constructing otherness

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International Journal of Applied Linguistics w Vol. 17 w No. 2 w 2007

Blackwell Publishing LtdOxford, UKIJALInternational Journal of Applied Linguistics0802-6106 © The Author Journal compilation © 2007 Blackwell Publishing LtdXXXOriginal ArticlesConstructing “otherness”Kate T.And erson

Constructing “otherness”: ideologies anddifferentiating speech style

Kate T. Anderson

Indiana University

Linguistic research focusing on evaluations of speech style has traditionallyconsidered social variables, acoustic parameters, and listeners’ ability toidentify speakers accurately. However, few studies examine how suchevaluation of speech relies on socially meaningful and available discoursesof differentiation. This article explores how listeners construct discursiveevaluations of a set of speech samples, one of which is consistently constructedas problematic. Discourse analysis highlights how language ideologiesintertwine with articulated reasons for identification of the “other”. Thismethodological approach expands the social contexts usually considered inan analysis of speech evaluation, problematizing linguistic notions of social relations and context. Implications for applied linguistic research onsocial identification of speakers based upon their speech style has particularrelevance to educational research and practice.

Keywords: language ideology, discourse analysis, linguistic profiling, speechevaluation, race

La recherche linguistique concentrée sur l’évaluation du style de parler traitetypiquement des variable sociales, des paramètres acoustiques, et la capacitédes auditeurs d’identifier correctement les locuteurs. Cependant, peu d’étudesexaminent comment une telle identification se fonde sur des discours dedifférentiation qui sont disponibles et qui ont une signification sociale. Cetarticle explore comment les auditeurs forment des évaluations discursives deséchantillons de la langue parlée, dont un example est regulièrement vuecomme étant problématique. L’analyse du discours souligne comment les

idéologies s’entremêlent avec des explications données pour l’identificationde « l’autre ». Cette approche méthodologique ajoute aux contextes sociauxconsidérés dans les analyses de l’évaluation du parler en mettant en questionles notions linguistiques de relations sociales et de contexte. Les implicationsde telles études de l’identification sociale basée sur le style de parler deslocuteurs s’étendent vers la recherche aussi bien que la pratique éducatives.

Mots clés: idéologie de langue, analyse du discours, évaluation de laparole, race



Constructing “otherness”

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The investigation [of ideologies] will require moving beyond the mere recordingof informants’ explicit statements of sociolinguistic norms, for beliefs and ideationalschemes are not contained only in a person’s explicit assertions of them. Instead,

some of the most important and interesting aspects of ideology lie behind thescenes, in assumptions that are taken for granted – that are never fully explicitlystated in any format that would permit them also to be denied. (Irvine 2001: 25)

Introduction

Identity, speech, and identification

This article explores a tension between traditional and applied linguisticapproaches to listeners’ identification of speaker identity (e.g. race, class, region)

based upon speech style. Both approaches address how social meaning is madeof the ways individuals speak; however, the former prioritizes quantifiedcorrelations between linguistic features and listeners’ evaluations, while thelatter, which I take up here, problematizes the social contexts in which suchevaluations become meaningful and communicable. Understanding moreabout social interactions, available ideologies, and the effect of implicitexpectations on reactions to speech requires analyzing evaluations beyondsurface linguistic structure. This, in turn, allows findings to be applicable tosocial contexts directly, rather than mediated first through application tolinguistic theory building. The critical applied linguistic approach I detail

here, by nature of its methodological orientation, both acknowledges thenecessarily contextualized process of linguistic profiling and provides insightsinto how language ideologies shape inequitable behaviors through theirsilent authorization of normative language expectations (Pennycook 2004).

Through an empirical, qualitative study of how US interviewees raciallyconstructed the identity of eight recorded voices, I examine one social contextin which everyday expectations of and reactions to others’ social identities,including race

1

, are explicitly mediated by linguistic input. Such analysis hasimplications for understanding how deeply rooted language ideologies, aspublicly and institutionally condoned belief systems, make differentiation

and discrimination of the “other” available and justifiable. I argue that adiscursive analysis of how listeners consistently evaluate one of eightspeakers as problematic, due to her racial identity as they receive it, relatesabstracted folk assumptions about language and identity as they emerge ininterviews “back to the domains of folk experience whence they originallycame and are made relevant in practice” (Widdowson 2006: 96).

Considering social contexts of speech evaluation

A critical applied linguistic approach offers a complementary alternative

to examining the products of listeners’ speech evaluations based upon



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vocal cues, a longstanding and persistent line of sociolinguistic inquiry(e.g. Dickens and Sawyer 1952; Purnell, Idsardi and Baugh 1999; Thomasand Reaser 2004). These and many other studies address the accuracy of

listeners’ responses, correlate listeners’ ability to accurately judge race andother social attributes with their demography, determine which voices areeasily identified from vocal cues, and examine the potential influence of acoustic stimuli on accurate judgments. While such studies include detailsof how linguistic features or cues might affect judgments of speakeridentity, they generally do not include details about the social contextsof interactions that occasion speakers’ evaluations. This is not a flaw intheir design, but a requirement for effectively addressing their focus – thesaliency of linguistic cues in linguistic contexts (e.g. phonetic, phonological,grammatical).

