Throughout the semester, we have read several different texts each centered around the concept of language and literacy. We read stories like “Mother Tongue” by Amy Tan where we heard about the immigrant English experience in America. We also read an article titled “If Black English Isn’t a Language, Then Tell Me, What is?” by James Baldwin that discusses how the same language can be used differently among different groups of people while revealing a lot about those people. Other articles and videos we watched showed us the concept of code-switching, the experiences of speaking with a stutter, and so much more. To me, each of these texts shared a common theme of how the way you used a language reflected on how people perceive you. It defines how people will treat you. I intend to showcase that regardless of what your true character may be, your ability to use language to convey your ideas to others could affect how people perceive you.

To start, I want to talk about people with stutters. People with stutters struggle to get their ideas out and it isn’t their fault, they are just unable to convey them and it is costly. In an article written by Abdulaziz Almudhi, an Associate Professor of Speech Language Pathology, titled “Investigating the beliefs and attitudes of teachers towards students who stutter” posits from the findings that teachers understood that children with stutters were not less intelligent than their peers who don’t. However, a quote from page 2 of the article states “Many studies have been done based on the attitudes and beliefs of teachers/educators on CWS. The majority of the research, unfortunately, has indicated that educators and peers are likely to have negative perceptions or associate negative personality traits towards CWS.” Almudhi on page 1 builds on this idea by saying “Children who stutter may be subjected to bullying – a global phenomenon (Winnaar, Arends & Beku, 2018) – and teasing (Mooney & Smith, 1995). Greene, Robles, Stout and Suvilaakso (2013) report that approximately 246 million individuals are annually exposed to some form of bullying. Bullying is considered as one of the most common reactions by peers towards CWS.”  What these two quotes show is that, although children with stutters aren’t any different intelligence wise, they are perceived negatively by both their teachers and peers. The only difference between the two being that their peers bully and tease them for it. As a result, they may feel isolated and become shy and then it becomes a self-fulfilling cycle where they are now perceived as shy. My point can be further illustrated in the paper “Stuttering in the Movies: Effects on Adolescents’ Perceptions of People who Stutter” written by Terrylandrea Miller in 2015 for their Master’s Thesis. The research conducted in this paper argued that a person’s perception of people with stutters can be affected by the media they consume and it was backed up by the data. I mention this because I want to include a quote from page 69 which states “Researchers conducting studies with preschoolers and school age children found that children as young as 3 years of age prefer the speech of fluent peers and puppets rather than dysfluent counterparts (Griffin & Leahy, 2007; Langevin, Packman, & Onslow, 2010).” It’s almost inherent to dislike/negatively perceive people with stutters. People prefer to talk and listen to people who “speak properly”. In the case of people who have stutters, their inability to convey their ideas in a way that most people find pleasant or practical causes them to be perceived negatively.

In a similar vein to that, I would also like to discuss speaking with an accent. People with accents are taken less seriously than those without. They are unwanted. A video titled “Why I keep speaking up even when people mock my accent | Safwat Saleem “ uploaded to the TED youtube channel addresses comments made on a video he created where it was made clear that because Safwats voice had an accent, it was undesirable. People said things like “Could you remake this without peanut butter in your mouth?” (2:40) and “Couldn’t follow because of the Indian accent” (2:52) They are treated as if it’s okay to be disrespectful to them. Surprisingly, credibility also takes a hit as seen by the research paper “Why don’t we believe non-native speakers? The influence of accent on credibility” by Shiri Lev-Ari and Boaz Keysar. One of the experiments they created tested if bits of trivia sounded less true if they were said by someone with an accent. Their general findings from the article say “When people listen to accented speech, the difficulty they encounter reduces ‘processing fluency.’ But instead of perceiving the statements as more difficult to understand, they perceive them as less truthful. Consequently, non-native speakers who have an accent are seen as less credible.” This study shows that even our own brains deceive us when it comes to our perception of people when using a language. They are untrustworthy by default because it is harder for us to understand them. They are seen as liars even if they have no malicious intent. Something as simple as an accent can be the difference between people seeing you as someone trustworthy or a liar.

