American Sign Language must learn English as a second language, but most US government and educational policies do not recognize this fact, focusing instead on deafness as an individual disability.

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•

•

• •

Formulating Discrimination: Dimensions of a Historical Hardship Index

the educational investment made on your behalf should reflect the time and place where you were educated. With this temporal and regional variability in mind, if you received a superior education in affluent schools, circle 1. If your school was one that made average per capita investments to your education, circle 2. If you attended inferior schools, or if you have not had the benefit of any investment made on behalf of your education, circle 3. Residential Status: If you have lived most of your life in dwellings that were either owned by you or your caregivers, circle 1. If you have lived most of your life in dwellings where either you or your caregivers paid rent, circle 2. If you or your caregivers experienced prolonged homelessness at any point in your lives, circle 3. Family Employment History: If you and members of your family have been gainfully employed or supported by income from inherited wealth, circle 1. If you and members of your family do not have income from inherited wealth and have experienced periodic unemployment, circle 2. If you or any of your family have no inherited wealth and have experienced chronic unemployment or have lived for extended periods of time on welfare, circle 3. Sexual Orientation: If you are heterosexual, circle 1. If you are bisexual, circle 2. If you are gay, lesbian, or transsexual, circle 3. Former Slave Ownership: If your ancestors owned slaves in the United States please do not accept any points. If your US ancestors never owned slaves, circle 1. If your US ancestors were enslaved in another country, circle 2. If your ancestors were enslaved in the United States, circle 3.

Many other categories could or perhaps should be added to those listed, such as religious discrimination (against you or your ancestors), political affiliation, or various regional preferences specific to individual circumstances.8 As indicated earlier, the intention is not to be comprehensive, but to be evenhanded through this attempt to redress inequalities that are the result of personal circumstances that, for many categories, are beyond individual control. For those who have completed every category with the HHI thus far, the lowest possible score that a US resident might receive would be 11, whereas the highest possible score (regardless of race) would be 30. Anyone who may not wish to include racial classification to your personal HHI can stop here. However, we optionally include racial categories that may or may not improve the local and/or historical accuracy of your individual score. It is important to stress that these are optional categories. For illustrative purposes, readers are encouraged to select among three possibilities: 8

A personal history of military service has not been included within this index because such service should not be a barrier to success. However, military service is a strong indication of personal sacrifice, and this index seeks not to diminish the potential relevance of self-sacrifice resulting from military service.

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• Personal Racial Identity: If you consider yourself to be White, circle 1. If you are biracial with one White parent and one non-White parent, circle 2. If both of your parents are non-White, circle 3. • Skin Color: If your skin is very light, please circle 1. If your skin is neither light nor dark, circle 2. If your skin is dark, circle 3. • Hair Texture: The Pencil Test from South Africa:9 If you place a pencil in your hair and it consistently falls out, circle 1. If you place a pencil in your hair and occasionally it falls out, circle 2. If you place a pencil in your hair and it never falls out, circle 3. If one were to include all three of these optional racial categories, your corresponding personal HHI score could rise between 3 and 9 points. Readers are encouraged to experiment with relevant racial inclusion, if for no other reason than comparison. 8.3

The Anguish of Confirming Accurate Local Calibration in Diverse Communities

Although your preliminary score may provide a good approximation of your relative privilege or hardship status as compared with other US residents, the challenge facing future analyses is the more painstaking task of accurately calibrating scores to reflect the realities of various communities throughout the world. For example, it was mentioned previously that readers should rank all vertical categories based on their impression of the relative magnitude of potential social barriers. Is sexual orientation more of a hindrance to opportunity than linguistic background? Such answers must be confirmed in local contexts. Similarly, are the various values attributed to each category truly comparable? In all likelihood, the values assigned to sexual discrimination, for example, might be weighted differently from values assigned to educational investment, or family employment history. Ultimately, the empirical accuracy and validity of HHI scores will need to reflect the circumstances and priorities for each individual, as calibrated to the nation and community in which s/he lives.

9

Some additional background may help clarify the relevance of considering hair texture, and the previous South African practice of sticking a pencil in someone’s hair to determine his/her racial classification is well attested and serves our present purpose. During apartheid in South Africa, it was common for government officials to classify citizens as White, Colored, or Black, depending upon whether a pencil would fall from their hair or could be held firmly within their hair. The pencil routinely fell from the hair of Whites and would just as routinely stay fixed within the hair of Blacks, but because of the special nature of South African apartheid, many “colored” South Africans could not so easily be segregated based on skin color alone, so “the pencil test” provided greater statutory insularity to South Africa’s ruling White classes.

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Another issue will be to determine the relative ranking of demographic categories, from those that are most impactful to those that are less likely to trigger discrimination. For example, by allocating a higher hardship score to women, I have implied that men routinely have more advantages than do women living in the same society. However, anyone who believes the reverse to be true need only provide a rationale for his/her opinion, and then flip the position of these categories. Each demographic category must be identified and weighted with care and a degree of flexibility to account for potentially changing circumstances. Rankings may be subject to change due to criteria that will vary from one region to another. One size certainly does not fit all; clear operational definitions will also be beneficial to the potential accuracy of historical hardship calculations throughout the world. 8.4

Interpreting Your Preliminary Score

Because racial categories are optional for the purpose of this discussion, you will first need to determine whether or not you plan to include any racial criteria in you personal HHI evaluation. For the sake of clarity, we consider the fullest possible scoring range, focusing first on the part of the index that does not make explicit reference to race, skin color, or hair texture. Those who exclude any racial considerations will receive scores ranging between 11 and 30, whereas those with HHI scores ranging between 11 and 17 are least in need of help, while those with scores between 18 and 23 may be thought of as less fortunate, or perhaps in need of some assistance. Those who are most in need of help would be those who receive HHI scores of 24 to 30. If any of the three optional racial attributions are added, your score could increase anywhere from 1 to 3 points among Whites, and anywhere from 2 to 9 points for those who are not White. Assuming for the moment that someone has completed every category listed in Figure 8.1, the broadest racially inclusive HHI scores would range between 14 and 39. Those with scores of 14 to 22 would be expected to be the least in need of help. Those with scores between 23 and 30 would be less fortunate, and those with the highest scores ranging between 31 and 39 would, unquestionably, be greatly in need of help. 8.5

Global Adaptation: Reformulating Historical Hardship Indexes beyond the United States

As a US slave descendant, a great deal of my thinking about inequality has been influenced by circumstances pertaining to slave descendants in my home country. However, as I have traveled throughout the world, I have witnessed

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human suffering that is surely in need of redress. Those who are afflicted by unequal opportunities typically lack the necessary political clout to change their personal circumstances, yet countless nations profess an ethos of fairness that they fail to achieve. All too often those who are impoverished are castigated by more affluent members of the societies in which they live, frequently based on stereotypes that they (i.e., the poor) lack the skills, intelligence, and desire that are necessary to become truly successful, particularly in highly competitive societies. Matters of inherited wealth or inherited hardship rarely play into the harsh opinions of those who believe that personal success reflects a combination of motivation, dedication, and personal desire that is confirmed by their success, and – in their opinion – must therefore be lacking among those who fail. The present formulation of an HHI for the United States is intended to help promote more objective assessments of the combination of historical circumstances and personal traits that have helped some members of society, while making life far more difficult for others. Adaptations of the HHI presented here could also be useful in other countries, especially those that reflect vast differences in wealth and opportunity. Consider, for example, countries that offer advantages or disadvantages based on religious beliefs and affiliations. Surely an index devoted to opportunity, or a lack thereof, in Saudi Arabia or Israel would be lacking if religion were excluded. South Africans might add more complex categories regarding language because English and Afrikaans are still highly influential despite the fall of apartheid and the creation of a national language policy that now includes eleven official languages. Depending upon the country under consideration, the ways in which educational opportunities are represented will vary greatly. So, too, will the impact of sex or sexual orientation. As long as women in Saudi Arabia are not legally allowed to drive, the potential impact of that constraint on their employment prospects may seem too obvious for further explication. Countries that allow gay marriage afford opportunities to homosexuals that are absent in countries that disallow gay marriage, or worse – where homosexuals fall prey to mistreatment. These considerations are all aimed at the common goal of promoting justice among people who live together, wherever they are found. While the majority of the content in this book concentrates on some of the ways that linguistic science might be enlisted to support this effort, the HHI index is provided to emphasize the fact that injustice, and the factors that perpetuate discrimination and inequality, typically exceed linguistic behavior alone.

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9

Linguistic Harassment

Sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never harm me. The Christian Recorder, March 1862

9.1

Formulating Linguistic Harassment

The formulation of “linguistic harassment” developed herein is inspired by two concepts: the preceding quotation that was created by the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church during America’s Civil War, and comparison to legal definitions of “sexual harassment.” As such, the time span under consideration is extensive, although it is quite likely that both forms of harassment existed long before humans had developed the capacity to document unwelcome remarks. During slavery in the United States, the meaning of the adage was abundantly clear at a time when lashings, lynching, and bodily dismemberment of slaves were either legal or overlooked. “Name-calling” against slaves was a minor affront that was easy to withstand when the alternatives were taken into account, and those slaves – including Nat Turner – who chose to defy their owners, physically or verbally, often paid dearly for their defiance. Whereas most American citizens cherished their collective pursuit of “life, liberty, and happiness,” the AME church recognized that the pursuit and preservation of life itself for slaves entailed simply ignoring the verbal abuse that was routinely heaped upon them. In modern times, we have witnessed many disturbing occurrences of sexual harassment, and all too often those who are the victims of unwelcome sexual advances have been told, as the slaves were, to ignore this mistreatment because to do otherwise might jeopardize their career. While abusive language directed at slaves and unwelcome sexual advances differ substantively, they constitute forms of harassment that are frequently conveyed through linguistic content – hence our desire to explore the concept, and to consider the criteria by which linguistic harassment should be defined. Linguists are in an excellent position to identify and dissect instances of linguistic harassment, and, for the purpose of this discussion, to use such analyses to advance just treatment of those who have been victimized by it. 134

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Linguistic harassment can take many forms. For example, insults or offensive language can be either spoken or written; linguistic harassment can occur in more than one linguistic genre. Linguistic harassment can also be aimed at different targets, based on numerous personal and social characteristics. The notion of “linguistic bullying” is pertinent, but not always considered to be identical to “linguistic harassment.” The differences, nuances, and relevant distinctions will become clearer as we examine the various ways in which linguistic harassment occurs. 9.2

Some Essential Operational Definitions

To fully comprehend the nature of linguistic harassment, it is useful to consider the ways in which sexual harassment has been defined.1 That exercise exposes some immediate similarities and differences of a substantive nature. For example, the concept of “harassment” is overarching from a legal point of view, with “sexual harassment” constituting one of the forms of harassment that can exist among many. Sexual harassment is defined so as to include unwelcome sexual advances, or requests for sexual favors, as well as other forms of verbal or physical harassment of a sexual nature. As such we see that legal definitions of sexual harassment already include reference to unwelcome verbal remarks that fit within the proposed operational definition of linguistic harassment being formulated herein. Similarly, just as the term “harassment” includes and exceeds sexual harassment, our operational definition of “linguistic harassment” includes and exceeds verbal forms of sexual harassment. Unwelcome written remarks of a sexual nature, such as text messages that contain explicit sexual comments or sexual innuendo, would surely constitute another form of linguistic harassment that intersects with sexual harassment, despite the fact that no reference to

1

The United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) defines sexual harassment as follows: “It is unlawful to harass a person (an applicant or employee) because of that person’s sex. Harassment can include ‘sexual harassment’ or unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical harassment of a sexual nature.” Harassment does not have to be of a sexual nature, however, and can include offensive remarks about a person’s sex. For example, it is illegal to harass a woman by making offensive comments about women in general. Both the victim and the harasser can be either a woman or a man, and the victim and harasser can be the same sex. Although the law does not prohibit simple teasing, offhand comments, or isolated incidents that are not very serious, harassment is illegal when it is so frequent or severe that it creates a hostile or offensive work environment or when it results in an adverse employment decision (such as the victim being fired or demoted). The harasser can be the victim’s supervisor, a supervisor in another area, a coworker, or someone who is not an employee of the employer, such as a client or customer.

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sexually oriented written comments is contained within the EEOC definition of sexual harassment. It is also evident that abusive language that is either written or spoken is not akin to unwelcome physical advances. Nevertheless, other dimensions of sexual harassment are clearly analogous with any proposed operational definition of linguistic harassment, such as the fact that linguistic harassment can be initiated by the victim’s supervisor or a coworker. As mentioned, linguistic harassment is not limited to comments of a sexual nature and can include a wide range of topics or other insulting comments that pester someone, perhaps repeatedly. A

Linguistic Harassment

Our operational definition of linguistic harassment resembles the EEOC definition of sexual harassment, although significant differences exist. Linguistic harassment may be unlawful, especially if directed at a job applicant or an employee. Linguistic harassment can take various forms (i.e., spoken or written), particularly regarding comments that are offensive or contain degrading content about various demographic characteristics of an individual. All comments that meet the definition are unwelcome by the person or persons to whom the degrading commentary is directed. For example, it may be (or should be) illegal for an employer to make offensive comments about a person’s race, religion, or sexual orientation, or to request sexual favors; other case-specific offensive discourse could also meet the threshold of illegal linguistic harassment. While it is not illegal for someone to tease another person, or to make a tasteless offhand remark, linguistic harassment would become illegal when it is so frequent or severe that the derisive remarks create a hostile or offensive work environment, or when they result in an adverse employment decision (such as, the person or persons who are the objects of degrading comments are either fired or demoted). Moreover, the linguistic harasser might be the victim’s supervisor, a supervisor in another area, a coworker, or someone who is not an employee, such as a client or customer. To confirm the existence of linguistic harassment that meets this definition, one of the linguistic tools that should be engaged is speech act theory (Austin 1962; Grice 1975; Searle 1965, 1969). For example, degrading discourse that is produced by an employer or a judge, teacher, police officer, or other who holds an official position of authority carries consequences that are more significant than identically unwelcome commentary by a person without an official status. B

Linguistic Abuse

Abusive linguistic behavior may not meet the threshold of illegality that is intended for our definition of linguistic harassment, although they may overlap

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in some instances. Linguistic abuse occurs when a person makes statements or provides written comments about a person or persons that are harsh or coarse, and very likely contain content that would embody linguistic maltreatment of others. Children may fall prey to linguistic abuse from their peers, or worse, their parents or caregivers. Abusive language is not merely hurtful; it is also vindictive in nature and content. Profane language usage might, on occasion, be abusive in nature, yet profanity must be judged within the context in which the taboo language was used to determine whether it was actually abusive. Abusive language is also likely to be intentionally derogatory; benign comments that are offensive may not be abusive per se, whereas vitriolic statements are much more likely to meet our intended operational definition of linguistic abuse. C

Insults/Taunts

Insults are defined as “insolent or contemptuous comments that are rude and demeaning.” When used as a verb, a person engages in the production of rude remarks that affront those to whom the insult is directed. When defined as a noun, an insult shares one or more of the descriptive characteristics mentioned earlier – they are insolent, contemptuous, rude, and/or demeaning. Figure 9.1 illustrates instances where insults achieve the status of repetition and harm that are consistent with linguistic harassment. Taunts include insulting remarks that are provocative in nature. They do not merely mock a person or persons, but they jeer at the recipient(s) in ways that frequently contain sneering sarcasm that might trigger hostile physical reactions by those who have been taunted. Once again we observe that some taunts should be thought of as embodying linguistic harassment, while other taunts fall beneath that threshold. Categories ABC, ACD, and ACE illustrated in Figure 9.1 are within the realm of linguistic harassment, while categories BC, BDE, BD, and CE may be offensive, but they do not meet the operational criteria to be defined as instances of linguistic harassment.2 D

Slander/Libel

Slander occurs when a false statement is made that damages the reputation of a person or persons. In much the same manner that linguistic harassment can have legal consequences, so too might some instances of slander be sufficiently damaging that the offended party feels compelled to seek legal relief in the courts. Libelous statements share some similarities to slander, but libelous 2

Henderson (2003) provides further clarification, having noted that dictionaries have begun to classify slurs as either offensive or disparaging. She discovered that slurs pertaining to Whites were listed as being only “disparaging” (except those that indexed social class, such as trailer trash), while those referring to Black were listed as “offensive.”

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A

AD AE ACE

ADE

ABD AB

ACDE

CE

ABDE

E

B

CDE

ABE ABCDE

DE

BE

BCDE ABCE

BDE

BCE BC

BD

BCD ABCD CD

D

ACD

ABC

AC C

Figure 9.1 An integrated model of different types of linguistic harassment

comments always occur in written form. In Section 9.4 we introduce ways to designate differences between written and spoken remarks, which is why it is possible to create a single operational definition for both slander and libel for analytical purposes. E

Linguistic Bullying

Linguistic bullying occurs when a blustering, quarrelsome, overbearing person habitually berates, badgers, or intimidates smaller or weaker people through statements, either spoken or written. Social media has witnessed some horrific instances of linguistic bullying where teens have harassed their peers to the point that some have responded to the criticism or insults by taking their own lives. While suicides resulting from linguistic bullying are rare, they are indicative of a troubling trend that enlists new technologies that amplify dissemination beyond remarks that would have once been delivered face to face.

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9.4 Contextual Considerations

9.3

139

Conceptual Integration

The operational definitions just provided do not always occur in linguistic isolation; rather, linguistic harassment could conceivably contain one or more of the categories listed earlier depending upon the specific content and context in which unwelcome discourse has been produced. The full array of options, hinted at in the operational definition of taunts, is illustrated in Figure 9.1, with each operational category represented by its corresponding letter: A = Linguistic Harassment B = Linguistic Abuse C = Insults/Taunts D = Slander/Libel E = Linguistic Bullying

9.4

Contextual Considerations

Under what social circumstances does linguistic harassment occur? The contexts where abusive language is introduced vary greatly, yet it could be crucial to any legal proceeding trying to either determine or resolve the existence of linguistic harassment to specify, as precisely as possible, the situational conditions under which the offensive statements or writing have been produced. Two analytical linguistic tools may be well suited to helping identify the amalgamation of operational definitions that could be in play, and whether they meet the legal threshold for linguistic harassment: discourse analysis and/or conversational analysis. The latter is reserved for analyses of speech, and the former could be used to evaluate speech, written statements, or a combination of the two. 9.4.1

Public Linguistic Harassment

Goffman’s (1959, 1981) studies of public behavior are relevant to the point at hand, as is his sociological formulation of “talk” as a social science construct (Goffman 1981, 4). Clearly, some instances of linguistic harassment may take place in public venues, while others occur in private settings; both always employ either speech events or communicative events.3 Public speech events occur in circumstances where it is possible, if not likely, that a conversation could be overheard. Various written forms of public discourse exist in the form of publications, or, in the age of social media, as text messages or other written forms of language that could rise to meet the definition of linguistic harassment. 3

A speech event involves conversation, whereas a communicative event could be conversational but might also include written remarks. Throughout this chapter, we strive to emphasize that both spoken and written forms of linguistic harassment should be taken into account.