Another notion of context is useful, however, for further developingan applied understanding of listeners’ social reactions to speech – thediscursive context of meaning-making around speech stimuli. I considerhow listeners discursively articulate and justify their evaluations from aperspective open to both listener and observer (i.e. somewhat consciously).Questioning how ideologies affect listeners’ evaluations of speakers’ inclusionin certain social categories treats speech as a social act (socially context-ualized), contrasting with studies that examine speech features as part of a speech signal (linguistically contextualized). I argue that the latter can be complemented by considerations of saliency in terms of social, dis-cursive meaning-making (e.g. evaluations and ideologies) prioritized inlinguistic anthropology, critical discourse analysis, and conversation analy-sis. This entails examining the discursive process of language identifica-tion with a focus not on linguistic structures, but on social structures of interaction.

Interviews targeting conversational evaluations of speech style provide auseful site for accomplishing this aim. Examining ideologies as they emergein listeners’ reported reactions to speech generates information relevant todiscrimination and linguistic prejudice based on speech. This can haveimplications for how linguistic profiling and stereotyping of speakers basedon speech occurs (Baugh 2003). The present study extends an emerging lineof folk linguistic and language ideological research (e.g. Irvine 2001; Lippi-Green 1997; Niedzielski and Preston 2003; Preston 2004) through analysisof the ways 29 listeners constructed and expressed social and linguisticevaluations of eight women’s speech. I specifically focus on listeners’ racialconstructions of one African American woman, Betty, across interviews.Through this analysis, I hope to add to understanding of how speechidentification relies upon socially circulating beliefs, ideologies, andexpectations of how social categories and speech style interact. By closelyexamining listeners’ descriptions and justifications of racial evaluations based on a short sample of speech, I examine one such context for socially

constructed identification of speech style.




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Methods

The data for this study derive from interviews with 29 undergraduate students

at a large southeastern university in the US. I began by playing eight anonymousspeech samples (average 16 seconds) for each listener. These samples originatedfrom 45-minute recorded conversations between acquainted pairs of AfricanAmerican female speakers

2

. I informed each pair that they could converseabout any topic they chose and that data were being gathered on women’sconversations; I did not disclose that the goals of the study were linguistic.These meetings took place in various private rooms familiar to at least onemember of each pair (a private office or conference room).

Speakers were my acquaintances and colleagues from a variety of backgrounds, all of whom self-identified as African American women and

were associated with the university in some capacity. They represented arange of speech styles, and I was interested to see how listeners reportedreactions to speakers based upon this varied sample. Table 1 includes biographical information about each woman, labeled with the pseudonym

3

by which she was presented to listeners.From these recorded conversations, I chose short speech samples based

on a lack of stigmatized grammatical, morphosyntactic and phonologicalfeatures

4

(see Bailey and Thomas 1998; Green 2002) and content that I thoughtlisteners would not identify as racially marked or that would perpetuateracial stereotypes (e.g. religious practices). I selected samples of about 16seconds in length; I felt this was sufficient but not overwhelming, as racialidentification has been documented as possible after only seconds of speech(Baugh 1996).

Listeners’ ages ranged from 18–25 years; 20 were from the southeasternUS and nine were from other areas of the US. I recruited them throughcolleagues’ classes at the university. Requirements for participation includedcurrent undergraduate status at the university and having resided in the USfrom an early age. I did not control for any social variables (e.g. sex, age), butdid try to recruit as many African American participants as possible. Aconvenience sample at this university would have yielded mostly EuropeanAmerican interviewees, but I strove to include around 50% African American

Table 1. Speakers’ demographic information

Pam undergraduate student, late teens, from northeastern USBetty faculty member, early forties, from midwestern USSandra graduate student, late twenties, from southeastern USRhonda graduate student, early forties, from northeastern USMichelle undergraduate student, early twenties, from southeastern USSophie faculty member, late thirties, from southern USMary staff member, early sixties, from southeastern US

Jill graduate student, late twenties, from southern US



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listeners as I hoped to increase the variety of possible perspectives acrossinterviews. This choice was informed by the assumption that the inclusion of individuals who claim cultural affiliation with a group often positioned as

“other” (i.e. African American) might have experiences and opinions thatdiffer from individuals who claim affiliation with a dominant culturalmajority (i.e. European American) (Baker 1984).

