Sociolinguistics and Language Education.pdf

Critical Language Awareness 221
status of native ‘standard’ English speakers in relation to linguistically
profi led and marginalized groups.
In an effort to incorporate the full range of what linguists know about
language and its use in society, we begin this lesson by drawing from sociolinguistic
research conducted on linguistic profi ling. Baugh’s research
(2003) describes linguistic profi ling as the auditory equivalent of racial
profi ling. This type of profi ling (usually occurring over the phone), for
example, can prevent potential homeowners from moving into certain
neighborhoods. Linguistic profi ling covers the full range of discriminatory
practices based on racial, geographic, gender, class, sexuality inferences
made from speech alone.
Students are introduced to this compelling research by watching a video
of recent cable news coverage of the linguistic profi ling project (LPP in Alim,
2005). The LPP research fi ndings (Purnell et al., 1999), which show that the
overwhelming majority of us can make correct racial inferences based on
the pronunciation of the single word ‘Hello’, inspire a whole unit of activities
designed to investigate this phenomenon. After introducing linguistic
profi ling research as ‘applied linguistics’, the students collect data from the
community about similar experiences. The following worksheet is given to
students as they watch the video and includes various short assignments:
Linguistic Profi ling Worksheet
What is linguistic profi ling? What is the relationship between linguistic
profi ling and racial profi ling? Do you think you can tell whether somebody
‘sounds White’ or ‘sounds Mexican’ or ‘sounds Black’ or ‘sounds
Indian’ or ‘sounds Arab’ or any other race or ethnic group? Today we
are going to talk about the relationship between race, language, profi ling
and discrimination. We are about to watch a news story that ran on
ABC News with Peter Jennings. This news segment is a case of what
we call, ‘Applied Linguistics’ – that is an area of research where
linguists apply their scientifi c knowledge about language to real-life
situations that affect everyday people – like you and me.
FREEWRITE: First impressions. What do you think?
OUTLINE OF NEWS STORY:
8:52 – Language as a criterion for discrimination. Linguistic
profi ling → racial profi ling.
9:32 – James Johnson’s housing application, his experience and his
experiment. Fair housing agency experiment.
10:32 – John Baugh, Stanford University professor – one simple word,
“Hello.” Linguistics and the law.