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In the public sphere, instances of linguistic harassment may be observed by others who are not directly involved in the potentially offensive conversation or written discourse. 9.4.2

Private Linguistic Harassment

Private occurrences of linguistic harassment take place without any witnesses other than the parties involved in the communicative exchange that could potentially be illegal. Some verbal statements requesting sexual favors could certainly fit within this realm – for example, if an employer made such statements to an employee (of either sex) in a situation where no other witnesses could either hear or read the unwanted solicitation. A coworker who regularly berated a fellow employee out of earshot or eyeshot of others on the job could be guilty of private linguistic harassment as well. Because our goal is to begin to provide linguistic tools that can be used to redress linguistic harassment, it is beneficial to conceive of Figure 9.1 from a threedimensional perspective. As depicted, Figure 9.1 is a plane without any depth, and Table 9.1 envisions two sides of that plane, with one being public and the other private. It is therefore possible that someone who is evaluating an instance of alleged linguistic harassment might want to specify whether the comments under scrutiny were produced in a public or private domain. We have depicted this in Table 9.1 by modifying the letter associated with each operational definition, where an italicized capital letter can be used to refer to public commentary, while lowercase italicized letters could be used to designate private discourse. By providing a means through which we can distinguish public from private discourse, we offer the potential to bring greater analytical precision to any evaluation of linguistic harassment, including any combination of all five operational definitions. A public display of linguistic bullying that included linguistic abuse and insulting language would be characterized as BCE, whereas a private instance of linguistic bullying that contained abusive and insulting language would be portrayed as bce. Being mindful of the fact that Table 9.1 Distinguishing between public and private offensive language Public offensive language

Operational Category

Private offensive language

A← B← C← D← E←

[A] = Linguistic Harassment [B] = Linguistic Abuse [C] = Insults/Taunts [D] = Slander/Libel [E] = Linguistic Bullying

→a →b →c →d →e

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9.5 An Illustrative Case

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linguistic harassment may be either spoken or written, it is possible to add a fourth dimension to Table 9.1 by underlining instances of alleged offensive language for each of the operational categories. An offensive statement on Twitter, or perhaps Facebook, would embody an example of public writing; if the language in question represented a case of linguistic harassment that included insults and taunts, those statements could be classified as ACD. Alternatively, private written statements that included the same operational definitions could be depicted as acd. These four dimensions could be used in conjunction with a combination of speech act theory to specify the authority of the speakers or authors of potentially offensive language, as well as conversational analysis and/or discourse analysis depending upon the actual content of the language under investigation 9.5

An Illustrative Case: Coach Mike Lonergan, Formerly of George Washington University

To demonstrate how an evaluation of linguistic harassment might work, let us consider evidence drawn from the example of former basketball coach Mike Lonergan, who was fired from his position at George Washington University on September 16, 2016, after an investigation revealed that he had routinely heaped verbal abuse upon several of his players and made disparaging remarks of a sexual nature regarding the university’s athletic director. According to Adam Kilgore (2016), one of Lonergan’s players lodged a complaint against the coach with Rory Muhammad who served as the university’s Title IX coordinator. University officials were initially mum, citing confidentiality regarding personnel matters. However, the Washington Post granted anonymity to some of the current and former George Washington basketball players because they feared reprisals that might impact their future prospects. Kilgore (2016) noted that many players believed Lonergan was “mean spirited.” Moreover, he was alleged to have “told one player his son would always be on food stamps. He told another, in front of the team, he should transfer to a transgender league, multiple players said.” Beyond comments that explicitly berated some of his former players, Lonergan also made disparaging remarks about his athletic director, Patrick Nero. He was alleged to have told five current and former players that “Nero requested the practice tapes so he could masturbate while viewing them in his office. The players said Lonergan also told Nero had engaged in a sexual relationship with a member of the team.” To evaluate coach Lonergan’s remarks, we use alternative analytic techniques to diagnose their potential to foment a hostile environment for the players who were either berated personally or heard coach Lonegran’s disparaging comments about Mr. Nero. The ethnography of speaking is an outstanding tool

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for this purpose because it allows us to dissect different components of the potentially offensive statements. In addition, speech act theory and conversation analyses will prove to be beneficial. 9.5.1

Ethnographic Evaluation of Lonergan’s Offensive Statements

According to Hymes (1962, 1974), every human communicative event consists of several universal characteristics that are identifiable. In this instance, we wish to determine the ways in which Hymes’s categories align with Lonergan’s admittedly controversial remarks that were either directed at his players or cast negative aspersions on his athletic director (Table 9.2). The ethnographic identification procedure that has been applied to Lonergan’s bullying and insulting remarks has been demonstrated here to illustrate some of the ways that similar evaluative ethnographic procedures might be utilized for other spoken or written communicative events, that is, for determining whether other statements constitute linguistic harassment, or determining the purpose of other linguistic content. We turn next to some additional linguistic tools that can also be enlisted to help confirm or refute the existence of linguistic harassment. Table 9.2 An ethnographic categorization of Lonergan’s speech a) Sender: Coach Lonergan was the “sender”; he made the comments that were stated and later confirmed by his current and former players who heard them and found them to be offensive and/or off-putting. b) Receiver: The various players who complained about Lonergan’s comments that were directed at them personally or which cast negative aspersions on their teammates or the athletic director represent the audience of receivers who heard the incendiary remarks, and by extension who may have suffered from being in a hostile athletic environment. Eventually a larger public audience that Lonergan had not intended to hear his comments became secondary receivers of his controversial statements. Indeed, it was this wider exposure that eventually resulted in his undoing and the loss of his job. c) Topic(s): The topic(s) varied somewhat, because the specific content of Lonergan’s disparaging remarks varied depending upon who was the object of his disdain. In one instance, the insult is directed at the child of one of his players; in another he casts negative and stereotypical aspersions against those who embody transsexual identities. On other occasions, he invoked vivid and offensive sexual and homosexual imagery toward a superior in the presence of athletes who were under his supervision. The commonality of these topics from the standpoint of their relevance to linguistic harassment shares the fact that all are denigrating and inconsistent with the highest professional standards that we expect of college athletic coaches. d) Code: To the best of my knowledge, all of the affronts made by Lonergan were delivered in English, which constitutes the code employed in this instance. e) Channel: The “channel” for the vast majority of the bullying taunts and insults attributed to Lonergan were made in the form of utterances. I know of no instance where he wrote any

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9.6 Diagnostic Speech Act Theory

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Table 9.2 (cont.) harassing statements, although they may exist. However, the offensive remarks that came to public attention were the result of speech, and the channel would include the coach’s spoken commentary, and those who initially heard his remarks. An ensuing written channel emerged through the press and other media outlets once this story expanded beyond the immediacy of those who were the objects of the hostile statements. At that point, a combination of print media outlets and various television and radio outlets reprinted or repeated the offensive commentary that was attributed to Lonergan; however, these various channels were engaged in a primary and secondary manner depending upon the relative immediacy of the remarks or their eventual dissemination through news outlets. f) Setting(s): The physical locations where Lonergan stated his initial offensive comments represent the original settings where the alleged harassment took place. Many of these statements were made at the athletic facilities used by the George Washington University men’s basketball team. Other settings would include the exact locations where Lonergan was situated whenever he would castigate his associates. Ensuing locations or settings where Lonergan’s insults were recounted through various media would include the physical locations where they were produced, that is, by a newspaper or radio station, as well as the specific locations where a person might read or hear those statements that were contained in the newspaper or broadcast on the radio. As was the case regarding the channels of communication, the relevant ethnographic setting was either primary or secondary. g) The event(s): Each instance where Lonergan produced a degrading statement about one of his athletes or his athletic director would constitute the primary events where potential linguistic harassment occurred. The secondary events that reported these remarks to a wider public audience constitute events as well, although they differ substantially from the primary events in that those who learned of Lonergan’s plight through news outlets were not the intended object of his scorn.

9.6

Diagnostic Speech Act Theory

Speech act theory comes into play in this illustrative instance because Lonergan did not make his offensive comments as an ordinary person. Rather, due to his position as coach of the men’s basketball team, he held a position of official authority and direct responsibility for the well-being of the athletes who were members of the team. His role as head coach exceeded that of another ordinary citizen who might have made identical disparaging statements about members of his team or the athletic director, but whose words would be less consequential because they were not made by the person who was authorized to lead the team. Speech act theory allows us to identify the authority, or lack thereof, of a speaker or writer who says something that is deemed offensive, but who may or may not be speaking from a position of sanctioned authority. As head coach of George Washington University’s men’s basketball team, Lonergan’s distasteful remarks carry more weight than identical comments by someone who was not the head coach.

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9.7

Conversation Analysis and Discourse Analysis Appraisal

Many of the techniques that have been advanced to conduct conversation analysis (CA) were initially developed by Sacks, Schegloff, and Jefferson (1974) and Schegloff, Jefferson, and Sacks (1977), all of whom were strongly influenced by Erving Goffman’s studies of talk in public places. Since then, Charles Goodwin (2003, 2007) and Marjorie Goodwin (2009, 2011) have refined CA methodology in ways that allow analysts to code the content of a conversation and then dissect that content to determine the specific linguistic properties that can be associated with different segments of speech. In this instance, we would hope to determine the extent to which Lonergan’s comments meet the operational definitions described earlier, or the extent to which his speech castigating his athletes or his athletic director does not fit with the criteria of the various operational categories. Many detractors of his speech were quick to label the remarks as containing insults or taunts, including bullying, which could be illustrated by ACE or CE in Figure 9.1, because the actual statements were produced in speech and were not delivered in written form, as might be the case for similar aspersions had he chosen to commit them to some written form, such as email or potentially offensive tweets. The fact that Lonergan repeatedly made offensive remarks that created a hostile environment for the athletes under his supervision might easily constitute the type of repeated behavior that is akin to unwelcome forms of sexual harassment. As such his linguistic affronts might easily meet the threshold of linguistic harassment as defined herein. 9.8

Audience Design Assessment

Before turning specifically to the ways in which audience design analyses are applicable to Lonergan’s statements denouncing his athletes and athletic director, it may be useful to review the foundations of the idea. In 1984, Allan Bell, a sociolinguist working in New Zealand, observed that the same radio broadcasters employed different styles of speaking during various broadcasts that were designed to appeal to alternative audiences. The broadcasters would often report the same news stories, in adjacent studios, but they knew they were speaking to a higher-status group or a lower-status group, and Bell (1984) documented the ways in which they modified their speech. The model that he developed, illustrated in Figure 9.2, resembles a circular target, with the speaker being at the bulls-eye in the center. That speaker will make comments to an “addressee,” who is “known, ratified, and addressed.” Others known to be present to the speaker may also be addressed, but not directly. “Auditors” are also known and ratified, while “overhearers” who are present are not ratified by the speaker. Bell (1984, 159) describes the remaining

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9.8 Audience Design Assessment

1st person 2nd person 3rd persons

145

Speaker Addressee Auditor Overhearer Eavesdropper

Figure 9.2 Bell’s model of audience design

outliers as follows: “Other parties whose presence is unknown are eavesdroppers, whether intentionally or by chance.” Bell (1984, 177) reports evidence provided by Solomon (1978) in the aftermath of an interview that former president Jimmy Carter granted to Playboy magazine in 1976 when he was a presidential candidate. Carter had granted an interview to Robert Scheer, hoping to reach more potential voters. However, Bell noted that after the formal interview was over, Carter made two informal comments that stirred considerable controversy. In the first instance, he said that he had “looked on a lot of women with lust,” and in the second case he mentioned that he had “committed adultery in my heart many times.” These statements, while considered to be quite controversial at the time, differ in style and content from the many remarks made by Lonergan that offended the athletes under his supervision or the larger public that disapproved of his comments once they learned of them. From the standpoint of using “audience design” as an analytical tool, especially when seeking to determine if linguistic harassment exists, Bell noted that Carter’s words, reprinted for a mass circulation magazine, reached a huge number of overhearers, who did not think the preceding quotations were presidential in nature. With the passage of time, and the repeated volatility that Lonergan displayed through various jolting remarks made in the presence of athletes under his supervision, many overhearers (or perhaps, over-readers) eventually became privy to his commentaries either at the time he made the statements or in ensuing broadcasts or reprints of his remarks.

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After an extensive internal investigation by administrators and attorneys working for George Washington University, the decision was made to terminate Lonergan’s contract. While that investigation did not disclose many additional details regarding the allegations of the verbal bullying, taunts, and insults that were brought to Mr. Muhammad’s attention by one of the basketball players, the aftermath of this episode is illustrative of a reasonably clear case of linguistic harassment, as well as some of the linguistic methods that can be used to expose hounding linguistic commentary. 9.9

Linguistic Defiance: The Special Case of Insubordination

Most of the legal definitions associated with harassment have been developed to maintain decorum in workplace settings. Thus, when a supervisor berates an employee, perhaps repeatedly, that behavior may result in the creation of a hostile work environment that is intolerable to those who have suffered from the verbal or written abuse. However, there are some situations where the tables are turned; that is, an employee may speak harshly to an employer or send an email or letter to a superior that contains offensive language or commentary that the employer or supervisor considers to be evidence of insubordination. Whenever such incidents are documented, employers can show cause for dismissing an insubordinate employee, and remarks that might otherwise be thought of as a form of linguistic harassment do not result in litigation, but the termination of the employee from his/her job. Like many of the dimensions of linguistic harassment that we have considered thus far, linguistic insubordination is not always easy to define or identify. Moreover, an exasperated employee may say or write something in the heat of a confrontational moment that s/he does not believe meets the criteria for insubordination, while an employer or supervisor who has received defiant commentary may interpret the situation quite differently. Indeed, it is for this reason that many organizations have established review procedures when disagreements of this kind occur. Regardless of the existence of a system of arbitration, or a lack thereof, derogatory statements made by an employee about his/her supervisor or coworkers may be interpreted as defiance or a refusal to comply with job requirements, and as such considered to be exemplary of insubordination. In these cases, the relevant commentary may constitute a special case of linguistic harassment that could lead to significant repercussions for the person who either said or wrote it. Goffman’s (1959) descriptions of sociological teams and the players on those teams are pertinent to this observation because those who work for a particular organization are, in his terms, members of the same team. Team

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9.10 Pertinence to Politically Correct Language Usage

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members who are not cooperative are also problematic and must therefore either comply with behavior that is conducive to harmonious organizational activities or they can be removed from the team. The hierarchy of team membership inevitably comes into play when decisions of this magnitude are pending. A worker cannot fire his/her boss, but the opposite occurs frequently and demonstrates that perceptions of linguistic harassment do not take place on an even playing field, especially within an organization. 9.10

Pertinence to Politically Correct Language Usage

The phrase political correctness has been used widely and disparagingly to refer to terminology that displaces previously attested referents that, over time, have come to be considered offensive by the people who are the object of the older and newer designations. One of the clearest examples to illustrate this point has to do with people who have diminished mental capacities. The phrase mental retardation was once used in respectful ways; however, that expression preceded the existence of the noun retard, which was not only less respectful, but soon considered to be offensive. It was once very acceptable to refer to US slave descendants as either colored people or Negroes, yet both of these terms have fallen into disfavor and have been displaced by Blacks (which was once considered to be highly offensive) or African Americans. Those who refer to devout Christians as Holy Rollers often do so in derisive ways, as do people who refer to Mexican Americans as either wetbacks or beaners. Some of these expressions, such as wetback, or the N . . . word,4 have been demeaning from the outset, whereas terms such as Negro or Redskin were not intended to be offensive when they were first coined, but their negative connotation evolved over an extended period of time. Clearly, harsh words readily come to mind when either Negro or Redskin is used today, but controversies surrounding the concept of political correctness imply that many people have become oversensitive to terminology to which they should not take offense. Ethnographers are perhaps in the best position to help resolve these matters, ideally in collaboration with linguists, because the interpretation of different words and phrases can change over time, especially regarding terms that refer to a particular group of people. Most often those who decry the existence of political correctness do not belong to the groups whom they consider to be overreacting to the older words or phrases; outsiders to the group do not yet consider the language to be offensive. It is therefore likely that a person could 4

The “N . . . word” is a euphemism for “nigger,” and it came into prominence during the O. J. Simpson murder trial in 1995 when attorneys (i.e., prosecutors and defense attorneys) debated about the potential bias or impact that repeated use of this epithet would have on a jury that was composed of many African Americans.

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easily refer to someone as being handicapped without knowing that those who live with physical challenges find that older term to be offensive. Politically correct words and phrases, much like slang, are constantly undergoing changes in semantic interpretation and reference, and it may be useful, whenever possible, to employ the terminology that the referent group finds to be most respectful. In so doing, outsiders to the group display their capacity, or at least their attempt, to show respect to a group instead of referring to them in an unflattering or derogatory manner that could be avoided. 9.11

Some Additional Legal Considerations

At what point does offensive language become so onerous that it is necessary to seek legal relief? The answer to this question depends upon many factors, and they are likely to vary from one nation to another, encompassing local laws, the relative sensitivity of people living in each country and its communities, and their ability to agree upon ways of identifying instances where linguistic harassment is no longer tolerable, and is therefore worthy of legal intervention. One reason that issues impacting women in workplaces throughout the world have received a great deal of attention in this regard is that they have been treated unfairly, or excluded, from many occupations that are male dominated. Moreover, the rights of women in Saudi Arabia differ greatly from the rights afforded to women who live in the United Kingdom. Matters of linguistic human rights lay beyond the law – essentially they are a matter of fairness that should be taken into account when referring to girls or women, wherever they reside. If, for example, a male employer makes repeated and consistent reference to his female employees in unflattering-to-derogatory ways, depending upon the nation in which he lives, he could be culpable for creating a hostile work environment for one or more of the women, whether under his direct or indirect supervision. It is, hopefully, unnecessary to list all of the distasteful words that have been coined in English alone that prove the point at hand; nevertheless, the B . . . word is one of many that a woman could, and should, consider to be offensive if it is directed at her or one of her colleagues.5 Documentation of potentially offensive language is vital to any litigation seeking relief from linguistic harassment. In the absence of documentation and/ or witnesses to unsavory language, in this instance directed at women, it would be much more difficult to prove that the employer had done anything wrong, especially if the employer denies that he ever said anything of an offensive nature. Whenever the offensive comments are provided in writing, such as in an 5

The “B . . . word” is a euphemism for “bitch.” Other derisive words that are almost always directed at women, especially when they are being harassed, include “slut,” “whore,” “cow,” and other distasteful words that, when used by an employer, might stand as clear evidence of linguistic harassment against the women to whom the derogatory words were directed.