Each interview lasted approximately 45 minutes and took place in aprivate conference room at the university. I told each listener that I wasinterested in his or her identification of speakers’ race(s) and asked him orher to pay attention to the sound

of each woman’s speech (and not to focusprimarily on word choice or grammatical structure). They heard the eightspeech samples two times each, one speaker at a time, and were given theopportunity to hear each sample again or at any time throughout the

interview. A copy of the orthographic transcripts of the speech sampleswas provided on which to take notes; these were labeled by speakers’pseudonyms and attended only to content and punctuation that aidedreadability (see Appendix 1 for these transcripts). The order of samplesvaried across interviews. After playing the samples, I announced thecommencement of the interview, began recording, and prompted listeners todescribe their impressions of each speaker, asking them to describe thereasons for their evaluations. If they did not mention race, I prompted forthis, letting the interviewees chose their own terminology, which ended upincluding only African American

, White

, Black

, and Caucasian

.I closely transcribed each interview, verbatim, with attention to

intonation and pauses. Initial examination of the transcript data revealed thatmost of the listeners described Betty as sounding White – far more than forany other speaker. This was of analytic interest because it constituted adiscursive space in which one voice was consistently heard as different thanthe others. Of the 29 listeners, 19 identified Betty as White (65%), eight asBlack (28%), and two remained undecided (7%). The only other speakers thatlisteners described as White were Sophie (7%) and Rhonda (2%). Examiningdiscourse in which listeners described how Betty differed from the otherseven speakers as someone whose racial attribution was problematicilluminates constructions of social/racial significance and value judgmentsattributed to speech style in these interviews. Table 2 provides listeners’overall evaluations of Betty’s race.

Table 2. Listeners’ identification of Betty

Listeners Total Betty is White Betty is Black Undecided

African American 9 8 1 –European American 20 11 7 2Total 29 19 8 2




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Analysis

Discursive evaluation of Betty’s speech style

Discourse analysis is an analytic tool for examining both the linguisticand social contexts of listeners’ evaluations. In particular, it allows forconsideration of how micro linguistic processes (e.g. utterances, lexicalchoice, prosody) and macro social constructs (e.g. race, dialect) are in adialectic relationship, not simply a binary one. In other words, languagedoes not just reflect society but helps to constitute it through the wayslanguage use and ideological social value come to be connected(Pennycook 2004). A critical epistemological assumption guiding thepresent analysis is that social meaning does not lie in a fixed relationship

to words, and the indexicality of language – ways in which meaningdepends upon linguistic and social contexts of discourse (Ochs 1992) –makes it crucial to consider listeners’ comments in the context of the explicitor implicated assumptions that frame their descriptions. Additionally,questioning assumptions that guide research on speech identificationand its social effects (e.g. perpetuating unequal opportunity, prejudice)requires an explicit consideration of methodological and epistemologicalassumptions.

Examining how social significance is attributed to speech style ininterviews can be applicable to other social interactions as well. Forexample, while the interview is a recognizable, institutional setting insome respects (Sarangi 2003), it also includes many of the same constraintsand affordances as other social interactions (Baker 1983). Examining howlisteners in this study reacted to, described, and made sense of Betty’ssupposed race provides insights into how they might react to someoneon the phone, in a job interview, or in the classroom. While this is apeculiar interactional context (i.e. asking for face-to-face racial judgmentand justification), it resembles in many ways other contexts in whichsomeone hears a voice and either internalizes or explicates evaluationand justification.

I analyzed listeners’ responses for articulated evaluations of howBetty’s race became relevant as a linguistically mediated social category.I examined hesitations, mitigations, use of seemingly social and linguisticcategories, and the ways that these were treated as relevant (Edwards2003; Rymes 1996; Stokoe and Wiggins 2005). Three major themes emergedfrom listeners’ constructions of Betty’s race along with one underlyingideological resource common to many listeners’ accounts. As I will touchupon below, examining discursive constructions of Betty’s race provides auseful analogue for how individuals make sense of voices they hear andpeople with which they come into contact in other social and institutionalsettings.



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Constructing Betty’s “difference”

A striking difference between listeners’ categorizations of Betty and the other

seven speakers arose in 28 out of 29 interviews and was characterized inthree main ways:

a) Betty sounds White and the others do not – ‘actively White’ b) the others sound Black and Betty does not – ‘passively non-Black’c) Betty sounds Black but ambiguously so, setting her apart from the other

speakers – ‘ambiguously Black’.

These three themes illustrate the ways that listeners constructed Betty’sspeech as racially differentiated in the context of the interview. Listeners

cited specific features of Betty’s speech as salient to their evaluation of her inreference to the other speakers, to their own ideas and expectations of raceand speech style, and to other people and experiences in their lives.

Betty as non-Black or White

To exemplify how listeners identified features of Betty’s speech style toconstruct her race as White, I include the following three excerpts. KD(a European American female), TA (an African American female) and EH

(a European American male) identified Betty’s speech as sounding White, but in different ways. For KD and TA, Betty sounded passively non-Black,whereas EH described Betty’s speech as actively White. (Transcriptionconventions are given in Appendix 2; K is the interviewer.)