To continue, I want to discuss immigrant English. I believe that the essay “Mother Tongue” by Amy Tan, an author of notable books such as “The Joy Luck Club”, would be vital in supporting my thesis. The essay, originally published in 1990, talks about Amy Tan and her mother and the language they communicate with. She calls the language her Mother Tongue because it’s how her mother speaks, a “broken” English that makes it easy for her mother to navigate a world entirely different from the one she was raised in. Of course, using this language has its downsides. In the essay, Amy Tan discusses a memory at a hospital in a quote which states “My mother had gone to the hospital for an appointment, to find out about a benign brain tumor a CAT scan had revealed a month ago. She said she had spoken very good English, her best English, no mistakes. Still, she said, the hospital did not apologize when they said they had lost the CAT scan and she had come for nothing. She said they did not seem to have any sympathy…. And when the doctor finally called her daughter, me, who spoke in perfect English – lo and behold – we had assurances the CAT scan would be found, promises that a conference call on Monday would be held, and apologies for any suffering my mother had gone through for a most regrettable mistake.” The point of telling this story was to show that despite her mother’s best efforts to communicate to the doctors in English, all the doctors saw was an immigrant they could push aside. They didn’t have to pay attention to her or take her seriously because of the way she spoke. Even when it involved something as serious as a brain tumor they didn’t treat her like she was a human. It was only until someone, her daughter Amy Tan, who could speak perfect English came to represent her that they began to take her seriously. They even apologized for it which they wouldn’t have done had it just been her. Another situation happens like this with a stockbroker earlier in the essay. She states “You should know that my mother’s expressive command of English belies how much she actually understands. She reads the Forbes report, listens to Wall Street Week, converses daily with her stockbroker, reads all of Shirley MacLaine’s books with ease–all kinds of things I can’t begin to understand.” and “One time it was a call to her stockbroker in New York. She had cashed out her small portfolio…. And my mother was standing in the back whispering loudly, ‘Why he don’t send me check, already two weeks late. So mad he lie to me, losing me money.’ And then I said in perfect English, ‘Yes, I’m getting rather concerned. You had agreed to send the check two weeks ago, but it hasn’t arrived.’ Then she began to talk more loudly. ‘What he want, I come to New York tell him front of his boss, you cheating me?’” She makes it a point to show that her mother is very knowledgeable when it comes to the stock market. Her mother reads reports, listens, talks with her stockbroker but still ends up facing a situation where that stockbroker is trying to take her money. They don’t send the check because they believe that she is clueless. She is aware that in order to make them take her concerns seriously she has to use her daughter’s perfect English. It’s very obvious that Amy Tan is implying that if it wasn’t for her mothers fragmented English, the stockbroker would treat her differently.

Furthermore, code-switching is a topic I find interesting and believe is useful in illustrating the point I am trying to make. Code switching can be defined as switching between different languages or varieties of language to better communicate with people. Most people do it subconsciously. An example of it can be the way you speak to your parents vs the way you speak to your peers vs the way you speak at work. Everyone talks differently to better fit the circumstances of the situation. Courtney L. McCluney makes the same claim in the paper “To be, or not to be…Black: The effects of racial codeswitching on perceived professionalism in the workplace.” published in 2021 along with co authors Myles I. Durkee, Richard E. Smith II, Kathrina J. Robotham, and Serenity Sai-Lai Lee. Their paper has a quote which says “In Study 1, a significant main effect for racial codeswitching among men (Study 1a) and women (Study 1b) indicate that the codeswitching Black coworker was perceived as more professional than the non-codeswitching Black coworker.” The goal of their experiments was to see if codeswitching affected how professional a Black worker was perceived to be. It turns out that if a Black worker changed the way they spoke to a “white sounding voice”, both Black and White people would perceive them as more professional. If they talked the way they normally did, they would be seen as unprofessional. James Baldwin makes a similar point in his essay “If Black English Isn’t a Language, Then Tell Me, What Is?” written in 1979. He goes on to make a case that Black English should be considered its own language as it’s different enough and tells the story of those who speak it. One of the most important lines in that essay is when he humorously says “To open your mouth in England is (if I may use black English) to ‘put your business in the street’: You have confessed your parents, your youth, your school, your salary, your self-esteem, and, alas, your future.” He means that because England comprises so many regions and so many regional accents, a person can tell a lot about you just by the way you speak. In general, he is making the claim that the way you speak says a lot about you. It ties in to the research paper because it shows that if you make the effort to sound professional (sound white), you will be perceived as such. People associate being professional as sounding white so anything diverging from that will be perceived otherwise. Therefore, being unable to alter your speech to sound professional will harm people’s perceptions of your professionalism.

Language itself is a tool that can be used to benefit people. It helps with forming connections with others and to create a sense of familiarity with one another. The way you speak and present yourself can shift people’s perceptions of you. However, it can also work to do the opposite. In the case of immigrants with accents or people with stutters, the inability to “talk normally” will cause people to take you less seriously. It will make them feel entitled to treat you with disrespect. If you are unable to codeswitch effectively, the way you want to be seen might be harder to achieve than if you were good at it. Overall, how capable you are of conveying what you want to say in a matter other people would understand shifts how they see you, regardless of who you really are.

Bibliography

Tan, Amy. “Mother Tongue.” The Threepenny Review, 1990, pp. 7–8.

Baldwin, James. “If Black English Isn’t a Language, Then Tell Me, What Is?” The New York Times, 29 July 1979. 

Saleem, Safwat. “Why I keep speaking up even when people mock my accent | Safwat Saleem” Youtube, uploaded by TED, 15 August 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4a0NvLTebw

Miller, Terrylandrea. “Stuttering in the Movies: Effects on Adolescents’ Perceptions of People Who Stutter.” Cedar, Spring 2015, cedar.wwu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1412&context=wwuet

Almudhi, Abdulaziz. “Investigating the Beliefs and Attitudes of Teachers towards Students Who Stutter.” South African Journal of Education, Aug. 2022, https://web-p-ebscohost-com.ccny-proxy1.libr.ccny.cuny.edu/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?id=0&sid=f4bc8f4c-7cd0-442b-a6d6-5e0536c31f6d%40redis 

McCluney, Courtney L., et al. “To Be, or Not to Be…Black: The Effects of Racial Codeswitching on Perceived Professionalism in the Workplace.” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, Academic Press, 29 July 2021, www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0022103121001025Lev-Ari, Shiri, and Boaz Keysar. “Why Don’t We Believe Non-Native Speakers? The Influence of Accent on Credibility.” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, Academic Press, 25 June 2010, www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0022103110001459