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9.12 Summation

149

email or text message, then the remark is easy to copy and preserve, with a precise time and date specified at the time of delivery. Spoken remarks are more complicated to document since they have not necessarily been recorded, nor might their content or the specific date and time they were spoken have been confirmed. It is therefore beneficial for the person or persons who have been the object of linguistic harassment in the workplace to faithfully produce a written document of the incident, including what was said (identically if possible), as well as where and when the distasteful statements were made. If others were privy to the incident, it is helpful to have more than one person add their signature as an affidavit to lend further credence to the allegation for any potential litigation. If, on the other hand, the only witness to the event is the woman who was the object of the linguistic affront, she should do her best to write down the event in as much detail as possible, and then decide what steps should be taken next. Any litigation is a serious matter and will have consequences for all parties involved in any legal proceedings. It is therefore wise to consider any decision to bring litigation in response to one or more instances of linguistic harassment with great care. Some organizations have an ombudsperson, whose job calls for the discreet documentation of potentially complex, if not potentially litigious, matters related to an organization, so that an employee has the opportunity to formally register his/her concern, but s/he does so without engaging the full weight of filing a formal complaint. The ombudsperson, by definition, is called upon to serve as a neutral party, who can faithfully report the evidence that has been shared with him/her. Unfortunately, many organizations do not have ombudspeople to serve their employees, in which case a person who feels that s/he has been the object of linguistic harassment in the workplace may seek legal consultation prior to making a more formal complaint. In the United States, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has been established for just this purpose – to help citizens who may be treated unfairly on the job to seek relief from the source of that unfairness. From time to time these problems are manifest in linguistic terms that may constitute harassment, and this chapter has attempted to outline a combination of operational definitions and analytical tools that can be used to help determine if and when linguistic harassment has taken place, regardless of the social circumstances under which it might occur. 9.12

Summation

The formulation of linguistic harassment that has been proposed here owes much to previous efforts to expose and eradicate various forms of sexual harassment. However, because sexual harassment can be physical in nature, while linguistic harassment is never physical, it has been necessary to consider

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a combination of heuristic considerations, operational definitions, and hypothetical analyses to demonstrate some of the ways that victims of linguistic harassment might seek relief. This discussion is not a mere philosophical exercise, but an explicit attempt to illustrate some of the ways in which different linguistic methods can be brought to bear upon this problem, which exists throughout the world. While not every society is equally well equipped to address linguistic harassment in legal terms, anyone who has been the object of linguistic derision may now be better equipped to find ways to define, expose, and evaluate forms of linguistic harassment wherever they occur. Alternative linguistic research methods, including the ethnography of communication, a combination of discourse analysis and conversation analysis, as well as speech act theory and audience design, have been used to illustrate ways in which a person might begin to evaluate spoken and written instances of linguistic harassment regardless of the potential legal culpability of the remarks in question. The methodological tool kit that has been illustrated in this chapter is by no means exhaustive, and it is possible to use these methods in qualitative or quantitative ways that have yet to be more fully explicated. The analytical illustrations provided are also intended to lend assistance to a larger concern – the reinforcement of human rights where derogatory statements about an individual or a group of people will not go unchallenged but will be exposed in terms of the potential harm they might inflict.

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10

Linguistic Contributions to the Advancement of Justice

10.1

Orientation

This chapter is devoted to the work of many people who have contributed, either directly or indirectly, to the intersection of linguistics and the pursuit of justice. While some of this work centers on laws and their implementation in the courts, a comprehensive quest for justice far exceeds legal matters, and it is this more inclusive objective that occupies our attention. Some of this work is explicit and intentional, produced by linguists who knowingly devoted their effort to promoting legal endeavors that might benefit from linguistic evaluation or experimentation (O’Barr 1982). Other studies have unintentionally contributed to the advancement of justice through linguistic research that was originally designed for alternative purposes. How, then, has linguistics contributed to the promotion of fairness? Have individual linguists advanced equality and the human condition by creating research that elevates justice? These questions, while rhetorical in nature, point to important conceptual differences between the science of linguistics and the individual linguistic scientists who may, or may not, commit their research to the betterment of humanity. Those linguists who are explicitly committed to the advancement of justice make their intentions clear in the embodiment of their research, while linguists who have made inadvertent contributions to justice often make no mention of that beneficial dimension of their studies, particularly if they have designed their research for other purposes. Because many relevant contributions that connect linguistic research with justice have not been explicit about that relationship, it may be most helpful to survey some of these contributions based on their beneficial nature, as well as consideration of the methodologies employed in these inquiries that support humanistic milestones. Foundational contributions will be described immediately after these introductory remarks, followed by a survey of relevant studies that are grouped based upon their methodological orientation. Some other research that has inadvertently demonstrated how linguistic research promotes fairness and equality is presented prior to consideration of work that explicitly links linguistics with various legal matters. 151

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This chapter is not a comprehensive survey of the subject of linguistic research being beneficial to the pursuit of justice. Rather, it seeks to be representative of a combination of iconic and lesser-known research that is also demonstrative, so that readers who want to learn more about specific methods they might adopt and use in the future will find a wealth of useful procedures. Some of these were briefly introduced in Chapter 9 when we discussed ways to detect and identify linguistic harassment. The relative utility of any of the methods that are depicted in this chapter will depend fundamentally on the nature of the facts and available evidence that may pertain to a legal case or social circumstance where linguistic tools might be brought to bear upon overcoming injustice. In some cases, the injustice may result from a single episode, while other cases may result from systematic and repeated instances of abuse that might benefit from evaluative linguistic intervention. Despite the diversity of innovative methods that might be utilized in the quest to advance fair and equal treatment among diverse people throughout the world, our primary goal, broadly defined, remains the same: we strive to find ways that linguistics can promote justice in various forms, and to do so for the benefit of those who may be afflicted by unjust circumstances. 10.2

Foundational Contributions

Linguistics as a research discipline is one of the youngest social sciences. The Linguistic Society of America was founded in 1925; prior to that time, studies of language were embedded within a variety of other research disciplines. Because language is ubiquitous, evaluations of literature and other forms of language usage were well established in the humanities and social sciences. Some linguistic evaluations were also embedded within the physical sciences, including physiology, human biology, and anatomical studies. Our foci will be devoted primarily to a combination of social science and legal contributions, with rare exception. One reason for this orientation is that many of the foundational contributions where linguistic research promoted equality exist in some of the pioneering efforts of anthropologists, ethnographers, and sociologists to better understand the ways in which people communicated. Franz Boas was unquestionably a pioneer, if not the pioneer, in this regard, as he forged new studies of language and culture that transformed the ways in which anthropologists and linguists conducted their research in the United States and other parts of the world. Although Boas began his career in Germany, where he was born, his greatest contributions to promoting greater human equality resulted from the publication of two highly influential books: The Mind of Primitive Man (Boas 1911), and Race, Language, and Culture (1940). Boas was much more than a linguist; indeed, his contributions to

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anthropology include archeology, physical anthropology, and cultural anthropology. It is partially for this reason that many consider him to be the father of modern anthropology, particularly so after he created an exhibit at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair devoted to the cultures of Native Americans. His work began to debunk myths of racial superiority that prevailed prior to his studies, and it became quite controversial because he espoused the principle of racial equality among all people, despite the obvious differences in wealth and culture that were abundantly evident across the globe. The next generation of highly influential anthropological linguists was led by Edward Sapir, who was greatly influenced by Boas. Also born in Germany, Sapir moved to the United States at the age of 5, eventually settling in New York where he graduated from Columbia University with a keen interest in Native American populations. The early stages of Sapir’s career were devoted, much like Boas before him, to the study of Native American languages and cultures across North America. He spent many years conducting this research in Canada before returning to the United States, where he joined the faculty at the University of Chicago in 1925.1 Sapir remains an iconic figure for linguists from diverse theoretical orientations because of the vastness of his foundational contributions to an embryonic science. He was largely responsible for describing the nature of phonemes (Sapi 1933); several years previously he wrote Language (Sapir 1921), where he described many of the essential facets of linguistics as a science, and he did so while being mindful of the social, cultural, and evolutionary dimensions of language, noting, “When it comes to linguistic form, Plato walks with the Macedonian swineherd, Confucius with the head-hunting savage of Assam” (Sapir 1921, 234). Neither Boas nor Sapir ever wrote directly or explicitly about the ways in which the emerging science of linguistics might one day benefit the cause of justice. Nevertheless, their collective contributions to the birth of linguistics, and linguistic anthropology, were based upon a shared premise of human equality that underpins modern efforts to promote unprejudiced interpretations of the various languages and cultures that exist throughout the world. Sapir was also gracious about sharing his research, a generous quality as reflected by his well-known collaboration with Benjamin Lee Whorf, who studied linguistics comparatively late in life while still working as a fire inspector for the Hartford Fire Insurance Company. Indeed, it was Whorf’s work as a fire inspector that gave rise to the famous Sapir-Whorf hypothesis for 1

As a graduate student I had a wonderful opportunity to use some of Sapir’s original evidence describing Takelma, a language that once existed in the northwestern region of the United States and Canada. His careful and attentive details were clearly inspired by his desire to preserve knowledge of this and other Native American languages that he knew were in decline due to the dwindling population of indigenous speakers.

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which he is perhaps most well known. Whorf had investigated fires that had occurred among Native Americans, and in so doing he noted, and concluded, that differences between English and many Native American languages probably constituted a source of linguistic confusion that may have inadvertently resulted in Native Americans misunderstanding warnings that were intended to prevent fires. His investigations provided several illustrations of instances of linguistic misunderstanding, and Whorf related these differences in linguistic interpretation to the concept of linguistic relativity, which he formulated to convey his belief that different languages could evoke different thought processes. While Whorf’s foundational contribution to human justice may be less direct than that of his mentor, Edward Sapir, his studies of various Native American languages maintain the same philosophical orientation of espousing human equality, despite the fact that different languages – in his opinion – supported different thought processes. The complete Sapir-Whorf hypothesis described linguistic relativity and linguistic determinism, and the manner in which both Sapir and Whorf interpreted the ways in which a specific language might influence the thought processes of its speakers. With the passage of time, most linguists have come to accept a weaker interpretation of the original hypothesis, which acknowledges a relationship between language and the human thought process, but which does not assume that one’s language determines the parameters of human thinking. When Sapir taught at the University of Chicago, one of his colleagues was Leonard Bloomfield, who also wrote a book titled Language (Bloomfield 1933). However, Bloomfield’s background and training differed substantially from that of Sapir or Boas, to whom Bloomfield paid considerable tribute throughout his career. Bloomfield was born in the United States, and he studied and taught German as a young man shortly after his graduation from Harvard College at age 19. He was greatly influenced by the field of philology, which was a precursor to the formal introduction of the field of linguistics as a scientific discipline. At that time, around 1913 and 1914, philologists were devoted to studies of European languages, and very interested in the systematic nature of sound change. Also strongly influenced by the seminal contributions of Ferdinand de Saussure’s (1916) concept of language structure, Bloomfield began to think deeply about the nature of linguistic change, and how best to evaluate these linguistic changes. In so doing, he emphasized the importance of descriptive approaches to linguistic analyses. These conceptual developments occurred at the same time that Bloomfield became one of the founding members of the Linguistic Society of America in 1924, and his tour de force at that time centered on the combination of descriptive and historical research methods that he applied to evaluations of documented language. Although Bloomfield’s

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(1933) influence and methodological orientation began to dwindle in the wake of Noam Chomsky’s (1957, 1965) theoretical breakthroughs, which were mentalistic in nature, it is important to appreciate that many of Bloomfield’s methods have proven to be quite useful in several legal cases where various linguistic elements have come under close evaluative scrutiny (Baugh 2000; Smalls 2004). As such, Bloomfield’s contributions to the creation and development of descriptive and historical linguistics represent another vital conceptual brick in the methodological foundation of research that linguists can use when called upon to resolve disputes about injustice. A clearer example of linguistic research that has more directly contributed to the advancement of justice can be found in Weinreich’s (1953) Languages in Contact. Kim (2011, 102) observes the following: Weinreich’s interest in language contact developed naturally out of his polyglot upbringing: he grew up speaking Yiddish, Polish, and Hebrew, and from a young age became familiar with Russian, German and, after his arrival in the United States, English, as well as many other European and non-European languages. This background constantly informed his research on bi- and multilingualism, and the linguistic and social outcomes of language contact.

Of considerable importance to justice, many of the linguistic conflicts that arise in different parts of the world are the result of disagreements between people who do not speak the same language, or who do not speak the same dialect(s) of a shared language. Haugen (1972) and Weinreich (1953) devoted a great deal of their research to issues pertaining to language mixing and code switching, which are common when speakers of different languages live in close proximity and fluency in more than one language occurs.2 Many of the illustrations that are provided in Languages in Contact are derived from Yiddish, and although Weinreich did not explicitly state that his book was intended to defy some of the prevailing stereotypes about Yiddish speakers, who were almost always Jewish, his meticulous linguistic analyses shed welcome empirical light on speech styles that had previously been the object of linguistic ridicule. He also made important scientific observations about ways in which linguists could distinguish languages from dialects, based on intelligibility. If two individuals do not share enough knowledge of the same linguistic system, they are likely to need an interpreter to communicate because their native languages are mutually unintelligible. However, if two people can 2

Language mixing differs from code switching in the sense that the latter employs intricate alternation between two (or more) languages, typically by individuals who are fluent speakers of those languages. Language mixing includes instances where a speaker may incorporate some words or phrases from another language into his/her mother tongue, but s/he lacks sufficient fluency in the second language to fully operationalize the type of seamless code switching that takes place among speakers who are completely proficient in the languages they alternate with considerable ease.

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understand most of what is being said by each other, then these speakers are likely to share a common language, although the dialects they speak may differ. By this reasoning the tradition of establishing independent languages based on political circumstances can give way to a more objective way of determining the extent to which interlocutors from more-or-less similar linguistic backgrounds should be classified as speakers of distinct languages or as speakers of the same-or-different dialects of a common language. Swedish and Norwegian may then be thought of as dialects, since both speakers of Swedish and Norwegian tend to comprehend each other’s speech, while the so-called dialects of Chinese may be thought of as distinct languages, particularly when they are mutually unintelligible to Chinese people who do not share the same mother tongue. Weinreich’s (1953) careful attention to linguistic detail when languages or dialects are in contact in overlapping speech communities provides an array of linguistic illustrations that may prove beneficial to anyone interested in better understanding the ways in which languages or dialects in contact operate in the social milieu. These analytical tools can also be useful in many instances that call for the resolution of conflict among speakers who do not share a common linguistic background. This may prove to be especially significant in circumstances where one language may be perceived to hold a higher local status than another. Unjust treatment of those who are deemed to be speakers of inferior languages or dialects is common, and Weinreich’s (1953) methods can frequently be beneficial to those who are the victims of linguistic or social degradation. 10.3

Methodological Grounding

A combination of qualitative and quantitative research methods may prove valuable to people seeking justice when evidence of linguistic bias exists. Many of the techniques that have been developed to study language in social contexts might be brought to bear upon the evidence in a specific case, even if it does not rise to the level of formal litigation. For example, the analytical procedures required to determine if children living in South Africa are obtaining effective language instruction in schools that is intended to increase their prospects for future employability are likely to differ from the evaluative measures necessary to confirm the language background of a murder suspect who was overheard by an earwitness at the scene of a crime. Various methodological tools will be considered in this chapter, and many of these methods are extensions of the foundational studies mentioned previously in other chapters. While the validity of different methods will depend upon the facts pertaining to specific instances of linguistic injustice, it is possible that combinations of the methods under consideration might be helpful to people of

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good will who want to find fair and equitable solutions to problems that intersect with linguistic considerations. The methods depicted are by no means comprehensive, and we say little in this chapter about the potential benefits of experimental findings, which could be quite considerable depending upon the dispute under consideration. Rather, this survey describes some of the ways in which established methods used to study language in social contexts may be honed to promote the advancement of justice, including the ethnography of speaking and communication, alternative approaches to sociolinguistics, the sociology of language, as well as conversation analyses and discourse analyses. Studies of linguistic accommodation will also be introduced, as will speech act theory, situational approaches to linguistic evaluation, audience design, and dialectology. Educational applications receive additional attention as do efforts to promote linguistic human rights. While it is difficult to imagine a specific instance that might employ all of these procedures, it may be most helpful to consider this survey as an introduction to an analytical linguistic tool kit where selective usage of the right tool on the right occasion may serve to solve or resolve disputations of a linguistic nature. Many of these procedures were described in Chapters 6 and 9. Here we devote more attention to the scholars who created these procedures, along with the conceptual rationale that undergirds their particular contribution.3 10.3.1

The Ethnography of Speaking or Communication

Dell Hymes formulated the ethnography of speaking in 1962, which he subsequently expanded as the ethnography of communication in 1964. As an ethnographer who had been influenced greatly by Sapir, Hymes was interested in the ways in which people talk and communicate in various cultures throughout the world. He was also a contemporary of Chomsky; both men were producing their most influential work during the same time period. Those less familiar with developments in linguistic science may not fully appreciate the huge theoretical and methodological impact that Chomsky (1957, 1965) advocated, which triggered the decline of the Bloomfieldian era of purely descriptive linguistics in favor of intuitive linguistic analyses that encouraged selfgeneration of data based on a speaker’s linguistic competence (Chomsky 1965). Chomsky’s revolution also introduced another linguistic concept of which Hymes took note as he developed his ethnographic approaches to the study of linguistic behavior – the notion of universal grammar. For Chomsky’s theory of transformational generative grammar to work, it became necessary to posit that all human languages shared a common nucleus from which children could construct 3

Three of the scholars mentioned in this chapter are former mentors, including William Labov (who supervised my doctoral dissertation), Dell Hymes, and Erving Goffman.

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Linguistic Contributions to the Advancement of Justice Linguistic Performance Communicative Competence Speaking Competence Grammatical / Linguistic Competence

Figure 10.1 Diverse levels of human communicative-to-linguistic competence

the grammars they encountered in the specific speech communities within which they lived. Whereas Chomsky concentrated on the ways in which this development took place in the mind of the child who was formulating language, Hymes’s ethnographic approaches were concerned with many of the universal characteristics that exist in the social milieu where human discourse is produced, which Chomsky described as linguistic performance. Hymes did not concentrate on specific linguistic performances per se, but rather the essential components that must exist for human communication to occur.4 The ethnography of speaking or communication may be most relevant to justice when comparing the difference between Chomsky’s notion of linguistic competence and Hymes’s formulation of communicative competence. In the first instance, a person’s linguistic competence corresponds to his/her knowledge and ability to determine the difference between grammatical and ungrammatical sentences in one or more well-known languages. Figure 10.1 illustrates the relationship between a person’s communicative competence (which is more complex and includes gestures) and his/her linguistic competence (which is more abstract and excludes extralinguistic communicative behavior). Whereas the core linguistic competence is used to distinguish grammatical structures in a language from those that are ungrammatical, a person’s communicative competence includes knowledge of the norms for interaction in the specific cultural and sociological circumstances where language is actually 4

According to Hymes, every human communicative event includes a sender, a receiver, a topic, a channel of communication, a code, a setting, and the actual event itself.