1) KD: I think there were things that remind me of White speech um (3.0) just well I mean the lack of sounding Black. And maybe there’s asound to a White person as well you could pick up on.

After KD first evaluated Betty’s speech as White, she rephrased it as Bettynot sounding Black rather than having a White sound. She added speculativelythat there might be an identifiable White sound, but this was not how sheframed her interpretation. Instead KD positioned Whiteness as neutral, or adefault. After mentioning that features of Betty’s speech remind KD of Whitespeech, she paused, then hedged, just well I mean before concluding that thiswas really the lack of sounding Black

. She weakly suggested that maybe

there isa White sound out there, but not necessarily.

TA’s reasons for attributing the category of Whiteness to Betty’s speechappear less vague than KD’s, hinging instead on her description of Betty’s

southern

-sounding accent and what this implied for her construction of

Betty’s race.




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2) TA: Betty I thought was White. Because (5.0) like it’s very kind of hardto tell why somebody sounds White or Black and the same for allof them. But I just thought Betty was White.

K: So was that something that you thought right away or was itsomething that she said that clued you into it?TA: Um (5.0) I think it was also because of her accent. She had a southern

accent that really didn’t sound Black so I just concluded that shewas White from that.

TA did not describe Betty’s Whiteness in a way that marked it as adefault, as KD seemed to. However, when combined with a southern accent,TA claimed that the lack of sounding Black tipped the scale and that Bettysounded more White. TA connected race and southernness by positioning

Betty’s sound as something that did not fit and placed her in anothercategory, White. In both KD’s and TA’s excerpts, Betty’s Whiteness wasconstructed as a category ascription of necessity; she did not fit elsewhere, soshe became White for them.

While KD and TA constructed Betty’s Whiteness out of exclusion (i.e.simply not Black), EH attributed a specific type of Whiteness to Betty. He didso by highlighting a feature of her speech that made her sound different thanthe other speakers – the flow of her speech – explicitly linking this to hiscategorization of her as White. Not only was this construction one of activeWhiteness, but it was arguably one of archetypal Whiteness – a newscaster.

This cliché often arises in casual discussions about accent, or lack thereof,and is almost categorically used to denote European Americans or White-sounding speech (or thwarted expectations of some African Americannewscasters’ supposedly non-Black-sounding speech).

3) EH: Everything was- had it- it seemed like it had equal (2.0) there wasa flow to her speech that some of the others didn’t have.

K: Mm-hmm. (2.5) Um so how did that make her sound in comparisonto others. (2.0)

EH: Her- (2.7) um it sounded more White I guess you would say or I

don’t know like newscast. Um, (3.0) she didn’t have as much thetone in her voice was not- it wasn’t it wasn’t goin up and down asmuch as some of the others. It was just more flat.

EH compared Betty to the other speakers (

didn’t have as much tone, wasn’t going up and down as much, more flat

). When asked to describe what thisdifference meant to him, he stated after a brief pause, White, I guess you wouldsay

. While EH described Betty’s speech in terms of its actively markedWhiteness based on seeming prosodic features (not as a default as in KD’sdescription, nor as a category implied by exclusion from another as with

TA’s descriptions), the way EH described Betty’s speech was still marked



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with hesitation (pauses, self-interruptions, I guess, I don’t know

). Thisdifficulty often arose in listeners’ discussion about Betty’s speech as theyconstructed a White Betty – as actively White or passively non-Black – as well

as the third category of construction I consider in this analysis – Betty asambiguously Black.

Betty sounds Black . . . but

Of the eight listeners that thought Betty sounded Black, all but one qualifiedthat evaluation with commentary on how much harder it was to determineand/or articulate this than with the other speakers. These descriptions of Betty as ambiguously Black do as much to construct her difference from the

other seven speakers as those that categorized Betty as White. The differencesthat listeners attributed to Betty’s speech style contributed to how her racewas made meaningfully different and not just included in the categoriesBlack or White. In other words, she thwarted listeners’ expectations in someway. What is most interesting about these constructions of Betty as Black iswhat follows – the seeming obligatory . . . but

. Trouble placing her race wasdescribed as a disparity between what listeners expected of a Black sound(which other speakers apparently corroborated) with how they heard Betty.Despite some elements of supposedly Black speech, Betty fit into this categorywith apparent difficulty.

The next excerpt comes from an interview with MT (an African Americanfemale).

4) MT: Yeah they all sound Black to me except Betty. Betty was- I wasn’tquite sure. Kind of just ambiguous she was. Somehow it really tookme a while- the rest were so easy to figure out, “Yeah they’reBlack,” but Betty was just different arguably ‘cause I guess, I meanshe could be Black or White. Like the pitch in her voice and therhythm are somehow White but at the same time she just had thisBlack intonation as well.