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produced. Thus, while linguistic competence is essential for understanding the specific grammatical makeup of a language, communicative competence is relevant to the implementation of that language, which will include knowledge of when not to speak, or when a gesture can be used rather than words. Hymes was fond of saying that “a person who has linguistic competence without communicative competence will be a social misfit.” Returning to the relevance to justice, I once served as an expert witness in a murder case that allegedly resulted from a drug deal that went awry. The defendants and murder victim used slang expressions referring to drugs, the drug deals themselves, and some of the people who were involved in the transaction as sellers and buyers. Linguistic competence alone could not confirm participation in the drug culture, whereas their communicative competence, displayed by familiarity with relevant slang terminology, as well as deft usage of that slang in their discourse related to the case and the crime, provided some of the means through which I could demonstrate to the court who spoke with whom, about what, and toward what end. Without the tools that the ethnography of speaking and the ethnography of communication provided, it would have been extremely difficulty to disentangle the participants in the conversation, as well as their intentions. 10.3.2

Sociolinguistic Developments

The tools that are used most frequently when seeking to lend assistance to the advancement of justice have been developed by William Labov. He is credited with being the father of variationist sociolinguistics; however, he graciously pays tribute to his mentor, Uriel Weinreich, whenever he describes the birth of the field: Weinreich was the perfect academic: passionately interested in the ideas of others, brimming over with intellectual honesty, vigor and originality. He protected me from every academic evil. When I visited other universities as a graduate student, the name of Weinreich always brought a special look of respect and awe. He died suddenly, of cancer, in 1967 at the age of 41. Going through his papers in later years, I found that he had written up projects for research that anticipated most of the things I wanted to do. So to this day, I do not know how many of my ideas I brought to linguistics, and how many I got from Weinreich. I would like to think that my students are as lucky as I was, but I know better than that. (Labov 2001, 459)

As one of William (Bill) Labov’s doctoral students, and the first African American to receive a PhD under his supervision, it is hard for me to imagine a better mentor, or being luckier than I have been as a result of Bill’s guidance. As mentioned, I was attracted to the field of linguistics after reading The Logic of Nonstandard English, which greatly affected me in many ways. I also had occasion to travel with Bill from time to time, and he would share personal

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experiences that gave insight into his dynamic personality, and his greatest influences. William Labov studied chemistry at Harvard and then entered the family printing business before returning to graduate school to study linguistics. This indirect route to graduate study also meant that Labov was only one year younger than his mentor, Uriel Weinreich. It was partially for this reason that Weinreich’s cancer and death at age 41 had an enormous impact on Bill, because he believed he had a duty to carry on much of the work that Weinreich did not have time to complete. Moreover, Labov was impressed and deeply touched by Weinreich’s professional dedication. At a time when Weinreich knew he was at death’s door, he devoted much of his waning energy to the collaborative publication titled Empirical Foundations for a Theory of Language Change (Weinreich, Labov, and Herzog 1968). That paper outlined many of the scientific principles that guided a larger portion of Labov’s career, including his massive three-volume tome, Principles of Linguistic Change, which he dedicated to Weinreich. My explication of this legacy is not intended to wallow in sentimentality, but to emphasize the common mission that was shared by men who were nearly the same age, and who were mindful of the linguistic discrimination that had impacted many Jews and African Americans. Weinreich’s (1953) Languages in Contact took an indirect approach to challenging some of the linguistic stereotypes about Yiddish, carefully identifying the empirical linguistic components of Yiddish, along with their historical derivation. Labov (1969a) challenged the prevailing status quo about Nonstandard Negro English as “broken English” or “improper English,” and he did so forcefully and with a degree of scientific conviction that echoed the precision for which his mentor was widely known. Those of us who entered graduate school in 1972 to study linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania witnessed an extraordinary transformation, because the quantitative procedures that Labov (1963, 1966) had devised to study language usage on Martha’s Vineyard and throughout New York City had been at first all completed by hand. Cedergren and Sankoff (1974) developed computer programs that expedited calculations far beyond what was previously possible, allowing me and others to reevaluate some of Labov’s (1969a, 1969b) original evidence with greater precision due to the availability of this vast computational power. Guy (1981) proved to be most adept at these new techniques, in part, because he had studied computer programming while he was an undergraduate student in Boston. I, on the other hand, initially struggled with this new technology, eventually discovering that I could use these new computational tools to address some of the prevailing historical controversies in the field regarding the historical origin of African American English (Baugh 1980).

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Two prevailing historical theories existed and were thought to be incompatible: the dialectologists looked to England as the historical precursor to African American English, while many Creole scholars were convinced that African languages played a far more influential historical role. My work demonstrated that both groups were right to an extent, and that contemporary varieties of African American English were the product of an intricate mixture of English and African influences that had evolved over time. These influences became entrenched because slaves were denied access to education, and their descendants continue to be racially isolated as compared to the vast array of other non-African immigrants to America. What, then, do these research trends have to do with justice, or the ways in which linguists might use these tools to eradicate inequality? Many readers will recognize that most advanced industrial societies throughout the world are socially stratified, and that well-educated affluent members of the upper classes tend to speak differently from those who do not share their wealth or social station. Indeed, this was the object of Labov’s (1966) study, The Social Stratification of English in New York City. George Bernard Shaw’s (1913) depiction of Eliza Doolittle’s linguistic transformation in Pygmalion, at the behest of the imaginary linguist Henry Higgins, stands as an early testament to the fact that many people recognized class differences in speech patterns, along with their consequences for employment, housing, and education. Similarly, Stephen Sondheim weighed in on this same topic in West Side Story in the famous song “I like to be in America,” where Bernardo and his compatriots extol the virtues of life back in Puerto Rico, while Anita and her female companions express their love of Manhattan. Some of the lyrical lines that pertain to linguistic justice occur when Anita exclaims, “I’ll get a terrace apartment,” to which Bernardo replies, “Better get rid of your accent.” Neither Shaw nor Sondheim is a professional linguist, but they knew well that people are judged by their manner of speaking, and that they may become the victims of discrimination based on their speech, which I have since characterized as linguistic profiling (see Chapter 5). The depiction of linguistic discrimination, while well attested in life and in fiction, fails to capture the ways in which people of good will can combat such harmful practices. However, thanks to the quantitative procedures that Labov has devised to study linguistic change in progress, we have tools that can be used in many instances to provide linguistic, if not legal, relief to those who have been the object of linguistic discrimination and ridicule. 10.3.3

The Sociology of Language

The difference between sociolinguistics and the sociology of language (Fishman 1972) is considerable, but it essentially boils down to the fact that

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Joshua Fishman, a sociologist, recognized that a specialized branch of sociology could be devoted to the study of language and how it operates in a given society. As such, some of the concepts that are relevant to linguists, such as the depiction of a speech community (i.e., those individuals who interact by means of speech) represent common conceptual categories, whereas other analytical components may be characterized in ways that genuflect to linguistics or sociology, depending upon the methodological orientation of a specific study. Garcia and Schiffman (2006) provide a lucid account of Fishman’s illustrious career, while taking great pains to convey that his scholarship, which began with the formulation of the sociology of language, evolved so as to exceed the narrow interpretation that I have implied earlier, that Fishman’s training and thinking as a sociologist somehow constrained his disciplinary contributions to sociological orientations alone. Indeed, Garcia and Schiffman characterize his many contributions as follows: Sociology of Language, the interdisciplinary enterprise established and developed by Joshua A. Fishman himself, has evolved into what we might call today, because of its integrative and yet distinctive character – Fishmanian Sociolinguistics. Fishmanian Sociolinguistics subsumes the following categories of study:

language and behavior multilingualism language maintenance/language shift/ reversing language shift language spread language attitudes and language and ethnicity/ nationalism/ identity/ religion/power language planning and language policy bilingual education and minority language group education (Garcia and Schiffman 2006, 6) While the relevance of many of these categories to the pursuit of justice may be self-evident, it is helpful to provide some illustrations of the ways in which Fishman’s insights have benefited those of us who seek to help people who have been afflicted by various linguistic maladies. Although language and behavior is a broad conceptual category, many examples leap to mind of ways that the manner in which one speaks has explicit consequences. In the United States, for example, if a person is unruly in a courtroom, perhaps yelling at a judge using profane language, s/he is likely to be arrested for contempt of court. It is not merely the profanity that can land a person in jail, but the additional fact that s/he was screaming when offending the judge; language and behavior combined may account for these hypothetical legal consequences. Language maintenance, shift, and spread are quite literal in their interpretation and can often be located geographically. To what extent do we observe

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linguistic stability or adjustments or forms of linguistic osmosis? All of these phenomena, which are sociological in nature, were objects for Fishman’s (1972) scholarly inquiries. Language matters related to attitudes, identity, religion, and power were also central to Fishman’s research, and they may be relevant to various forms of linguistic discrimination and injustice that can occur in isolated incidents, or more systematically depending upon the circumstances. The discussions of language planning and policy may or may not be related to Fishman’s work on bilingual education, or the education of minority groups with distinctive linguistic characteristics. The planning and policy issues often result in a form of linguistic engineering, which may be perceived as beneficial or detrimental from the perspective of an individual. Plans to impose a language, such as Russian, on speakers of Polish or Estonian may be seen as welcome by those eager to engage with Russia, while it may be anathema to those seeking to maintain a strong national identity. Educational policies in South Africa changed dramatically after the fall of apartheid, when the Bantu Education Act fell into disfavor because it prevented, or at least delayed, many Black South Africans from learning English and occasionally Afrikaans, which were the only official languages under the apartheid government. Fishman’s (1972) research provides an array of sociological tools with linguistic relevance that may be helpful to people striving to overcome injustice linked to language. He and his wife Gela were also instrumental in efforts to revive Yiddish in the United States and Israel. They engaged in applied linguistic efforts to halt and reverse the decline of Yiddish for a combination of personal, religious, and political reasons that they believed were vital to the future well-being of Jews throughout the Diaspora. Those efforts, to many, are demonstrative of the pursuit of a very special form of linguistic justice in the aftermath of the Holocaust that explicitly attempts to preserve important linguistic aspects of Jewish culture that could have been lost without their direct and steadfast intervention. 10.3.4

Conversation Analysis

In much the same manner that Labov’s contributions were inspired by Weinreich, the field of conversation analysis (CA) is most closely associated with Sacks, Schegloff, and Jefferson (1974), who were students of Erving Goffman. Goffman (1959, 1981) is best known for studies of self in society, and the ways in which people behave in public places. He devoted a great deal of his research to studies of talk, and the various ways that people converse in different settings. The methods that Sacks et al. (1974) developed made significant breakthroughs in the ways that transcripts were written. They rarely employed

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phonetic transcription but used an array of diacritics to distinguish between longer or shorter utterances, as well as pauses in a conversation. Moreover, their transcriptions, which often evaluated speaking circumstances with multiple participants, resembled a musical score so that they could visually illustrate instances where two or more speakers were talking simultaneously. Most transcription procedures tend to be linear and, by extension, give the impression that speakers do not encroach on each other in deference to coordinated turn taking. However, Sacks et al. (1974) showed that normal conversations with multiple participants frequently exhibit overlapping speech. We have perhaps one of the clearest illustrations of how CA is relevant to the pursuit of justice in Roger Shuy’s utilization of it in the Cullen Davis murder trial (see Chapter 2). Whereas the prosecutor in that case provided a transcript that was linear in its depiction, Shuy used a combination of CA and discourse analysis (DA) for transcription procedures to visually identify those instances where both Mr. Davis and Mr. McCrory spoke at the same time. CA also provides ways to differentiate between a loud voice in contrast to the speech of someone who is soft spoken. The Cullen Davis trial demonstrated that a person speaking in a normal tone of voice may not be heard by someone who is not immediately in his/her presence, especially if that second person is raising his/ her voice to ensure s/he is being heard. The essential point is quite basic, because CA methods have not only been shown to be important in a legal case; they were used in the iconic case that represents the birth of forensic linguistics. 10.3.5

Discourse Analysis

The field of discourse analysis (DA) is somewhat more expansive than CA because not all discourse is spoken. A single discourse episode can conceivably include a combination of speech and written documentation. Imagine, for example, a classroom teacher who observes students passing written notes surreptitiously during class, and, after reading the note, s/he may make direct reference to its content while admonishing the students for engaging in the disruptive practice. Both written and spoken content are relevant, and DA provides methods for a comprehensive linguistic evaluation. John Gumperz (1982a, 1982b), a linguistic anthropologist who conducted extensive research in Norway, India, parts of Europe, and the United States, is one of the founding figures for DA, and his University of California–Berkeley colleague Robin Lakoff (1973) used DA methods to study differences in men’s and women’s styles of linguistic usage to distinguish between powerful and powerless language. Lakoff’s student Deborah Tannen (1990, 1994) took that work further and is among the best-known linguists in the world, thanks to her insightful studies of the

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ways in which miscommunication between men and women occur, in their marriages, relationships, as well as on the job. Another branch of DA that is prominent in Europe is referred to as critical discourse analysis (CDA), and its proponents include Fairclough (1989, 1995), Wodak (1998, 2009), Wodak and Chilton (2005), and van Dijk (1984, 2014), among others. Those who employ CDA formally incorporate analyses pertaining to differences in social power as well as other dimensions of political domination or subordination as part of their linguistic evaluation. In other words, in a study of discourse in a workplace, proponents of CDA will acknowledge at the outset that the boss has power and privileges that are not afforded to his/her workers, and the power dynamic is likely to show up in their behavior, such as the ways in which either party addresses the other. DA and CDA are useful tools, and they are quite powerful because of their dexterity and capacity to evaluate different discourse styles that are part of a larger episode. While it should be clear that great care should be taken whenever selecting different analytical procedures to redress unjust treatment, DA and CDA require special attention in this regard, because unscrupulous or inadvertent misinterpretation of important linguistic facts or social relationships might easily be overlooked without careful scrutiny. Some of these concerns have been expressed in a series of DA-related books produced by James Paul Gee (2014a, 2014b), where he observes, “In my view, there is no one right approach to discourse analysis. Rather, different approaches work better or worse for the different types of oral or written language we want to analyze and for different research goals and questions we have” (Gee 2014b, 1). When those goals seek to rectify injustice, it is exceedingly important that the right analytical tool be used for the right job; otherwise we could – perhaps inadvertently – accentuate the very miscarriage of justice that we strive to rectify. 10.3.6

Speech Act Theory

Unlike the other linguistic tools described thus far, speech act theory has been developed by philosophers, most notably Austin (1962), Grice (1975), and Searle (1965, 1969), who worked independently to explain various ways that speakers employ language to accomplish an intended action, such as a promise. Any individual can say, “I promise to tell the truth,” and presumably this statement is not merely a combination of words that complies with grammatical rules, but an illocutionary act that, while not a formal contract, is indicative of the intention of the speaker to perform in a certain manner – in this instance, to tell the truth. Other speech acts can only be performed by people who hold specific positions of authority. Teachers are authorized to give their students grades,

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judges can sentence defendants, and jurors vote to determine if someone is to be found guilty or not guilty. Courts routinely display speech acts where judges and jurors act cooperatively, and their words have consequences. If a judge asks, “Has the jury reached a verdict?” the foreperson of the jury may then respond by saying either “Yes, your honor” or “No, your honor.” If the foreperson has answered in the affirmative, then the judge is likely to ask him/her to affirm the collective finding of the jury as to the guilt or innocence of the defendant. In the case of legal proceedings, the implementation of speech act theory connects to the roles and statements of the authorized participants, with legal consequences. Speech act theory also pertains to other walks of life whenever a person makes a statement with consequences. A landlord can inform a prospective tenant that s/he has been accepted to rent a given property, or a police officer may inform a person that s/he is under arrest. Only someone who is ordained or legally authorized may perform a wedding; a layperson can produce the grammatical sentence, “I now pronounce you man and wife,” or “I now pronounce you married,” but without the proper authority this statement has no legal validity. Threats, promises, and requests all fall within the purview of speech act theory because they all represent statements that have consequences. It is for this reason that speech act theory has so much potential relevance to attempts to determine whether language usage has been unfair, or whether people have been treated unequally – whether or not the statements in question rise to the level of a potential legal entanglement. Austin (1962), Grice (1975), and Searle (1965, 1969) have provided linguistic and legal analysts with another set of evaluational tools that can be implemented, when appropriate, to determine if various parties had the authority, and perhaps the responsibility, to act upon spoken or written statements they have made, particularly if they pertain to actions where justice could prevail. 10.3.7

Linguistic Accommodation

Many people display instances of linguistic accommodation without realizing it. Linguists often refer to a similar linguistic phenomenon as dialect leveling, which takes place when two speakers of the same language who speak different dialects shift their speech in the direction of their interlocutor, and they do so without seeking to call attention to their mutual linguistic adjustments. The scholars who are best known for their analyses in this regard include Giles and Powesland (1975), who wrote Speech Style and Social Evaluation, although their research indicates that different speakers may either converge (i.e., adjust their speech toward each other) or diverge (i.e., adjust their speech away from each other) depending upon their perceptions of appropriate social

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distance. In that work, they elucidate a theory in which people adjust their speech during face-to-face interactions. Accommodation theory is not limited to linguistic behavior per se, because Giles and Powesland (1975) also recognize the importance of gestures during speech events, and the fact that individuals from different social and cultural backgrounds who share linguistic competence may employ different gestures with different emphases while speaking. The elasticity in language that they observe, either bringing speakers closer together or exacerbating the distance and differences between them, is often related to discussions where evidence of greater personal harmony or interpersonal discord may be on display. For those interested in describing and evaluating linguistic circumstances where the quest for justice is pertinent, accommodation theory may provide some additional analytical procedures that help to describe the social relationships, as well as any linguistic or gestural adjustments, that took place during an observed encounter of communicative convergence or divergence. 10.3.8

Situational Styles

Before describing situational styles, it may be useful to review Labov’s formulation of contextual styles, which he developed to evaluate differences in the amount of attention speakers were paying to their speech as he gathered data from them. Four contextual styles were utilized, including (1) the interview, (2) reading passages, (3) word lists, and (4) minimal pairs. Interviews were the least formal, consisting of casual conversation covering a range of topics. The reading passages were tailored so as to include specific words and phrases that might be of interest. For example, in New York City, words with post vocalic /r/ were of considerable interest, such as car, card, source, star, and hour. Word lists would contain a variety of words in isolation, so as not to be stated in a sentence or other grammatical expression, and minimal pairs contrasted words that might otherwise be pronounced the same but for Labov’s request to pronounce them in adjacent couplings, such as cot and caught, or pin and pen or merry and marry. By comparing the pronunciation of the same or phonologically similar words across contextual styles, Labov was able to determine which words were under the conscious control of the speaker, as well as some of the linguistic variables that a speaker might believe could stigmatize his/her speech. As such, his technique proved to be most valuable, up to a point. When I tried to implement contextual style analyses with many of my adult African American consultants, typically after we had completed a casual interview, I often encountered resistance or rejection of my request. I came to realize that many of the best consultants with whom I had established a rapport and had been able to conduct an informal interview were simply not comfortable reading. They were even

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less comfortable with the idea of having their reading recorded, often because their reading skills were quite weak, and, in some rare cases, nonexistent. Thanks largely to Goffman’s advice, I began to seek alternative ways to evaluate the range of formal-to-informal styles of speaking employed by my consultants, and to do so without calling upon them to read. He encouraged me to look closely at the situation, a concept that he argued had been neglected in many studies of human communication: At present the idea of the social situation is handled in the most happy-go-lucky way. For example, if one is dealing with the language of respect, then social situations become occasions when persons of relevant status relationships are present before each other, and a typology of social situation is drawn directly and simply from chi-squaredom: high-low, low-high and equals. And the same could be said for other attributes of the social structure. An implication is that social situations do not have properties and a structure of their own, but merely mark as it were, the geometric intersection of actors making talk and actors bearing particular social attributes. (Goffman 1964, 134)

In my case, the gathering of data from the same consultant in different speaking situations took time, and I completed a four-year longitudinal study where I closely monitored and recorded the speech of nine African American adults in a variety of different settings (Baugh 1983). The procedure that I used to implement Goffman’s situational orientation is illustrated in Figure 10.2, where two axes combine to create four categories. Familiarity among

• Type 1

• Type 3

• Type 2 Familiar + Insiders to African American vernacular culture

Unfamiliar + Insiders to African American vernacular culture

Familiar + Outsiders to African American vernacular culture

Unfamiliar + Outsiders to African American vernacular culture • Type 4

Figure 10.2 Diverse situational speech events in African American communities

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interlocutors represents one dimension, and membership within the vernacular culture represents the other. While familiarity is best represented along a continuum, for heuristic purposes it is conceptually useful to employ binary contrasts, namely, distinguishing those who are unfamiliar from those people who know each other quite well. Similarly, membership and active participation within a culture are relative; however, to illustrate and contrast situational styles, I was able to distinguish between those who lived their lives in the vernacular culture daily and those who had very little contact with, in this instance, vernacular African American culture. Type 1 represents the least formal speaking situation, where people know each other well and share a common culture, whereas Type 4 is somewhat more formal because interlocutors do not know each other well, and they do not share a common cultural background. This situational orientation has already been used to evaluate some cases with legal relevance, where drug sales took place among strangers from different backgrounds, while other drug sales occurred among long-standing friends who had grown up together. By looking at the situation where language is used, we can further specify some of the circumstances that may enhance the prospects to promote justice – again, depending upon the specific linguistic conditions under consideration. 10.3.9

Audience Design

Bell’s (1984) formulation of audience design is well suited to analyses of broadcasts, speeches, and evaluations of certain social media where the person or people who have produced the broadcast, speech, or social media content can be shown to have tailored their material to an intended audience. Radio formats throughout the world are often modified to serve people who may share interests in a particular type of music (e.g., hip hop, jazz, classical) or political orientation (e.g., conservative or liberal). Social media reflect some similar trends where those producing the material are mindful of the proclivities and preferences of their followers, be they interested in fashion trends or some of the disturbing propaganda that has regularly been produced by advocates of terror. Imagine, for instance, a political speech that is given where the speaker calls upon those present, and perhaps others who are listening to the speech through mass media, to take up arms against a common foe. To the extent that one or more of the people who hear that speech actually use weapons to vanquish their enemy, audience design, perhaps combined with the evaluative methods of CA, could be used to prove that the speaker had incited others to engage in violence. Moreover, such evaluative evidence might, on occasion, have overt legal relevance.

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10.3.10 Dialectology Dialectology represents one of the oldest and most well-established branches of linguistics, and Europeans produced many important dialectology studies long before the Untied States ever came into existence. In France, Germany, England, and other European nations, it was common for a combination of scholars and scribes to record differences in the words that people used to refer to various objects, places, and famous people. Some of this work began as early as 1284 in France and continued with research by the neogrammarians that gave us Grimm’s Law and Verner’s Law to illustrate the rule-governed nature of sound change in a language, for example, accounting for the different sounds employed in serene in contrast to serenity, or the pronunciation of divine as compared with divinity. Survey methods were often used in support of this research, and by the time dialectologists began their studies in the fledgling nation of America, the country had been populated with immigrants from diverse linguistic backgrounds who employed different words and phrases for the same phenomena. Kurath (1939), McDavid (1958), Cassidy (1985), and Weinreich (1953) were among the dialectology pioneers in the United States, and their efforts have been computerized and continued with considerable sophistication by Kretzschmar (2009) and Preston (1989), who study the ways that specific words are used and interpreted in different parts of the country, as well as perceptions about where the best and worst forms of American English can be found. While well-known differences between words such as soda or pop or coke are clearly within the purview of dialectology, in many instances its linguistic relevance to justice may boil down to the use of specific words or phrases that impinge upon fairness or equality, and that might not come to light but for dialectological analyses. Occasionally slang words or expressions come under dialectological scrutiny, although it is far more common to observe dialectologists evaluating more established linguistic trends that are less fleeting than slang expressions (those that are briefly employed by one group, only to be discarded after short periods of time). Regardless of the relative longevity of the lexical usage under evaluation, dialectologists can contribute to efforts to promote justice whenever an occasion arises where specific words or phrases, either spoken or written, have been used in discourse that is pertinent to fairness or the maltreatment of people. The depiction of some women as welfare queens, for example, does not make explicit reference to race; however, many Americans infer that such a reference is often directed at poor African American women. Dialectologists are in an excellent position to rectify and clarify these misconceptions, or to elucidate their implied innuendos.

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Some dialectologists have also been called upon to help resolve trademark disputes, such as that referring to the Washington Redskins football team. Dialectologists have been enlisted by proponents and detractors of the term Redskin/s to provide expert testimony during trials to determine whether that reference is racist. Dialectology is particularly well suited to evaluations of the meaning, or changes in meaning, of different words and phrases that exist in all of the world’s languages, providing an additional tool that may be beneficial to those seeking justice for people who suffer the indignity of derogatory oneword references to the groups to which they belong; the N . . . word in the United States is highly illustrative in this regard. 10.3.11 Educational Applications Educational applications of linguistics to promote equality and fairness are vast. Global efforts in this regard would be well served by a separate book on this topic; indeed, many books already exist on this subject, although most concentrate on the specific educational and linguistic circumstances that are pertinent to a particular nation-state. The education of children, including whether or not children have been given the right to attend school, is subject to political circumstances throughout the world. Nations such as Cuba have increased literacy rates tremendously, while other nations – particularly those suffering from the ravages of war – do not afford their children access to an adequate education. Being mindful that political circumstances vary greatly throughout the world, and that access to education is often capricious when viewed in comparative global perspective, matters of linguistic justice as they relate to educational opportunity require different solutions in different places. In China, these challenges grow from a combination of historical and political circumstances that collide with matters of personal identity, as those living in Taiwan and Hong Kong use forms of Chinese that differ from Mandarin. South Africa still wrestles with ways to improve educational outcomes for all students, particularly in the aftermath of apartheid and the Bantu Education Act that restricted Black educational access to the two official languages at that time, English and Afrikaans. Despite having a new constitution that recognizes eleven official languages, South African politicians and educators are still struggling with how best to devise fair and equitable educational programs that will uplift all students, and provide them with effective academic opportunities to live up to their full potential. Australians, Brazilians, and those living throughout Europe and Russia all face local educational circumstances that reflect considerable linguistic complexity, and which may, or may not, share an ethos of the importance of education for all children. As a citizen of the United States, who initially

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attended racially segregated public schools exclusively populated by poor children of color, my awareness and knowledge of educational needs and opportunities have been shaped greatly by my own personal experience with America’s decentralized educational enterprise. Whereas India, China, Singapore, and many other nations defer to their respective national ministries of education to set educational standards for children living in those countries, the United States gives this educational control to each state. Therefore, a child living in Kentucky who studies chemistry may learn the subject in ways that differ considerably from students who study chemistry in Vermont, or Oklahoma. When matters of student linguistic diversity are added to these educational challenges, they grow increasingly complex, and – most unfortunately – they are often subject to political intervention that may prove detrimental to the academic success of students who are not native speakers of the dominant languages, or the dominant dialects of those dominant languages, in the countries where they reside. As previously indicated, Bernstein (1966, 1973) attributed some of the educational disparities that he observed in England to the language (i.e., the Elaborated Code or the Restricted Code) that the students brought with them to school. An enormous number of students living in the United States are not native speakers of English, and the schools they attend are likely to differ regarding the extent to which the school has effectively found ways to serve these students. Labov (1969a) attempted to address the special linguistic and educational circumstances of Black students in the United States; in the aftermath of his analyses, many American educators promoted policies advocating bidialectal education – where African American students were to be taught SAE as a secondary dialect, with recognition that the dialect that they were likely to speak in their homes would be AAVE. That educational philosophy was challenged by Sledd (1969), who argued that it was both racist and unfair to place the entire burden of bidialectal education upon poor Black students, while more affluent White students who were native speakers of SAE were not called upon to do the same (i.e., they were not required to learn AAVE as a secondary dialect). The case regarding the intersection between Black student language and public education came to a head in 1979 during litigation that came to be known as The Black English Trial (Smitherman 1981; Labov 1982), and the African American plaintiffs won their case. Judge Charles Joiner, who presided over the trial, ruled that the defendant school district had failed to provide adequate training to the teachers of African American students who spoke AAVE, while expecting – if not demanding – that they produce their assignments in SAE. While that court ruling did not have a national impact, because it was not a Supreme Court ruling, many educators from across the Untied States

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attempted to develop programs to help improve educational prospects for Black students, while others did not. In 1996 the Oakland School Board voted in favor of a resolution declaring Ebonics to be the home language of the 28,000 African American students who were attending public schools in that city at that time. Their effort, while well intended, met with a firestorm of criticism from Blacks and Whites alike, who decried any claim that African Americans spoke a language other than English (i.e., Ebonics), or that Black students should receive special educational treatment or additional funding allocations due to the suggestion that they were like non-English-speaking students and deserving of new educational programs taking their special linguistic circumstances into account. Many linguists, and educational linguists, in different countries have worked tirelessly to help less fortunate students find ways to improve their educational outcomes. These efforts are particularly noteworthy in countries where student populations do not all speak the same language, or where students who speak with distinctive dialects that are devalued find themselves at educational disadvantages. Quite often the disparate educational outcomes that we observe when looking at students from different socioeconomic backgrounds paired with different linguistic backgrounds reflect inadequate policies along with other educational maladies that exceed linguistic relief alone. Readers who are interested in this topic will discover an enormous array of well-intended work, some of which has been shown to be highly effective, and other studies that – perhaps inadvertently – misunderstand and misrepresent the plight of those students who are not native speakers of the dominant linguistic languages or dialects in the societies in which they live. Proponents of linguistic justice must remain vigilant in their quest to increase educational opportunities and outcomes for those who are helpless to challenge the linguistic status quo in their home communities. In so doing, not only will we increase educational prospects for those students; we may also enhance prospects for greater social harmony, which cannot flourish in communities that neglect the educational well-being of those children most in need of help.5 10.4

Some Additional Linguistic Contributions to the Advancement of Justice

A great deal of research that intersects linguistics and the promotion of justice does not fit neatly into any single conceptual or methodological paradigm. 5

Ladson-Billings (2009) describes some of the ways that outstanding teachers have improved the lives of less fortunate students, and Darling-Hammond (1997, 2006) recognized that students are far more likely to succeed when they have experienced teachers as well as increased opportunities to learn.

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In many of these instances, researchers have attempted to address a specific topic, and, on occasion, their contribution to human egalitarianism was ancillary to their main objective. Such is the case for some of the scholarship we shall mention momentarily, although there are noteworthy exceptions where the intended goal from the outset has been to explore the relationship between linguistics and justice, and to do so explicitly without mitigation. 10.4.1

The Case of Displaced Populations in Cape Town’s District 6

McCormick (2002) conducted a classical sociolinguistic study in Cape Town’s District 6, which she describes as “a large inner-city neighbourhood, first settled in the 1840’s and, by the implementation of a series of apartheid laws, depopulated and almost entirely razed during the 1970’s” (McCormick 2002, 65). She describes her book about the community as a study that “contextualized (bilingual) switching historically and in the contemporary context. It shows how and why people learned to use their languages in the way they do now. In so doing it gives glimpses into social relationships among speakers of the many different languages that were used in Cape Town in different eras, and it shows how these social relationships were affected by wider political and economic factors” (McCormick 2002, xii–xiii). Nowhere does McCormick explicitly mention an intent to have her book help those families that were displaced from District 6 to obtain justice or other political relief from the infringements on their lives, yet her book provides many important details that were written long before South Africa’s formation of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Readers of her book would be justified in thinking that McCormick anticipated the potential for eventual reconciliation, but her considerable contributions in this regard are understated, and never made explicit. As South Africa still struggles with efforts to promote equality and greater social harmony among people who were once political adversaries, McCormick’s book provides a wonderful illustration of how a lone linguist can contribute, albeit indirectly, to the collective efforts of a nation to overcome apartheid. Many nations that struggle with various forms of social inequality share some of the same linguistic characteristics that McCormick (2002) describes in District 6, where matters of personal linguistic identity often collide with dominant political and linguistic norms that tend to be less accessible to members of oppressed groups. Those interested in the installation of justice in South Africa and elsewhere, including some of the ways that linguistic science can assist this enterprise, would be well advised to consult her scholarship more fully than I have been able to describe herein.

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10.4.2

175

Urbanization of Rural Speakers in Brazil

Bortoni-Ricardo (1985) conducted a different sociolinguistic study in Brazil, where she evaluated the changing linguistic behavior of rural Brazilians who were moving to urban areas, primarily in search of better economic opportunities. She did so through a series of interviews that provided clear accounts of linguistic change in progress, combined with careful evaluation of the social networks that speakers engaged that introduced them to new urban linguistic norms. As was the case with McCormick (2002), Bortoni-Ricardo (1985) makes no direct mention of her intention or desire to produce a sociolinguistic study that can balance the scales of justice for poor rural speakers in search of a better life. However, by placing her research within social and historical accounts of Brazil, she presents a combination of linguistic, social, and cultural details that could easily lend support to someone who wanted to help the rural speakers that she studied begin to overcome many of the hardships they suffered through no fault of their own. Her book begins with a historical overview and then a detailed account of the Caipira culture as well as many of the linguistic features that distinguish the Caipira dialect. She then introduces readers to some general observations about social network analyses before providing in-depth analyses of her Brazilian consultants who lived through the urbanization process that she describes. Those network patterns are then matched with criteria for dialect diffuseness, which in turn allows her to describe instances of miscommunication that have negatively impacted the lives of her consultants. While Bortoni-Ricardo’s research methodology shares some similarities and dissimilarities with that employed by McCormick (2002), both sociolinguists have provided research in their respective native countries that illustrates some indirect ways that linguistic research has the potential to promote greater justice for those who have been linguistically dispossessed. Readers of these works will need to be innovative since neither linguist has spelled out exactly how her research might benefit efforts to promote equality. However, these books provide wonderful illustrations for linguists and policy makers who hope to enable speakers from diverse backgrounds to achieve the highest possible degree of social harmony among people who historically have been separated by dialect differences that accentuate disparities in their social station. 10.4.3

Linguistic Human Rights

Thanks substantially to the collective efforts of Tove Skutnabb-Kangas and Robert Phillipson, the field of linguistic human rights (LHR) is quite well established, with a substantial number of contributions that view LHR from

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various perspectives. Together they have championed the causes of linguistically disenfranchised populations throughout the world by forcefully advocating on their behalf: Observing LHRs implies at an individual level that everyone can identify positively with their mother tongue, and have that identification respected by others, irrespective of whether their mother tongue is a minority language or a majority language. It means the right to learn the mother tongue, including at least basic education through the medium of the mother tongue, and the right to use it in many of the (official) contexts . . . It means the right to learn at least one of the official languages in one’s country of residence. It should therefore be normal that teachers are bilingual. Restrictions on these rights may be considered an infringement of fundamental LHRs. (Skutnabb-Kangas, Phillipson, and Rannut 1995, 2)

While extoling the importance of LHRs, they challenge two myths that they argue have inhibited LHRs: the first, that monolingualism is beneficial to economic growth; the second, that minority rights (including and exceeding LHRs) represent a threat to a nation state. Their focus on minority groups, or, more precisely, groups that lack political power within a nation state, grows from their international observations and analyses that reveal patterns of linguistic oppression throughout the world, and show that the languages of less influential people are not only overlooked but are often the source of ridicule and disdain by political elites who advocate – if not force – speakers of minority languages to adopt and employ the languages of power. Skutnab-Kangas and Phillipson point to an example of classroom instruction where students in the Komi-Permian district of Russia were taught exclusively in Russian, even though the indigenous people and their language made up more than 60 percent of the population in that region. Similarly, in Kozmodemyansk, in the Russian republic of Mari, they described a secondary school where, with the exception of two Russian speakers and one speaker of Bashkir, all students beyond the fifth grade were taught in Russian only, despite the fact that Mari was classified as the official language of Kozmodemyansk. They observed similar educational bias in Kenya, where indigenous languages were castigated in favor of English. They also spoke critically of a major corporation in Denmark that disallows employees to speak in a language other than Danish on the job. They argue, quite forcefully, that LHRs should be included formally within the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, allowing speakers of minority languages to have greater, if not full, protection under the law. Moreover, they do so by positing the rhetorical question, “Can the courts clarify the scope and interpretation of linguistic human rights?” (Skutnabb-Kangas et al. 1995, 15). They answer in the affirmative, claiming that the time has come to include LHRs in international law.

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Their research and efforts to promote LHRs throughout humanity are precursors to the present thesis, which seeks to go beyond the rhetoric calling for human rights, linguistic or otherwise, to the pursuit of justice where people who are disenfranchised due to their linguistic background, or who have been treated unfairly, might find ways to enlist linguistic methodologies as they seek relief from maltreatment or injustice. Kontra (2000, 2004) has taken up the cause of LHRs in Hungary, where he echoes many of the themes outlined by Phillipson and Skutnabb-Kangas. Indeed, in 1999 he was the lead editor of a volume in collaboration with them, Language, Right and Resource: Approaching Linguistic Human Rights (Kontra et al. 1999). In that book and elsewhere, Kontra also uses extensive linguistic research to demonstrate that minority groups in Hungary, including the Romani, have suffered from linguistic dislocation resulting from the devaluation of their language, to say little of the rampant discrimination suffered by the Romani people living in Hungary for decades. Whereas many linguists have not been explicit about their desire to connect linguistic research with justice, those linguists who have been proponents of LHRs represent a major exception to this trend. Moreover, they acknowledge their intellectual debt to Fishman (1972), Hymes (1962), Labov (1969a, 1972a, 1972b), Haugen (1972), Ferguson (1959), and other sociolinguistic pioneers who have provided the empirical research foundations upon which they make their claims promoting LHRs. Due substantially to the global orientation of the LHR enterprise, it has met with differential success in various parts of the world, where people of good will who have been convinced that members of minority groups have suffered from unfair treatment and perhaps much more (e.g., unequal educational or economic opportunities) due to their linguistic backgrounds have taken steps and promoted policies to overcome these barriers. The other side of the coin has witnessed either resistance or neglect, where LHRs continue to languish and their speakers continue to suffer from a combination of policies and social circumstances that all too often are intended to maintain the sociolinguistic status quo, where political elites are far more likely to perpetuate their power than if they concede to grant the type of LHRs that have been advocated by Phillipson, Skutnabb-Kangas, Kontra, and others. 10.4.4

Linguistic Diversity and Social Justice

Piller (2016) takes up many of the topics and goals espoused herein, beginning with some observations about the linguistic circumstances that abound in her native Australia, where the reality she describes is one where “youths from ‘culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds’ were more likely to be unemployed than their Australian-born peers despite being better qualified”

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(Piller 2016, 17). As a result of this observation, and others pertaining to instances of linguistic disenfranchisement worldwide, her book “is intended to serve as a systematic exploration of the social consequences of linguistic diversity” (Piller 2016, 20). Thanks to her extraordinary efforts, matters of linguistic diversity are explicated throughout the book, with emphases on diversity in the workplace and in education, as well as global and linguistic justice. She observes instances that are reminiscent of the call for LHRs, where linguistic diversity is suppressed, or where problems may arise for students worldwide due to the hegemony of English as an academic language, along with a host of other linguistic inequities that emphatically demonstrate the need to promote social justice among linguistically diverse populations. Three forms of justice loom large for Piller (2016): social justice, global justice, and linguistic justice. In the first instance, an operational definition of social justice is provided at the beginning of the book. Inspired by Plato, and his devotion to justice as “being fundamental to all other virtues,” she describes social justice as “the master virtue that undergirds all others,” focusing “principally on disadvantage and discrimination related to gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, religion, and age” (Piller 2016, 23). The depiction of global justice that Piller presents reinforces some of the work previously cited that calls for the expansion of linguistic human rights: Globalization has placed an extra layer of disadvantage on subordinate speakers of subordinate languages as their subordination is extended beyond their relationship with locally dominant languages to their relationship with globally dominant English. (Piller 2016, 334)