K: So when you say pitch you mean the highness or lowness of her voice?

MT: Yeah the fluctuation of her voice.K: Sounded White?MT: Yeah.K: Ok, but then when you said intonation um what did you mean by

intonation?MT: Just the way she speaks. I don’t know just something back there

sounds Black. All of them have that but just Betty was a littleambiguous ‘cause her rhythm and her tone of voice were notconsistent with each other.

(listens to speech sample again)




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MT: Yeah, she’s Black. She just has a little- like she speaks a little bit likea White person. Probably grew- nah- yeah probably grew aroundlike middle-class White people. And she probably picked up that

rhythm but I guess she still kind of sounds Black.

MT’s description of why Betty could be either Black or White includedfeatures of her speech that sounded Black (

just the way she speaks, somethingback there

) and features that sounded White (

pitch and rhythm

). MT’sdescription of both Black and White features in Betty’s speech differs fromprior examples of Betty’s constructed race. MT described these linguisticfeatures (

pitch, rhythm, intonation

) as inconsistent with Betty’s social features(

White, Black

), suggesting that her expectations of what Black or White speechsounds like were not sufficiently met. Upon hearing Betty’s speech sample

for a third time, MT decided that Betty was indeed Black and that theambiguousness arose from exposure Betty must have had to middle-classWhites, therefore coloring her speech with non-Black flavor.

This attribution suggested that Betty’s seemingly original Black speechpatterns resulted from sufficient exposure to middle-class White people

. Bettydid not fit into either category of Black or White, so MT constructed a feasibleway to account for this by speculating about her cultural affiliations andmaking a connection between social attributes and features of Betty’s speech.MT commented that Betty still sounds kind of Black

, but she speaks a little bit likea White person

. However, Betty sounded Black enough for MT to ascribeBlackness . . . but

to her and not the opposite (Whiteness . . . but

).

Betty as “proper”: the ideology of correctness

Another construction of Betty’s ambiguous Black sound hinged upon amarked difference from the other seven speakers rooted in an ideology of correctness (see Milroy 2001; Preston 1996; Woolard and Schieffelin 1994).For example, many listeners differentiated Betty from the other speakersthrough evaluations of her speech as proper

, clearer

, or better enunciated

. Iargue that this ideological frame takes root in a dominant language ideologyperpetuated by normative institutions, such as educational systems, thatspeaking “correctly” affords one opportunities, maximizes social capital, andcan erase negative aspects of your identity as “other” (e.g. southern, rural,poor, African American, minimally educated, urban, etc.) (Lanehart 1998;Reagan 2002: 32; Spears 1999). Like all ideologies, language ideologies aredeep-seated, often unconscious, socially ubiquitous, and normative.

I argue that some listeners drew upon an available ideology of correctnesseither as sole justification of their racial evaluations of Betty’s speech or assomething to fall back on when other available justifications eluded them. Inother words, circulating language ideologies, such as that of the merits of

“correct” speech, provide an available and often obvious or neutral social



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lens by which to make sense of the relevance of speech styles withoutexplicitly calling attention to race, which is often viewed as socially risky. Inthese cases, listeners’ reasoning appealed to a higher authority rooted in

ideology – “the way it is” – such that ideology became a crucial joist in manylisteners’ constructions of Betty’s race, be it Black or White.The following excerpt from my interview with MAS (a European

American female) illustrates this ideology in her construction of Betty asambiguously Black.

5) MAS: She was also a little bit hard to tell than some of the other people.She sounded a little more educated um she soun- I mean notnecessarily educated maybe she just came from a different place,she um her- I don’t know she sounded a lot more proper than

some of the other people um and she was a little bit more hard totell her race but I think that she’s Black.K: Ok, so what made you think that she was Black?MAS: Um (6.0) I could just hear it in her voice just like kinda when you

answer the telephone and you’re trying to figure out who somebody is you can just decipher.

K: So was it um (3.0) was it like a pitch thing or a rhythmic thing or apause duration thing or anything like that=

MAS: =Some of the others is definitely rhythmic? I don’t know and youcan just tell especially with some of them you can just tell rightaway just by the way that they pronounce words. With her- shesounded a lot more standardized but I could just tell by the umdepth of her voice.