Proponents of LHRs may not object directly to the hegemonic consequences of English, in deference to their elevation of advocacy for the rights of people throughout the world to use and promote their mother tongue language(s). Thus, while global linguistic justice and LHRs share a common denominator regarding their concern for disadvantaged minority groups, as well as majority groups that may be at a linguistic disadvantage, such as Blacks living in South Africa who are not native speakers of either Afrikaans or English, Piller’s position offers linguistic caution: The central argument is that, as appealing as the notion of a global lingua franca and “English for everyone” may be, in reality, discourses and practices related to the global spread of English have become a key mechanism to entrench global inequalities. (Piller 2016, 334)

Despite clear relevance to LHRs, when describing linguistic justice Piller (2016, 411) observes, “readers will have been struck by the absence of any in-depth

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discussion of language rights and by little reference to discussions about linguistic justice in normative political philosophy.” The rationale for this decision is pragmatic according to Piller, in order to bring more direct attention and emphasis to “the question ‘How could linguistic justice be advanced?’ rather than ‘What would be a perfectly just linguistic order?’” (Piller 2016, 411). One of the ways in which linguistic justice has been advanced includes growing contributions from forensic linguistics, to which we turn next, and that work relies, at least in part, on the desire to promote social and linguistic justice, albeit in legal contexts that use the courts. 10.4.5

Forensic Linguistics

Whereas Piller (2016, 18) emphasizes that questions pertaining to “the intersection between linguistic diversity and social justice are currently rarely being asked, the field of forensic linguistics is experiencing rapid growth.” The field of forensic linguistics began in 1949, with the publication of Language and the Law: The Semantics of Forensic English by Frederick Philbrick, who recognized that attorneys “exercise their power in the courts by manipulating the thoughts and opinions of others, whether by making speeches or questioning witnesses” (Philbrick 1949, v). After a long hiatus Jan Svartvik introduced the phrase forensic linguistics in his evaluation of the confession of Timothy John Evans, who confessed on November 30, 1949, when he walked into the central police station in Merthyr Tydfil, Wales, exclaiming, “I want to give myself up. I have disposed of my wife.” These embryonic contributions to the birth of forensic linguistics preceded Roger Shuy’s serendipitous entry into the field in 1979, the very same year that Geneva Smitherman (1981) enlisted the help of fellow linguists in defense of eleven Black plaintiffs who brought suit against the Ann Arbor School District, in what came to be known as The Black English Trial. This diffuse and rather inauspicious genesis for forensic linguistics has witnessed enormous global growth since 1979, culminating with the founding of the International Association of Forensic Linguistics (IAFL) in 1992. The IAFL affirms, “In the broadest sense, ‘Forensic Linguistics’ covers all areas where law and language intersect.”6 Four subfields within forensic linguistics have been further delineated: language and law, language in the legal process, language as evidence, and research/teaching. The IAFL also produces a professional journal, The International Journal of Speech, Language, and the Law, which began in 1994 under the title Forensic Linguistics: The International Journal of Speech, Language and the Law; the title was shortened in 2003. The IAFL and its companion journal have largely 6

More thorough details regarding the IAFL can be found at www.iafl.org/forensic.php.

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been responsible for guiding the professional development of forensic linguistics, which employs many of the methods that have been described in this book, as well as conducting experiments designed to bring greater clarity to legal proceedings. Olsson and Luchjenbroers (2014) have written a book titled Forensic Linguistics, in which they outline some important dimensions of the discipline, with primary emphasis on author identification, as well as some of the ways in which students of forensic linguistics might learn their craft. They cite the work of various pioneers in the field, including Svartvik, Shuy, and Carole Chaski, who “has pioneered the syntactic analysis of authorship” (Olsson and Luchjenbroers 2014, 7). Chaski is also noteworthy for having created the Institute for Linguistic Evidence, which was founded in 1998 as the first nonprofit scientific research organization devoted to developing and testing methods in forensic linguistics. She was also instrumental in founding the Association of Linguistic Evidence, a similar organization within the Linguistic Society of America. Another noteworthy pioneer in the field of forensic linguistics is William O’Barr, who, working in close association with his former student John Conley, wrote Linguistic Evidence: Language, Power, and Strategy in the Courtroom (O’Barr 1982). As was the case with early, and quite influential, independent legal linguistic contributions to forensic linguistics by Shuy, and Smitherman, O’Barr does not refer explicitly to his work as contributing to the emerging discipline of forensic linguistics, yet the direct connection between his linguistic expertise and active participation in court proceedings surely falls within the scope of IAFL’s definition of its field. Due substantially to the rapid global growth of forensic linguistics as a discipline, both strengths and inevitable weaknesses have emerged. The field has not yet established the formal criteria by which those claiming to be experts in forensic linguistics can be vetted, and, as we have seen thus far, the array of linguistic methodological tools that can be brought to bear upon legal evidence is quite vast. The result is that some well-intended parties to legal cases have been known to use the wrong evaluative linguistic tools – which could result in the false conviction or wrongful release of defendants, who deserve the assurance that the forensic linguistic evidence presented in court represents a state-of-the-art analysis. Regrettably, that cannot be assured at the present time. Be that as it may, the field of forensic linguistics shows great promise, and a large number of police officers, judges, law professors, and law students, as well as many social scientists and policy makers, are showing greater interest in the ways in which forensic linguistics might prove beneficial to them in their specific professional contexts. With caution for occasional professional missteps clearly in mind, we have witnessed the birth and growth of an exciting

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new branch of linguistic science that, when properly implemented, can go far toward balancing the scales of justice. 10.4.6

Linguistic Profiling and the Law

Forensic linguistics and forensic linguists are concerned with finding effective ways to use linguistic science for legal purposes. By contrast, the analyses of linguistic profiling as related to the law are derived from evaluations of court cases, be they civil or criminal, where linguistic evidence has proven to be central. Three attorneys, all of whom have extensive linguistic training, have largely been responsible for advances in studies that link instances of linguistic discrimination, or linguistic profiling, with the law. They are Bethany Dumas, Lis Wiehl, and Dawn Smalls. Dumas taught linguistics for many years at the University of Tennessee before returning to school to obtain a law degree, and she combined her training to devote her professional skills to scholarship that utilized her linguistic background to evaluate a variety of legal considerations, including jury instruction (Dumas 2000, 2002), the wording of federally mandated cigarette package warnings (Dumas 1990), and studies of Appalachian speech in East Tennessee (Dumas 1981). The combination of her linguistic and language-related legal scholarship has helped to advance our understanding of the ways in which legal language can be confusing, if not deceptive or discriminatory. Lis Wiehl (2002) discussed the importance of racial perceptions in the courtroom in an important paper, “Sounding Black” in the Courtroom, where she described the consequences of an instance where a police officer claimed to be able to identify a defendant in a drug-dealing case (Clifford v. Kentucky) as a Black man, sight unseen, based on the sound of his voice on a wiretap recording. The judge in the case allowed the officer in question to make this identification based on his years of experience, and the officer’s assertion that he could distinguish between Black and White speakers, although he did not specify the linguistic criteria by which he judged or differentiated these racial groups. Citing the case of People v. Sanchez (2001), the judge noted that in that case the witness was able to identify a defendant as having spoken at the scene of a murder employing a Dominican Spanish accent, which was well known to the witness. The significance of Wiehl’s (2002) study is that it shows some of the ways in which linguistic profiling can have major legal consequences during a trial. Intrigued by Wiehl’s (2002) findings, and Baugh’s (2000) original formulation of the concept of linguistic profiling, Smalls (2004) conducted a massive survey of a series of civil and criminal cases that all centered on crucial evidence pertaining to linguistic identification; she observed that the reliability

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of witnesses varied greatly. As a result, she began to question the criteria by which a witness might be thought of as an expert, when testifying in cases that pertain to linguistic identification. Smalls (2004) concluded that many earwitnesses were less reliable than others, yet the law stipulates that some people should be considered expert witnesses, while others should not be granted this status. Her work raises crucial, and as yet unresolved, questions regarding how best to ensure the validity and credibility of voice identification in legal proceedings where matters of voice identification are paramount. 10.5

Summary

This chapter provides many perspectives that are relevant to linguistic contributions to the advancement of justice. Some of the earliest research in linguistics by the founding figures of the field are presented first, followed by descriptions of diverse linguistic methods that can be brought to bear upon analyses used to promote justice through alternative modes of linguistic inquiry. The tools that are outlined, from a methodological perspective, are intended to provide readers with brief exposure to ways that assorted methods can be utilized, and perhaps combined, to evaluate multiple instances of occasions where linguistic behavior is relevant to the pursuit of justice. The chapter concludes with several specific illustrations, such as advocacy for linguistic human rights, as well as a description of the birth and spread of forensic linguistics; collectively they illustrate the numerous ways in which linguists, various other social scientists, educators, and attorneys have contributed to a common goal – enlisting linguistics to improve the human condition through the steadfast and unwavering quest for justice.

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11

Shall We Overcome?

11.1

Foundation

The title of this chapter is inspired by the civil rights protest song, We Shall Overcome. The refrain from those famous lyrics, believed to be derived from an earlier gospel song titled I’ll Overcome Someday, is clearly a declarative –and optimistic – sentence. I have modified the phrase to create a question: Shall we overcome? As a child who lived through the US civil rights movement, I rarely questioned the content of the song, nor did I fully comprehend exactly what was to be overcome. Was it racism? Was it the lack of voting rights for Black Americans? Was it unequal educational opportunities? Was it residential segregation? Was it police brutality? Or were civil rights protesters demanding liberty and justice for all, as embodied in the Pledge of Allegiance? To consider the, as yet unrealized, goals that began with the US civil rights movement, and which have been expanded to other groups and countries since the inception of that movement (which was in turn inspired by Gandhi’s nonviolent protests against British rule in India), we shall consider five main themes: pursuing just justice, overcoming injustice, obtaining justice, achieving justice, and sustaining justice. The chapter concludes with some final reflections on ways in which linguistic science can lend assistance to this noble global enterprise. I have chosen, quite intentionally, not to embellish the term “justice” with any modification. The reason for this decision is that injustice, in various forms, is expansive and therefore defies conceptual classification with the degree of precision that I would hope to instill. Indeed, the concept of “justice,” as described by Plato, and echoed in the US Constitution, is unqualified. It is this more comprehensive sense of unqualified justice, that is, justice without reservation or limitation, that constitutes the ultimate goal of this book. Anything less risks dilution of the full blessings that human kindness might eventually bestow upon those who suffer from the affliction of any form of injustice. This goal is exceedingly ambitious and quite modest simultaneously: ambitious, in the sense that people have suffered from injustice since the inception of our species; modest, because linguistic science can only play a very minor role in this enormous – but worthy – collective enterprise. 183

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11.2

Pursuing Just Justice

There have been many noteworthy and laudable attempts to challenge and overcome injustice in one form or another. Efforts to promote social justice are extensive, as are attempts to advance racial justice. Advocates of economic justice have called attention to the massive disparities in wealth that exist in most advanced industrial societies, regardless of the political orientation of the nation where that economic injustice exists (i.e., capitalist countries, communist countries, or countries that espouse socialism). Environmental justice is sought by those who know well that many of the world’s poor and destitute people are far more likely to live in close proximity to hazardous locations where chemicals, pesticides, and other carcinogens are far more prevalent than in the residential areas where affluent members of those very same societies live. Every incarnation of justice, or injustice, that was previously described is surely worthy of rectification, and my decision to address these concerns under a broader classification, just justice, is an intentional pun. The word just has more than one meaning, yet both meanings are productive as applied to linguistic contributions that can promote justice. One meaning associated with the word just is adjectival, depicting behavior or actions that are morally right or fair. This adjectival interpretation is employed here to bring greater emphasis to the meaning of justice itself, which, for the purpose of the goals espoused herein, refers to the quality of being fair and impartial, as well as conformity with truth, fact, and reason that can promote equality through actions or deeds. In this sense, the present focus on just justice is one that emphasizes these collective definitions. The adverbial definition of just, as in, “I am just a linguist,” is nearly synonymous with the word only. Complete synonymy may not exist for these two words because some people bring different semantic interpretations to them, depending upon the specific sentence where the two words might be substituted. Consider, for example, the sentence, “He is just a lawyer,” in contrast to, “He is only a lawyer.” While some people might justifiably interpret these sentences as sharing an identical meaning, others may feel that the first incarnation, with just, is more demeaning than the second sentence, employing only. Comparing, “She just loves chocolate” with, “She only loves chocolate” embodies two potential interpretations: one where the sentences are interpreted to mean the same thing, and another interpretation where their meanings differ, without any pejorative attribution to the word only. When these productive adverbial interpretations are extended to the phrase, just justice, the intended meaning refers to an unrestricted interpretation of justice. The pun associated with just justice seeks to convey that the unqualified

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interpretation of justice is the definition that best serves the present thesis. Another reason that this dual interpretation of just justice is being used here is that throughout this book, we have endeavored to make the case for enlisting linguistic tools to help meet this goal. Few people give much consideration to the fact that they utilize linguistic behavior in nearly every human endeavor, be it through speech, reading, or writing; and discourse is typically associated with every form of injustice known to humanity. As such, due largely to the ubiquitous nature of language in nearly every human enterprise, linguistic science has been either overlooked or underutilized as a potential tool to rectify injustice. 11.3

Overcoming Injustice

Most English dictionaries fall short of providing adequate definitions of the term “injustice,” because they typically define it as the quality of being unjust. Similarly, the definition of “unjust” is that it is an adjective referring to something that is lacking in justice or fairness. This apparent tautology makes the task of clarifying and demonstrating some of the various ways that linguistics might be employed to either promote justice or overcome injustice nearly intractable. Nevertheless, the quest for justice worldwide is far too important to let definitions, or a lack thereof, stand in the way of potential progress toward the rectification of injustice. It is also important to make clear that the depictions of the pursuit of justice espoused herein exceed legal proceedings. The first time this author was deposed, an attorney informed me that, “You’re seeking justice, but you should never equate justice with the law.” Thus, while the courts and forensic linguistics are well suited to address certain forms of injustice, they are by no means comprehensive, and the aspirations for justice espoused herein are all inclusive. What, then, must be overcome to achieve justice? Might it be racism, or sexism, or human trafficking? Should justice reduce or eliminate environmental racism, or might it be utilized to overcome homophobia? What of voting rights, or economic injustice, or unequal access to educational opportunities? Should health care, and concerns about the production of food and those who toil in the chain of that production to deliver food throughout the world be included in efforts to overcome injustice? For that matter, what of the populations who suffer from hunger and malnutrition? Surely, their plight is one that falls within the purview of justice, however it may be defined? Again, our goal is all inclusive. If any branch of linguistics can be enlisted to overcome any of the sufferings just mentioned, then it is our goal to find ways to use those linguistic tools for that purpose.

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I seek not to give short shrift to other forms of injustice, such as that noted in my youthful observations regarding police brutality in Philadelphia, described in Chapter 2, or evidence of religious intolerance. It is also important to appreciate that linguistics can play a much larger role than it has thus far in combating propaganda on social media that advocate acts of terror throughout the world. Readers of this book need not be reminded of the horrific savagery that the entire world has witnessed at the hands of terrorists who have enlisted social media to entice others to take up arms against defenseless soft targets. Their sophisticated use of social media, through propaganda that has persuaded thousands of disaffected youth worldwide to embrace their philosophy, is a perfect candidate for linguistic evaluation and intervention. In common parlance, justice is often best served when proponents of peace and equality fight fire with fire, in the sense that social media – if utilized properly – can introduce narratives that might dissuade youth in specific countries and cultures from rallying to the clarion call of those who advocate the kidnapping, killing, and exploitation of people who do not bend to their will. The injustice just described is truly horrific. However, there are less violent forms of injustice that also deserve rectification, such as political misconduct, or linguistic hegemony. Due substantially to the fact that injustice is massive, the depictions presented thus far are merely illustrative of the types of social and political maladies that linguists might be able to challenge, especially so since a great deal of this injustice is perpetuated through linguistic means. Again, the adage of fighting fire with fire seems apropos when contemplating the various ways in which linguistics, and linguists, can work independently or with others in the common quest to overcome injustice. 11.4

Obtaining Justice

Efforts to overcome injustice are merely some of the steps that are necessary to obtain justice, which is one of the aspirational goals that people of good will seek throughout the world. On occasions, these acts of justice occur on the micro level where one person helps another, whereas in other instances, individuals or groups of people have been able to implement justice on a macro level, impacting and improving the lives of many people simultaneously. When justice is obtained, either for an individual or a group of people, it is likely to have been acquired or secured through some means. A wonderful illustration of such an occasion took place in April 2016, when Pope Francis visited the island of Lesbos in Greece, which, at that time, housed thousands of displaced Syrian refugees who were fleeing the ravages of war that consumed their home country. By that point in time, many European countries had begun to close their borders to Syrian refugees, for a variety of reasons, exacerbating problems for the refugees and for the Greek government.

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Greece was in the midst of a gradual economic recovery that was severely burdened by the presence of thousands of Syrian refugees who were no longer allowed to move beyond Greece in their efforts to relocate to various European countries. In the midst of this nearly intractable political turmoil, Pope Francis flew to Lesbos and prayed with many of the refugees who were stranded there, despite the fact that the vast majority of them were Muslims who did not share his faith. Upon departing from Greece to return to Rome, Pope Francis surprised the entire world by allowing three Syrian refugee families to return with him to begin new lives in Italy, where they would have the freedom to raise their children and escape the devastation and destruction they had witnessed prior to leaving Syria in search of a better life. The twelve people whom Pope Francis brought with him on his return trip to Rome were given new leases on life. He had singularly demonstrated the importance of Christian charity by example, while conveying an indirect message to the European politicians who had turned their backs on the suffering of the Syrian refugees whom they had blocked from entry into their respective countries. Pope Francis, through his actions, allowed the twelve Syrian refugees that he brought to Rome to obtain justice. This illustration was one that received a great deal of attention, and it demonstrates a clear example of the obtainment of justice. It was my honor, in 2002, to support a micro contribution to the obtainment of justice that, I believe, is worthy of discussion to further clarify the potential significance of ways in which people can obtain justice. At that time, the research regarding linguistic profiling was gaining prominence, and it had appeared in several news broadcasts. As a result, I began to receive calls from time to time asking for advice about how best to challenge or address various forms of linguistic discrimination. On the day in question, I received a call from a woman who identified herself as an African American who lived in Oakland, California. She informed me that she was a single mother who was raising three children, and that she was able to do so thanks to a civil service job, working for the city of Oakland. After these introductory remarks, she asked me some questions about my research, while seeking assurance that she had reached a linguistic expert who might help her. After a brief confirmation of my linguistic expertise, she recounted an incident that had resulted in her arrest; she was engaged in litigation when she reached out to me. Although she had a steady job, her income was not such that she could afford to hire an attorney, and the court had appointed a public defender who strongly encouraged her to admit to the misdemeanor crime. Her court-appointed attorney told her that the crime was not substantial, and he was fairly certain that she would be given probation and would not face the prospect of incarceration.

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Although the public defender perceived probation to be a speedy and potentially beneficial outcome to the trial, since the defendant would be unlikely to spend any time in jail away from her children, she knew that any such admission of guilt would have direct and immediate consequences regarding her employment. If she admitted guilt to the crime, she would be fired and would have no income. As a result, she did not want to admit guilt, nor did she want to lose her job, and she clearly wanted to avoid an outcome that might have placed her in jail for any length of time. I then asked her to share more details about the case. She explained that she had received a ticket for a parking violation and had taken most of her lunch break to go to the court to pay her fine. When she arrived, she discovered a fairly long line of others who were also paying fines. Being mindful of the limited time available to her to conduct this transaction, she decided to join the line and wait her turn. As the line moved ever so slowly toward the payment window, she realized that she needed to use the toilet. She pondered her options: should she leave the line to use the toilet, or should she wait, despite the growing sense of urgency that she needed to relieve herself? She decided to wait in line, describing the agony she felt as each transaction before her seemed to take longer. Eventually, she turned to the woman behind her, who she described as an elderly White woman, and in an attempt to make casual conversation indicating her dilemma, she said, “As soon as I’m finished up there (i.e., at the payment window), I’m gonna go drop a bomb in the bathroom.” At that time, which was not long after September 11, 2001, many Americans were quite sensitive about the prospect of additional terrorist acts, and many law enforcement agencies began to tout the phrase, “If you see something, say something.” The woman who was recounting her story, along with her overriding concern that she might be convicted for making a terrorist threat, then explained that she was able to reach the window and successfully pay her fine, at which point she made her way to the ladies room as quickly as she could. Shortly after she entered the stall, the police burst in – guns drawn – and placed her under arrest for having threatened to bomb the building. Her legal nightmare began in earnest upon her arrest, followed by several urgent calls to relatives who raised the necessary bail money that allowed her to return to work, albeit the next day. Upon returning to work, she did her best to be discreet about her altercation, fearing that it might jeopardize her job, and she took great care to coordinate her schedule with coworkers in order to meet with her public defender and challenge the accusation that she intended to blow up the building where she had paid her traffic fine. She had just completed one of her court-appointed appearances on the day she contacted me, indicating that were she to follow her public defender’s

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advice, she would surely lose her job. She then explained that she had absolutely no intention of literally dropping a bomb after paying her fine; rather, she was being euphemistic, seeking to make polite conversation with another person who was waiting in the same line, while avoiding the use of a less polite way of expressing her sense of urgency of the need to defecate. By that point in our conversation, she was in tears. Her public defender had informed her that he knew of no expert witness whom he could call upon to help her case, and that it would be expedient and easy to merely admit guilt since her primary objective was to avoid incarceration. However, she indicated that the public defender seemed much less concerned with her secondary objective, that is, to maintain her job and the steady income it provided. I then tried to offer her some reassurance, indicating that I thought I might be helpful, and I offered to send her a copy of my curriculum vitae to share with her public defender, if not the judge, to present my qualifications as well as to indicate my willingness to serve as a witness on her behalf. She provided me with the contact information and, at the conclusion of the call, I sent her a copy of my credentials, as well as a publication that I thought might be useful. Her attorney was pleased, and somewhat surprised, by her initiative. He asked her if she was absolutely certain that I was willing to help, and she told him that I had given her that assurance. She then emailed me indicating that her attorney would introduce my credentials to the judge presiding over the case, and that I should anticipate being called upon to testify at the next hearing. Having served in a similar capacity on previous occasions, I knew that my testimony would be scrutinized, especially if a prosecutor was adamant about seeking a conviction, and so I decided to take the initiative by writing a letter to the honorable judge who was presiding over her case. The essential point can be stated simply: my letter indicated that the defendant was clearly being euphemistic, avoiding any potential vulgar reference to the act of defecation, and that her choice of words in search of a polite way to express the concept was ill chosen, but an innocent mistake. Moreover, I provided many examples of other well-known euphemistic expressions that people use in an attempt to find polite forms of expression for urination or defecation. The public defender delivered my letter to the judge, who immediately dropped all charges in the case, helping this defendant to obtain justice on a micro level.1 1

We did not discuss payment until after the case was dropped, at which point she called to ask how much money she owed me. For several reasons, including the fact that this case did not demand a great deal of my time, I told her that I did not require payment. However, I did suggest that she choose her words with care on future conversational occasions, and that if an opportunity presented itself, she should consider helping someone else who might benefit from her assistance.

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11.5

Achieving Justice

There is an important distinction between examples of obtaining justice, like those we have just considered, and achieving justice, to which we now turn. In the latter instance, history has provided periodic examples of hard-fought battles for justice that were either broached or won by champions who devoted their intentional actions to overcoming injustice in various forms. The examples we will consider also provide an opportunity to illustrate how discourse analysis (DA) can be used retroactively to illuminate some of the linguistic content that proved to be persuasive, while supporting the eventual advancement of justice. The three examples that will be reviewed took place in different countries at different points in history, and each represents a major milestone or turning point in the history of the nation(s) where these struggles for justice took place. The first illustration took place in many countries, almost simultaneously, and centers on women’s rights. The women’s suffrage movement began in the mid-nineteenth century when women living in different countries began to organize, often to demand the right to vote and participate as equals in the political processes of their respective home countries. The second example focuses on efforts within the United States to eliminate racially segregated schools, which were transformed in 1954 with the unanimous Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board. The last instance centers on the decline of apartheid in South Africa, and the ascendancy of Nelson Mandela as the first democratically elected Black president of that country. As noted, speeches were integral to the success of each of these movements, and DA provides methods that allow us to conduct historical analyses of effective language, which may offer insights into how best to promote justice in the future. Turning, then, to the struggle for women’s rights, the first international organization devoted to advancing equal rights for women was formed in 1888; that year witnessed the creation of the International Council of Women (ICW) in the United States. Several years later, in 1904, another complementary association was formed by British and American women’s rights activists Millicent Fawcett (from England) and Carrie Chapman Catt (from the United States); together, along with many other like-minded women, they launched the International Woman Suffrage Alliance (IWSA). The movement to promote women’s rights was truly a global venture, resulting in collaborations among women in New Zealand, Australia, Sweden, and Finland. While the right to vote was one of many concerns that these women advocated, it was a common and pressing concern to nearly all of them, because they were unable to be full participants in their countries’ democratic elections, which were restricted exclusively to male voters.

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This trend began to change in 1893 when New Zealand passed an electoral bill, which was followed by a similar law in 1894 in South Austria, granting full suffrage to women, including the right to vote and to run for elected office in Parliament. Two decades passed before women gained the right to vote in England, in 1918, and American women were finally granted the right to vote in 1920. Once the vote had been granted to women in England, many other European nations passed laws affording women the right to vote, including the USSR. Some other countries, including Spain, France, Italy, lagged far behind, with some delaying women’s voting rights until as late as 1971. The champions of women’s suffrage worldwide were vigilant and unwavering in the quest for equal rights, and they often used public speeches to advance their cause. One of the most inspirational women to challenge the status quo of male hegemony was Susan B. Anthony, who famously said: It was we, the people, not we, the white male citizens, nor yet we, the male citizens; but we, the whole people, who formed this Union. And we formed it, not to give the blessings of liberty, but to secure them; not to the half of ourselves and the half of our posterity, but to the whole people – women as well as men. And it is downright mockery to talk to women of their enjoyment of the blessings of liberty while they are denied the use of the only means of securing them provided by the democratic-republican government – the ballot. (Susan B. Anthony 1873)

Anthony’s effective use of language stems, in large measure, from her ability to concisely pinpoint contradictions between the egalitarian ethos embodied in the US Constitution and the reality of women’s lives devoid of the right to vote. In the first instance, “we, the people, not we, the white male citizens,” points out immediate differences to treatment based on sex. She then, quite effectively, draws contrasts between “the whole people,” rather than “half of ourselves” or “half of our posterity.” In other words, “the blessings of liberty” should be bestowed upon every American, not just American men. The additional assertion that refers to women’s enjoyment of inequality being a “downright mockery” of justice is another effective use of evocative language, which eventually helped to advance her cause. Years later, on November 13, 1913, Emmeline Pankhurst, a British suffragette, gave a rousing speech that was inspired by Patrick Henry where she demanded the right to vote, or death. She drew an analogy between the men of Hartford, Connecticut, where she delivered her speech, and the disenfranchised women of America, and the world, for whom she was advocating: Suppose the men of Hartford had a grievance, and they laid that grievance before the legislature, and the legislature obstinately refused to listen to them, or to remove their grievance, what would be the proper and the constitutional and the practical way of getting their grievance removed? Well, it is perfectly obvious at the next general election the men of Hartford would turn out that legislature and elect a new one.

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But let the men of Hartford imagine that they were not in the position of being voters at all, that they were governed without their consent being obtained, that the legislature turned an absolutely deaf ear to their demands, what would the men of Hartford do then? They couldn’t vote the legislature out. They would have to choose; they would have to make a choice of two evils: they would either have to submit indefinitely to an unjust state of affairs, or they would have to rise up and adopt some of the antiquated means by which men in the past got their grievances remedied. (Pankhurst 1913)

Pankhurst also made reference to the Boston Tea Party within the same speech, noting that when American men had exhausted every conceivable attempt to resolve their differences with the king of England, only to be rebuffed, the ensuing revolution that gave birth to the United States was all but inevitable. Psychologists employ a relevant phrase to refer to the rhetorical device that Pankhurst employed in the preceding commentary: she asks her audience to engage in a thought experiment, where they imagine a hypothetical set of circumstances. Pankhurst’s hypothetical example assumes that the men of Hartford “were not in the position of being voters at all,” and that “they were governed without their consent.” What she posed as a hypothetical thought experiment for the men of Hartford was the reality that women living in Hartford faced in 1913. By introducing this topic within the context of “removing their grievance,” which knows no sexual dislocation – men or women may suffer from a grievance – she confirms the human, rather than male, dimensions of potential grievances. To then suggest, again hypothetically, that the men of Hartford could not vote to remove the legislators who failed to address their grievance was absolutely brilliant. By so doing, Pankhurst laid bare the blatant hypocrisy of women voters’ disenfranchisement in the United States, England, and elsewhere. She concluded with a thinly veiled threat, by acknowledging that those who chose not to “submit” to a political status quo that denied them of their right to vote would then “rise up” and adopt the “antiquated means” of conflict resolution (i.e., armed rebellion) that had been employed during the Boston Tea Party, and the American Revolution. In common parlance, these courageous women spoke truth to power and used their intellects to persuade and chastise those who would continue to deny women living in democratic countries their birthright to participate fully as voting citizens. The lack of women’s rights was a source of glaring injustice that has yet to be fully resolved. However, the struggle to help women gain the right to vote is a clear example of an instance when the pursuit of justice eventually prevailed. A different set of unjust circumstances afflicted slaves and their descendants in the United States prior to 1954. Long before the women’s suffrage movement was initiated, countries throughout North America and South America had imported African slaves to perform a variety of laborious

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duties, and to do so against their free will. Within those states that sanctioned slavery in the United States, additional statues were passed that made it illegal to teach slaves to read or write. These laws were intentionally designed to prevent slaves from gaining the literacy skills that might someday allow them to challenge the very authority that had enslaved them in the first place. Although many abolitionists decried the inhumanity born of slavery, the institution persisted for a combination of political and economic reasons until Abraham Lincoln passed the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863. The ensuing passage of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the US Constitution made formal provision for the inclusion of former slaves, and their descendants, to become full-fledged citizens of the United States, no longer to be counted in the US Census as 3/5 of a person. The combination of these political, social, and economic changes had a tremendous impact on America during and after the Civil War. The reunification of the nation witnessed a host of new challenges, including how best to incorporate former slaves into the larger society as citizens. Readers of this book are likely to know that passage of the Emancipation Proclamation, and new amendments to the US Constitution, did not result in the immediate fair and equal treatment of Black people living in America. Efforts to exclude African Americans from the right to vote, or to own property, or to start businesses, or to learn a trade, or to obtain a meaningful education were consistently thwarted by those who resisted any effort to promote greater racial equality, and through that effort to enhance opportunities for former slaves and their descendants. Thus, while the yoke of slavery had been lifted – at least statutorily – the consequences of racism throughout America lingered for decades after the end of the Civil War. In its aftermath, schools were created for Negroes, including Howard University and other historically Black colleges and universities at the behest of Booker T. Washington. However, these educational institutions were not comparable to those serving more affluent White Americans. In addition, many of the former slave states passed laws explicitly segregating schools by race, while claiming that the education that they provided was separate, but equal. The legacy of racially segregated schools, which many African Americans considered to be unjust, unequal, and unfair, was eventually challenged through carefully crafted litigation that was masterfully organized by Thurgood Marshall and a team of African American attorneys with whom he worked, all of whom were affiliated with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Legal Defense and Education Fund. That group was motivated to challenge, if not overthrow, various Jim Crow laws that relegated Blacks to second-class status.

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Marshall and his colleagues believed that it would be best to attack Jim Crow laws where they perceived them to be weakest, which centered on the practice of state-mandated racially segregated schools. At first, five separate cases were initiated, and a three-judge panel at the US District Court initially ruled in favor of the school boards, which would have allowed racially segregated schools to continue. However, when confronted by this reality, the plaintiffs appealed to the US Supreme Court in 1952, where the five cases were consolidated. Marshall’s strategy was clear: he argued that racially segregated school systems must be inherently unequal, and that they therefore violated the Equal Protection Clause contained in the Fourteenth Amendment: They can’t take race out of this case. From the day this case was filed until this moment, nobody has in any form or fashion, despite the fact I made it clear in the opening argument that I was relying on it, done anything to distinguish this statute from the Black Codes, which they must admit, because nobody can dispute, say anything anybody wants to say, one way or the other, the Fourteenth Amendment was intended to deprive the states of power to enforce Black Codes or anything else like it. We charge that they are Black Codes. They obviously are Black Codes if you read them. They haven’t denied that they are Black Codes, so if the Court wants to very narrowly decide this case, they can decide it on that point. So whichever way it is done, the only way that this Court can decide this case in opposition to our position, is that there must be some reason which gives the state the right to make a classification that they can make in regard to nothing else in regard to Negroes, and we submit the only way to arrive at that decision is to find that for some reason Negroes are inferior to all other human beings. (Marshall 1953)

Marshall’s remarks, while formal, are less scripted than the speeches that were delivered in support of women’s rights. Nevertheless, his explicit linkage between the Fourteenth Amendment and the fact that racially segregated schools are, essentially, a form of Black Codes represents the fundamental argument of his case. In addition, by arguing that any potential ruling that would be “in opposition to our position” (i.e., that racially segregated schools are inherently unequal and therefore violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment) must do so on the grounds that “Negroes are inferior.” Unanimous Supreme Court rulings have been rare throughout history, but the scales of justice were tilted more toward favoring racial equality after the unanimous ruling in favor of the plaintiffs. The Supreme Court ruled as follows: Today, education is perhaps the most important function of state and local governments. Compulsory school attendance laws and the great expenditures for education both demonstrate our recognition of the importance of education to our democratic society. It is required in the performance of our most basic public responsibilities, even service in the armed forces. It is the very foundation of good citizenship. Today it is a principal instrument in awakening the child to cultural values, in preparing him for later professional training, and in helping him to adjust normally to his environment. In these days,

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it is doubtful that any child may reasonably be expected to succeed in life if he is denied the opportunity of an education. Such an opportunity, where the state has undertaken to provide it, is a right which must be made available to all on equal terms.

The legal affirmation of the importance of fair and equal access to an education did not ensure, and has not ensured that Black students obtain educational parity with Whites. Racial disparities in educational achievement within the United States still persist. However, the pursuit of justice moved forward significantly as a result of this ruling, which dismantled a system of overt educational apartheid in the former slave states that relegated Black students to a woefully inferior education, sanctioned by statutory proclamation. Yes, we still have a long road to travel before racial discrepancies in educational achievement are erased; but thanks to the judicious work of Thurgood Marshall and his colleagues, the United States is much closer to its goal to provide color-blind education to all of its children, regardless of their racial background. Racial segregation was also sanctioned by law in South Africa during apartheid. Unlike the United States, where the one drop rule prevailed – that is, one drop of Black blood was sufficient to classify someone as being African American – South Africa maintained three broad racial classifications, including Blacks, Coloreds (people of mixed racial heritage), and Whites. The laws governing these groups varied greatly, as did their educational, occupational, and residential allocations. Two dominant groups, representing a minority of the South African population, prevailed during apartheid: Afrikaners, who traced their ancestry to the Dutch settlers who were the first Europeans to arrive in South Africa, and native speakers of English who, for the most part, were descendants of British subjects who took over South Africa once the Dutch descendants were displaced during the Boer Wars. Blacks were subjected to the harshest treatment during apartheid, and their prospects were both constrained and dim when compared to the affluent lives that the minority White population experienced. Since the indigenous Black population did not migrate to South Africa, their native languages were spoken by a majority of the population before and during European settlement of that country. Both Dutch and British investors made huge fortunes at the expense of Black South Africans, while children of mixed race, that is, those who were classified as Colored South Africans, were provided with opportunities that exceeded those available to Black South Africans, but which never reached a level of parity with White South Africans in any social domain. It was against this backdrop of long-standing racial segregation and harsh inequality that fledgling resistance to White domination began to emerge. For the purpose of this discussion, to illustrate examples that strive to achieve justice, we consider some iconic quotations from proponents and detractors of

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apartheid, including Stephen Bantu Biko, Pieter Willem Botha, Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela, and Hendrik Frensch Verwoerd. Verwoerd was prime minister of South Africa from 1958 to 1966, and he promoted the concept of “grand apartheid,” which classified the lands where Africans lived as separate national homelands. He also oversaw South Africa’s departure from the British Commonwealth. Blacks reviled him, while many Whites embraced his vision of a racially segregated independent Republic of South Africa. He was eventually assassinated by Demetrio Tsafendas, who worked as a parliamentary messenger. Although Verwoerd survived a previous attempt to take his life in 1960, when he was shot twice in the head by an English farmer, Tsafendas succeeded in the assassination when he entered the Houses of Assembly and suddenly stabbed Verwoerd to death. Verwoerd’s notoriety included the brutal repression of anti-apartheid demonstrators, resulting in the Sharpeville massacre, and he led the government that sentenced Nelson Mandela and Walter Sisulu to prison, among many others. His sentiments reflecting his entitled sense of racial superiority were stated succinctly when he said: There is no place for [the Bantu] in the European community above the level of certain forms of labour . . . What is the use of teaching the Bantu child mathematics when it cannot use it in practice? That is quite absurd. Education must train people in accordance with their opportunities in life, according to the sphere in which they live. (Verwoerd 1950)