Immediately after commenting on how Betty’s race was hard to tell

, MASlisted a number of reasons for this: a little more educated, came from a differentplace, sounded a lot more proper than some of the other people

, and sounded a lotmore standardized

. In this implicit comparison between Betty and theother speakers, MAS constructed possible ways for Betty to not be Blackand, I argue, to possibly be White (without explicitly mentioning race). Bymentioning a different place

presumably not inhabited by some of the otherpeople

(i.e. the other speakers, who sound Black), MAS constructed a notabletype of Blackness rooted in sounding more proper

and harder to tell

than theother speakers. She did this with a visible degree of hesitation and mitigation(

I mean, maybe, I don’t know

). She then made an explicitly racial distinction;Betty’s pronunciation is proper

, and the others sound more Black, thusplacing “properness” and Blackness in opposition. What decided Betty’sBlackness for MAS was not her pronunciation (which one can controlin some cases) but her voice itself (which one has less control over).Coming from a different place

can lead to sounding proper

, hinting at issuesof opportunity, education, and standardization. So Betty could still be

Black in MAS’s construction because of the depth of her voice

, but that




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which she may have control over (pronunciation) made identifying her racedifficult because it did not fit MAS’s expectations of how race and speechconnect.

KW (a European American female) also mentioned Betty’s clear pronuncia-tion as a reason for her difficulty determining Betty’s race. There was somethingBlack-sounding about Betty, but, like MAS, what KW perceived as clarityin Betty’s pronunciation confused her perception of Betty as Black becausesomething did not match her expectations of a Black voice.

6) KW: Now see I had a really hard time with her. I mean she pronouncedher words fully I thought and (3.0) um (3.0) I mean she was reallyclear and uh and that’s why I kind of like had a hard time with herI think.

KW comments that pronouncing words fully and being really clear made itdifficult to determine Betty’s race. Potentially, this would not be problematicif Betty sounded more White. However, because KW seemed to have a conflictof expectations (sounding “clear” was noteworthy rather than invisible),Betty’s clear enunciation created a disconnect for her, much like for otherlisteners.

In addition to listeners’ constructions of Betty as ambiguously Black,many specific attributions of Betty’s Whiteness hinged upon an ideology of correct speech. In the next two excerpts, Betty’s Whiteness was salientlymarked by the fact that there was something more to her enunciation,pronunciation, or grammar than the other seven speakers.

CS’s (a European American female) comments about Betty did not justinclude a notion of clear enunciation but hinged upon it entirely. Like MAS’sversion of Betty, whose “correctness” made her exceptional (presumably asa White voice among seven Black voices, or as a Black-sounding voice thatsounded “clear”), CS also described Betty’s “properness” as setting her apartfrom other Black speakers.

7) CS: I think Betty’s White because of the way she spoke, I think it wasmore proper than the other (2.0) people.

K: So is that also grammar or=CS: =Clearer sentences. I think Betty was clearer with the pronunciation

of words than Michelle was. And I (1.0) could tell that she wasWhite. I think her- her sentences were more- more clear and

K: Mm-hmm.CS: more clear than Michelle’s.

According to CS, Betty had clearer sentences and clearer pronunciation of words,which she directly compared to Michelle’s speech (who she thought soundedBlack). It was this difference in pronunciation, rooted in a sense of clarity for

CS, that framed her ascription of Betty’s Whiteness, which she justified



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through explicit racialization of Betty’s proper and clear sound as White. Iargue that the ways that Michelle did not sound “proper” to CS contributedto her “obvious Blackness” in contrast to Betty’s supposed “exceptional

Whiteness”.LG (a European American female) also depicted Betty’s race asremarkable because of her pronunciation.

8) LG: I couldn’t decide if she was Black or White. Like at the beginningshe was pronouncing her words very well and right there (pointingto transcript) it kind of ran together. These first few words soundedvery, very White.

K: Did any other parts sound White to you?LG: (5.0) I don’t know. I think mainly at the beginning of all the sentences

she- it seemed like she starts out better and then do it. And whenshe said look she sounded Black. (small laugh) And I guess theduration and intonation are not as bad as Pam. Still a little bit, yeahnoticeable.

LG claimed that Betty’s race was unclear because her pronunciationseemingly vacillated between White and Black speech styles. LG describedBetty’s first few words as pronounced very well and very, very White (linking“good” speech with Whiteness). She then claimed that Betty’s speech rantogether, which LG attributed to sounding Black. Betty, however, was not asbad as Pam. LG was more explicit about such values she associated withspeech than some other listeners; Betty’s speech was not just proper or White, but good (and ambiguous because of this “goodness”) and not as bad as theother speakers (who she was convinced were all Black).

Sophie and Rhonda

In addition to listeners constructing Betty as an exception in this group,three listeners also included Sophie and Rhonda in this category of beingproblematic to pinpoint racially. Incidentally, all three of these listenersalso thought that Betty sounded White. An African American female listenerand a European American female listener both thought that Sophie soundedWhite. The former claimed however, that she sounded Black some of thetime, which was marked by a different tone and rhythm than when shesounded White. The latter claimed that Sophie had a neutral voice and thelack of something marking it as Black. One African American female listenersaid Rhonda sounded White initially. She claimed that Rhonda’s articulationdid not match her own way of speaking, which she identified as Black.However, Rhonda’s use of the word folks was enough to change this listener’soverall evaluation of Rhonda’s race as Black. I summarize these perceptions

of Sophie and Rhonda as (1) interspersing a Black and White sound, (2)



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lacking a Black sound (i.e. passively non-Black), and (3) differing from whatis expected of a Black sound. These are clearly similar to ways that listenersconstructed Betty’s difference. It seems, however, that the degree to which

these ways of constructing Sophie and Rhonda were less obvious to this poolof listeners than for Betty, as indicated by the overall number of problematicconstructions (28 versus two and one, respectively).