Nelson Mandela, who was sent to prison during Verwoerd’s administration as prime minister, was a founding member of the African National Congress (ANC) Youth League. He was convicted under the terrorism act of 1963 and imprisoned until 1990. His disdain for apartheid was on vivid display during the trials that sent him to prison: I hate race discrimination most intensely and in all its manifestations. I have fought it all during my life; I fight it now, and will do so until the end of my days. Even although I now happen to be tried by one whose opinion I hold in high esteem, I detest most violently the set-up that surrounds me here. It makes me feel that I am a Black man in a White man’s court. This should not be. (Mandela 1962) I have fought against White domination, and I have fought against Black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons will live together in harmony with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for, and to see realized. But my Lord, if need be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die. (Mandela 1964)

Although P. W. Botha eventually released Nelson Mandela from prison, leading toward the eventual end of apartheid and Mandela’s democratic election as South Africa’s first Black president, Botha was a forceful defender of apartheid until its demise. He emphatically rejected the idea

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of racial equality and resisted the prospect of a racially integrated South Africa until the external political and economic pressure on him and his country was so great that he had no other choice but to concede defeat. Prior to that time, however, his defiance of anyone who was critical of apartheid was abundantly clear: I am one of those who believe that there is no permanent home for even a section of the Bantu in the white area of South Africa and the destiny of South Africa depends on this essential point. If the principle of permanent residence for the black man in the area of the white is accepted, then it is the beginning of the end of civilisation as we know it in this country. (Botha 1964) The idea of an Afrikaner people as a cultural entity and religious group with a special language will be retained in South Africa as long as civilisation stands. (Botha, cited by Crwys-Williams 1994)

Stephen Biko was much younger than any of the men just quoted. He was eager to challenge the authority of the apartheid government, and toward that end he was a cofounder of the South African Students’ Organisation (SASO) in 1969. Despite his relative youth, he authored the influential article Black Consciousness and the Quest for True Humanity (1981), and organized the Black People’s Convention in 1972. Like Mandela, he was arrested and sent to prison under the terrorism act, and he died in prison as a result of a brutal police beating in 1977. Although his voice was silenced, his words lived on beyond his relatively short life: Sure there are a few good Whites just as much as there are a few bad Blacks. However, what we are concerned here with is group attitudes and group politics. The exception does not make a lie or the rule – it merely substantiates it. (Biko 1979) Double consciousness is knowing the particularity of the white world in the face of its enforced claim to universality. Double consciousness is knowing the history offered up to black people – its many interpretations and echoes of white superiority and black inferiority, of white heroism and black cowardice, and even the temporal and geographical location of history’s beginning as a step off of the African continent – is a falsehood that blacks are forced to treat as truth in so many countless ways. Double consciousness, in other words, is knowing a lie while living its contradiction. (Biko 1978)

Discourse analysis allows us to look at the language of those who defended apartheid, as well as those seeking to upend it. In the case of apartheid apologists, we find explicit dismissal of any prospect for racial equality. Verwoerd implies that his opinion is merely pragmatic, and that Blacks are incapable of higher-order thinking, and therefore should be trained exclusively to toil as laborers. Botha sees himself as a defender of a so-called civilized society, where any prospect of Black equality, or constraints on Afrikaner culture, would inevitably lead to the demise of South African civilization.

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Mandela effectively uses combat metaphors to convey his fight against racism, or the domination of people regardless of their race. He also makes clear that his principles are unwavering, and that if need be, he is prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice to promote a vision of life in South Africa where all people can live in harmony. Biko’s perspective is somewhat different, although his goal for Black liberation is nearly identical to that espoused by Mandela. Biko’s effective references to racial groups, as well as prevailing propaganda and perceptions associated with racial superiority or inferiority and heroism or cowardice, affirm his disdain for “falsehoods” that Blacks in South Africa were “forced to treat as truth.” Whereas Mandela spoke of his willingness to make the ultimate human sacrifice to achieve racial harmony, Biko’s murder accentuates the fact that direct actions to achieve justice differ from benevolent acts where one might obtain justice, because the former is the result of a combination of individual and collective deeds. The suffragettes and Thurgood Marshall further illustrate this point, because the hard-fought rights that women and African Americans have achieved were not granted without the careful planning and implementation required to combat injustices against women and Blacks with new laws and political opportunities that clearly advanced the cause of fair and equal treatment. 11.6

Sustaining Justice

While there can be no doubt that occasional celebration is justified whenever justice is either obtained or achieved, the quest for true justice can remain incomplete if it is not sustained. All too often freedom, or other social, economic, or political milestones that promote justice in one form or another, can be reversed or degraded without vigilant attention by proponents of equality. The issue of voting rights in the United States is a useful illustration in this regard. As noted, women in the United States did not obtain the right to vote until 1920, and minority voting, be it Black or Brown, was historically repressed through a variety of techniques, including poll taxes and literacy tests that were explicitly designed to prevent Blacks and other non-White minorities from gaining access to the ballot. To his credit, Lyndon Baines Johnson worked tirelessly to achieve passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1964, and that landmark legislation was a triumph for justice that was widely celebrated at the time. The former slave states, and other municipalities, were then on notice that they could no longer impede minority voter registration or political participation without risking the prospect of incurring federal prosecution. With the passage of time, many of the former slave states sought relief from what they perceived to be an added burden that was not imposed on states

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where slavery did not once exist, and the Supreme Court rescinded some of the provisions of the Voting Rights Act that required these states to seek federal approval before changing the configuration of their local political districts, or passing new laws – such as legislation demanding specific voter identification to gain access to the ballot. In this instance and in many others, such as equal access to fair housing, and non-predatory home loans, we have witnessed the slow-to-rapid evaporation of justice that once prevailed. It is therefore incumbent upon all who seek to promote justice that we recognize the need for constant vigilance to sustain the achievements gained through the collective struggle of individuals and groups that have fought for equality, and to maintain Mandela’s vision of human harmony as essential to the pursuit of peace and prosperity worldwide. 11.7

A Cautionary Coda

Throughout this book, every effort has been made to provide illustrations of ways to enlist linguistics for the betterment of humanity and the world at large. Moreover, this venture has exposed various linguistic tools that can be used to achieve goals that have collectively been designed to overcome injustice or, more positively, to promote justice – unqualified. I therefore view my task as being cast in the tradition of toolmakers and inventors who have designed their wares for benevolent purposes. Be that as it may, history has shown that many tools and inventions that were created for the benefit of some worthy purpose were eventually weaponized and used for evil purposes with malicious intent. That same potential, to use the tools depicted throughout this book for harmful purposes, is a real possibility. It is therefore incumbent upon readers of good will who share a vision and desire to accelerate justice, and the betterment of societies worldwide, to be attentive and watchful of those with nefarious intent who might read this book and adapt the tools described herein for harmful and hurtful purposes for which they were never intended. Consider, for example, the discovery of fire. At its best it was harnessed to provide heat, and it provided a means through which our forebears could cook food. However, those bent on the destruction of their enemies soon enlisted fire as a weapon of war, as in the horrific death by burning of Joan of Arc. The invention of rope has been one of the most important discoveries that has proven to be tremendously beneficial, yet that tool was used repeatedly by the Ku Klux Klan to lynch many enslaved or descendants of enslaved Black Americans. Benjamin Franklin’s experiments to harness electricity, combined with Thomas Edison’s invention of the light bulb, transformed humanity throughout the world, and so too did the creation of the electric chair. My home nation of the United States is the only nation ever to unleash the

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Shall We Overcome?

destructive power of atomic weapons, while that same technology has also been harnessed to generate electricity. The list of weaponized tools could go on without end, only to emphasize the destructive potential of well-intended creations misused with harmful intent. With this caution firmly in mind, readers who wish to employ the tools described herein for the benefit of those in need of justice may find new ways to support this benevolent enterprise. Just as history has witnessed the misuse of tools for harmful purposes, we have seen many marvelous efforts that reveal the better nature of humanity. Those who come to the aid of others in the wake of natural disasters, or those devoted to eliminating hunger or eradicating human trafficking, as well as others who have dedicated their professional training to saving lives – from efforts to cure cancer to ways to reduce or reverse global warming – are more representative of the type of people for whom this book has been written. Ideally the tools described herein could be used by an individual who wishes to advance justice on a micro level, or they might be used in an organized way by groups of coordinated people striving to make macro contributions to justice. By enlisting the help of those who are selfless and willing to commit themselves to the pursuit of justice – in all forms – it is my fervent hope that we may eventually achieve the aspirational objective where injustice is rare – if not nonexistent. If, and when, that glorious day arrives, the question posed by the title of this chapter will be answered in the affirmative, because we will be able to tell our children, and they will be able to tell their children, of a bygone era when justice finally eclipsed injustice. Then, and only then, can we eventually make the claim that we – as a people – have truly overcome.

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Index

AAVE. See African American vernacular English abolitionists, 12 Accuracy Index, 111–112 acoustic measurements, 114–115 affirmative action, 61, 63, 64, 125–126 African American vernacular English, 16, 29, 39, 73, 75, 99, 107 Afrikaans. See apartheid Alexander, Neville, 54–56 Ali, Muhammed, 11 Anthony, Susan B., 191 apartheid, 54, 195–198 see also South Africa Appalachia, 15 audience design. See methods Austin, John L., 45, 136, 165, 166 Baker, Colin, 70 Bantu Education Act, 54–56 Baugh, John, 61, 75, 155, 181 Black English, 160 Black street speech, 107, 110, 168–169 housing discrimination, 16, 18, 51 see also Purnell, Idsardi, and Baugh terms of self-reference, 59, 124 Bell, Allan, 47–48, 144–145, 169 Bernstein, Basil, 72, 172 Biko, Stephen, 197 bilingualism, 70, 72 Black Codes, 194 Black English Trial, 72–74, 172–173, 179 Black Panthers, 2, 7–9 Bloomfield, Leonard, 154–155 Boas, Franz, 152–153 Bortoni-Ricardo, Stella, 175 Botha, P.W., 196–197 Brazil, 15 Brown v. Board of Education, 63 Brown, Michael, 4, 122 bullying, 19, 46 busing, 72

CA. See methods, conversation analysis California, 74, 75–76 Canada, 70 Carter, Jimmy, 145 Cassidy, Frederick, 68, 170 CDA. See methods, critical discourse analysis Cedergren, Henrietta, 69, 160 Census, US, 63, 126–127 Chaski, Carole, 180 Chicanx English, 16, 99, 108 Chomsky, Noam, 69, 155, 157–158 civil disobedience, 50 civil rights, 9, 59 Clark, William, 98, 107 Clifford v. Kentucky, 83, 181 code switching, 155 Comey, James, 4 see also FBI competence, linguistic v. communicative, 158–159 Congress, US, 11, 98 contextual styles, 167–168 conversation analysis. See methods Creole, 52, 161 critical discourse analysis. See methods Cullen Davis murder trial, 16, 21–26, 41, 164 DA. See methods, discourse analysis Dayton, Elizabeth, 12, 107 death penalty, 34 dialect leveling, 166 dialectology. See methods dialects, 12–13, 27, 63, 71 diphthong, 30, 34 discourse analysis. See methods discrimination disparate impact, 106–107 education, 71–72, 73, 129, 163, 176, 193–195 employment, 77–78, 130, 136 housing, 67, 85, 87, 98–99, 118, 130 women, 71, 120, 129

212

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Index drive-by shootings, 35–41 Du Bois, W.E.B., 11 Dumas, Bethany, 181 earwitness, 18–19 reliability, 85–87, 95 Ebonics, 74, 75–76, 173 EEOC. See Equal Employment Opportunity Commission elderly, 18 England, 15 Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, 149 ethnography of communication. See methods ethnography of speaking. See methods, ethnography of communication Evans, Orin, 3 FBI, 4, 8, 21, 22 Ferguson, Charles, 177 Ferguson, Missouri, 4 Fishman, Joshua, 78, 161–163, 177 forensic linguistics, 16, 22, 26 France, 15 Gandhi, Mahatma, 48–51, 183 gangs, 1, 35, 39 Garner, Eric, 4 Gee, James Paul, 165 Germany, 51 Giles and Powesland, 166–167 global justice, 178 Godinez, Manuel, 108 Goffman, Erving, 139, 144, 146–147, 163, 168 Goodwin, Charles, 144 Goodwin, Marjorie Harness, 144 Grice, Herbert Paul, 136, 165, 166 Gumperz, John, 164 Guy, Gregory, 160 Haiti, 52 hardship index. See Historical Hardship Index Haugen, Einar, 155, 177 Haynes, Racehorse, 21, 25–26 Henderson, A., 77–78, 85 HHI. See Historical Hardship Index historical context 1960s, 9–11 slave trade, 17 slavery, 123–124 World War II, 46–47 historical evaluation, 48 Historical Hardship Index, 19 Hitler, Adolph, 46–47, 48, Hoover, J. Edgar, 8 see also FBI

213 Hurricane Katrina, 121–122 Hymes, Dell, 11, 142, 157, 158–159, 177 IAFL. See International Association of Forensic Linguistics identity, 2 immigration, 11–12, 61, 79–80, 123, 124–125 International Association of Forensic Linguistics, 179–180 intonation, 38, 108 Italians, 12 Jamaica, 15, 52 Jefferson, Gail, 144 Jensen, Arthur, 13, 72 Jews, 12 JFK. See Kennedy, John F. Johnson, Lyndon B., 10, 11, 198 justice, definition, 44, 183 Kennedy, John F., 10, 11 King, Martin Luther, 4, 8, 11 Klatt, D.H. and L., 110, 114 Kontra, Miklós, 53, 177 Kurath, Hans, 68, 170 Labov, William, 9, 12, 30, 58, 68–69, 75, 77, 99, 107, 161, 177 Black English trial, 73, 172 contextual styles, 167–168 Ebonics, 76 nonstandard English, 14–15, 172 social stratification, 11, 78, 161 sociolinguistics, 159–160 Lakoff, Robin, 70, 164 Lambert, Wallace, 69–70, 102 language policy, 20, 48–49 Latinxs, 15, 46, 59, 65, 67, 109 Lau v. Nichols, 72 law and linguistics, 42–43, 46, 68, 87, 148–149, 166 auditory lineups, 95–96 cases, 100–101, 164 role of linguist, 27, 40–41, 180–181 LBJ. See Johnson, Lyndon B. LeMoine, N., 76–77 LGBT, 15, 18, 46, 130 see also sexual orientation linguistic disenfranchisement, 15, 20 linguistic harassment, 19, 56 linguistic justice, 178–179 linguistic profiling, 16, 51 global, 51–52 linguistic relativity, 154

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214

Index

macro-linguistic, 107 Malcolm X, 8, 11 Mandela, Nelson, 54, 56, 62, 190, 196, 198 Marshall, Thurgood, 11, 193–195 Massey and Lundy, 18, 84, 100, 118 Massey, Douglass, 106, 107 McCormick, Kay, 174 McDavid, Raven, 68, 170 McGorrery and McMahon, 95 media, 4, 5, 9, 22, 36, 47–48, 169 methods, 22 audience design, 47, 48, 144–146 conversation analysis, 41, 50, 139 critical discourse analysis, 165 dialectology, 14, 68–69 discourse analysis, 22, 139, 190, 197–198 ethnography of communication, 50, 141–142, 150, 157 phonetic analysis, 27, 28, 99, 109–111 phonological evaluation, 41, 99 spectrographic analysis, 29, 33–34, 41 speech act theory, 48, 50, 136, 143 topic initiation, 22, 24 Mexico, 15 MLK. See King, Martin Luther morpheme, 107–108 murder trials, 27 N . . . word, 39, 46, 59, 147 NAACP. See National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Nation of Islam, 2, 6–7 National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, 193 Native Americans, 62, 81, 129, 153–154 Negro, 59, 60, 61 O’Barr, William, 151, 180 Obama, Barack, 61, 62, 123, 124 Ogbu, John, 61, 64, 124–125 Ogletree, Charles, 61–62, 63, 125 Parkhurst, Emmeline, 191–192 People v. Sanchez, 83, 181 Philadelphia, 1, 11 Quakers, 11 settlers, 12 social context, 2–4, 5–7, 12, 14 Philbrick, Frederick A., 179 Phillipson, Robert, 175–177 phone calls as evidence, 27–28, 37–40 housing discrimination, 51, 66–67, 102–103 linguistic profiling, 65–66 phoneme, 30, 34, 41, 153

phonetic analysis. See methods phonological evaluation. See methods phonological reduction, 30 Piller, Ingrid, 53, 177–179 police, 2, 8, 36, 37, 39 brutality, 13 mistrust of, 3–4, 5, 9 racial profiling, 65 raids, 8–9 position of authority, 45, 48 Powell, Colin, 62 Preston, Dennis, 69, 170 public speech, 48, 59, 191 Puerto Ricans, 11, 12 Puerto Rico, 15 Purnell, Idsardi, and Baugh, 16, 18, 71 Quakers, 11, 12 racial profiling, 65 Rice, Condoleezza, 62 Rickford and Rickford, 75, 107 Rickford, John R., 75 Rizzo, Frank, 3, 8 see also police Sacks, Harvey, 144 Sacks, Schegloff, and Jefferson, 163–164 SAE. See Standard American English San Francisco, 71 Sankoff, David, 69, 160 Santa Ana, Otto, 53, 108 Sapir, Edward, 153–154 sarcasm, 40, 41, 42 Schegloff, Emanuel, 144 Schegloff, Jefferson, and Sacks, 41, 144 Searle, John, 45, 136, 165, 166 sex of a speaker, 18, 88 sexual harassment, 19, 134, 135–136 sexual orientation, 18, 46 see also LGBT Shuy, Roger, 16, 21–26, 72, 164 Skutnabb-Kangas, Tove, 53, 175–177 slave descendants, 15, 58–62, 63, 122, 129, 130, 192–193 Smalls, Dawn, 18, 82–84, 155, 181–182 Smitherman, Geneva, 73, 75, 107, 172, 179 SNCC. See Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee social justice, 178 social media, 80, 138, 139, 141, 169, 186 social stratification, 11, 12, 17, 52, 78, 161 sociolinguistics, 14, 58, 159, 161–163 South Africa, 15, 20, 54–56, 171, 174 see also apartheid Soweto uprising of 1976, 55 Specter, Arlen, 76

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Index spectrographic analysis. See methods speech act theory. See methods speech patterns, 11, 12, 13, 15 Southern, 12 Squires, Gregory, 98, 118 Standard American English, 16, 71, 76–78, 99, 129 Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), 11 Supreme Court, US, 11, 64, 72, 194–195 talking White, 13, 74, 78 Taney, Roger B., 60–61, 62–63, 64, 122 Tannen, Deborah, 70, 164 Texas, 52–53 textbook adoption, 52–53 Till, Emmett, 11 topic initiation. See methods transcripts, 163–164 as evidence, 22–25, 27, 38–40 Tucker, G. Richard, 70, 102

215 Turkish, 51 variable rules, 69 verbal abuse, 46 Verwoerd, Hendrik Frensch, 196, 197 Vietnam War, 10–11 Walton, J. and R. Orlikoff, 110, 111, 114 War on Poverty, 10, 11 Weinreich, Uriel, 68–69, 155–156, 159, 170 Whorf, Benjamin Lee, 153–154 Wiehl, Lis, 181 Wodak, Ruth, 165 Wolfram, Walt, 70, 75, 78, 107 women’s rights, 190–192 World War II. See historical context Yiddish, 12, 155, 160, 163 Zentella, Ana Celia, 45, 53, 77

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