Discussion and implications

Findings

Although Betty, like the other seven speakers in this study, self-identified

as African American, 28 out of 29 listeners consistently constructed heras different from the other seven speakers. Whether identified as Whiteor Black, Betty’s speech represented a departure from the other speakers.Ideologies of correctness surfaced in many listeners’ evaluations of Betty’srace, illuminating how such evaluations often rest upon available discourseslinking speech styles with social attributes (e.g. sounding like X indexesWhiteness or southernness, etc.). This particular instance of racial ascription based on speech style serves as an illuminating example – a contextualaccount of various normative and justifying discourses that listeners drawupon to make sense of speech as socially marked. These evaluations do notrepresent isolated linguistic judgments, but rather socially mediated beliefsabout identity that position individuals as “other”, “proper”, “exceptional”,and so on, based upon how they are heard to speak.

What do these results tell us about what labels like White or Black mean based on a discursive approach to identification? A more broadly relevantframing of this question is: How are articulated evaluations of speech style bound up in ideological processes of differentiating us versus them, expectedversus thwarted, or appropriate versus not appropriate? The goal of thisarticle was not to identify or even describe acoustic properties of speech ortheir salience, which these listeners may be keying into subconsciously; thatis for other studies in able hands. The focus instead is on what values areassociated with speech styles in interactions, how these are justified based onwhat listeners hear, and how these insights can be reflexively considered byeducators and scholars as we perpetuate or thwart circulation of linguisticand social stereotypes based on language. This study says less about the cuesthemselves (as far as formal linguistic properties) and more about how theyare taken up as socially significant, recognizing that evaluating speakeridentity is not only subject to linguistic analysis but is the subject of everydaysense-making practice. How should we understand listeners’ evaluations interms of these findings? No matter what happens in the cognitive processingof speech, it still relies upon interactive channels before meaning is actually

made of it (or so I believe). By this view, sounding Black or White is not a




string of features, but a series of reactions not just to speech but many otherthings that are socially mediated. Therefore, complementary studies thatpoint to available ways to make sense of perceived social differences

attributed to social categories are necessary and compatible with traditionallinguistic studies of speech identification.The critical applied linguistic approach I extend here problematizes social

interactions as politically and ideologically mediated. This transformativetake on the role of discourse in positioning social actors as embodiments of “otherness” via race, gender, ability, sexual orientation, age, region and soforth provides an expanded view of “what constitutes the social” (Pennycook2004: 796) in linguistic studies of speech identification. In this study, the waysthat listeners constructed Betty as White, non-Black, and ambiguously Blackshed light on social categories, implicit assumptions, and ideological resources

in evaluation and justification of linkages between social attributes andspeech. Betty is not just Black or White; listeners’ categorizations of her speechplace her between and across categories, thwarting expectations – she is“White . . . and”, “Black . . . but”. This study shows that listeners’ reactions tospeech often surface through ascription of leaking boundaries; we makesense of others based upon very messy conceptions of the social world. Byillustrating just a few of the ways that these 29 listeners constructed Betty’srace, it is clear that there is far more to be said about the data in this study,let alone the constructions that occur on a daily basis as we hear others speakand react to and interact with them as racialized, sexualized, regionalized,and other such categorized individuals.

Implications

Unpacking the ways that listeners identify race as a social quality based ontheir descriptions of others’ speech includes examining more than structuralfeatures to which they might be reacting. Analysis of discursive evaluationexpands understanding of the available social expectations and value-ladencategories influencing what is made socially relevant about differences inspeech style. Furthermore, what becomes relevant is not always madeexplicit but often requires contextualization beyond the immediate linguisticstructures to be understood (Irvine 2001). This can aid understanding of whylisteners seem to notice certain social (and linguistic) features, including thepotential ideologies influencing these saliencies.

A better understanding of social contexts that spark attention to speechstyle (and their concomitant linguistic cues) as salient or stigmatized can lendstandards of proof to legal battles regarding linguistic profiling (Baugh 2003)and inform educational policy and practice by creating greater awareness of variety among speakers (J. Rickford and R. Rickford 2000) and the effectsof speech style evaluation on classroom interactions and learning (Godley

et al. 2006).




Implications from this study highlight how language ideologies mediateour making sense of others’ identities based on how they talk. I draw specificconnections to this study and educational practice. Language is the main

source of interaction, learning, and social meaning-making in classrooms, sothe ways that individuals are categorized based upon their speech styleaffects their opportunities to participate in classroom activities as well asteachers’ and other students’ orientation to them as types of learners (Godleyet al. 2006; Lee 2006). Language use is reflexive and does not just disseminateinformation but also creates and shapes social relations, assumptions, and judgments. This reflexivity is amplified by its invisibility in many institutionsand situations. Greater awareness of how we perceive and judge others basedupon their speech can have far-reaching effects – both positive and negative.

A critical applied linguistic approach to understanding social evaluations

of speech style and identity informs research on education and otherinstitutions that contribute to discourses of “correctness” and other languageideologies. Such an approach complements existing studies that focus onlinguistic features as the primary unit of analysis and their acoustic orgrammatical contexts. This may yield fruitful cross-paradigmatic insightsand further develop ideas of what types of cues, both linguistic and social,are available in speech to prompt linguistic profiling or discrimination. Whatwe attend to in analyses and the contexts we consider in research and itsdissemination shapes available insights about linguistic identification andcan open up a dialogue with others engaged in promoting social justice andopportunity in the public sector, as speech is an inescapable emblem of identity, both real and perceived.

Notes

1. In most global contexts outside of the US the term ‘ethnicity’ would be moreappropriate here. However, in this context the term ‘race’ accurately depicts theideological differentiation of individuals denoted by skin color and perceivedancestry (i.e. descended from West African slaves). I ascribe to neither a biologicallyessentialist nor a liberally naïve treatment of race as an omni-present category. Iinstead recognize that its relevance stems from social orientation to it as a distinctiveand meaningful social differentiation. To avoid confusion, I use African Americanto denote an embodied cultural category, and Black (plus non-Black and White) todenote an attributed linguistic category.

2. I originally chose only African American speakers to avoid contributing to a deficitmodel of African American speech, which requires comparing their speech to thatof European Americans. I aimed to examine reactions to African American women’sspeech, not to their actual race. In a subsequent study (Anderson in press), Iincluded two European American speakers due to critics’ concerns.

3. I chose these pseudonyms because I saw them as race-neutral. This proved to be anaïve assumption, as names carry different social connotations for each individual.In subsequent incarnations of this study numbers were assigned to the samples.




4. Examples of stigmatized features include consonant cluster reduction ( firs’ for first), stressed BIN (she been done that), use of labiodental fricatives for interdentalfricatives (breav for breathe), and copula absence (she the youngest one).

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e-mail: [email protected] [Final version received March 2, 2007]

Appendix 1: Transcripts of speech samples

Betty

Now I liked it in there because the manager put mostly people who wereworking in there- I think you were where the students were. ‘Cause Iremember, when I moved in I said, “Look, I am not a student, and please,if you can, put me away from the students, ‘cause I am no longer in that life;I need a good night’s rest.”

Pam

I do take time out to relax but, I don’t know if that would really help my

nails grow. ‘Cause I just- every- any time I have a free moment I will bite my




nails. Um, usually when I’m studying, um, I’m coming up with something,like, I’m working on a project or something like that, um.

Sandra

I couldn’t do it this weekend because I went home. But I e-mailed them right before I left, and I sent them everything as a word attachment, their consentform, because I don’t want to have it like I did before where they walked inand immediately slid them the thing for them to sign; I want it already to be done.

RhondaWhat kind of study would that be if you would do- well you could do aconvenience sample or a predetermined, um, sample of folks and just findout. I mean, or even pick up the phone and do your- some of your familymembers, you know in terms of their age range and ask them whether or notthey’ve ever had a preference.

Michelle

This is perfect for me; I lose the big purses. I hate big purses. I used to besuch a tomboy, I would not carry a purse to save my life. When I found thisthing, I can strap it over my sh- chest, and just walk with it. And I neverforget it ‘cause it’s so little I know I’m missing something if I don’t have it. Igot my key on there, so there’s no way I would ever forget this purse becausethis is what I have to use to lock my door.

Sophie

‘Cause there were four other people who requested his- who requested him, but his team was already full. And I was like, well what about that deal?Because they put him on a team with no coach, and there weren’t evenenough players on the team to make a team.

Mary

He lives up there, so he told me Sunday, he says, “Guess what?” I said,“What.” He said “I’m having me a house built.” He said they’re almost

finished with it. And he says, “I will be so glad to get out of that place.”




Jill

‘Cause he told me, um, he said, “I’m gonna start taking, um, gymnastics again.”

I said, “Oh really?” That’s what he told me. So I don’t know if that’s the truthor not, but that’s what he told me he’s gonna be taking gymnastics again.

Appendix 2: Transcription conventions

(0.5) pauses in tenths of a second(text) description of non-verbal behaviortext- self-interruptiontext= latched speech

“text” quoted speech

constructing otherness

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