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People say that a long, long time ago,

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everybody on earth spoke the same language

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and belonged to the same tribe.

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And I guess people had
a little too much time on their hands,

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because they decided
they were going to work together

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to become as great as God.

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So they started to build a tower
up into the heavens.

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God saw this and was angry,

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and to punish the people
for their arrogance,

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God destroyed the tower

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and scattered the people
to the ends of the earth

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and made them all
speak different languages.

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This is the story of the Tower of Babel,

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and it's probably not
a literal historical truth,

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but it does tell us something

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about the way that we understand
languages and speakers.

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So for one thing, we often think
about speaking different languages

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as meaning that we don't get along
or maybe we're in conflict,

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and speaking the same language as meaning
that we belong to the same group

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and that we can work together.

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Modern linguists know

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that the relationship between
language and social categories

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is intricate and complex,

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and we bring a lot of baggage
to the way that we understand language,

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to the point that even
a seemingly simple question,

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like, "What makes a person
a speaker of a language?"

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can turn out to be really,
really complicated.

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I'm a Spanish professor at Ohio State.

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I teach mostly upper-level courses,

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where the students have taken
four to five years

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of university-level Spanish courses.

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So students who are in my class
speak Spanish with me all semester long.

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They listen to me speak in Spanish.
They turn in written work in Spanish.

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And yet, when I asked my students
at the beginning of the semester,

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"Who considers themselves
a Spanish speaker?"

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not very many of them raise their hands.

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So you can be a really,
really good speaker of a language

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and still not consider yourself
a language speaker.

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Maybe it's not just about
how well you speak a language.

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Maybe it's also about what age
you start learning that language.

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But when we look at kids
who speak Spanish at home

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but mostly English at work or in school,

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they often feel like they don't
speak either language really well.

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They sometimes feel like they exist
in a state of languagelessness,

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because they don't feel fully comfortable
in Spanish at school,

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and they don't feel fully comfortable
in English at home.

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We have this really strong idea
that in order to be a good bilingual,

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we have to be two
monolinguals in one body.

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But linguists know that's not really
how bilingualism works.

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It's actually much more common
for people to specialize,

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to use one language in one place
and another language in another place.

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Now, it's not always only about
how we see ourselves.

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It can also be about
how other people see us.

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I do my research in Bolivia,

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which is a country in South America.

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And in Bolivia, as in the United States,

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there are different social groups
and different ethnic categories.

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One of those ethnic categories
is a group known as Quechua,

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who are Indigenous people.

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And people who are Quechua
speak Spanish a little bit differently

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than your run-of-the-mill Spanish speaker.

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In particular, there are some sounds
that sound a little bit more alike

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when many Quechua speakers use them.

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So a colleague and I designed a study

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where we took a series
of very similar-sounding word pairs,

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and they were similar-sounding
in exactly the same sorts of ways

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that Quechua speakers often sound similar
when they speak Spanish.

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We played those similar-sounding
word pairs to a group of listeners,

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and we told half of the listeners
that they were going to listen

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to just your normal
run-of-the-mill Spanish speaker

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and the other half of the listeners that
they were going to hear a Quechua speaker.

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Everybody heard the same recording,

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but what we found was that people
who thought they were listening

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to a run-of-the-mill Spanish speaker

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made clear differences
between the word pairs,

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and people who thought they were
listening to a Quechua speaker

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really didn't seem to make
clear differences.

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So if a visual would help,

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here are the results of our study.

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What you see here in the top line
is a little bit of an arch.

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That's what you would expect

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from people who are making
clear differences between the word pairs,

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and that's what you see for people

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who though they were
listening to a Spanish speaker.

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What you see on the bottom
is a little bit more of a flat line,

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and that's what we expect to see

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when people are not
making clear differences,

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and that came from the group that thought
they were listening to a Quechua speaker.

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Now, since nothing
about the recording changed,

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that means that it was the social
categories that we gave the listeners

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that changed the way
they perceived language.

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This isn't just some funny thing
that only happens in Bolivia.

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Research has been carried out
in the United States,

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in Canada, in New Zealand,

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showing exactly the same thing.

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We incorporate social categories
into our understanding of language.

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There have even been studies
carried out with American college students

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who listen to a university lecture.

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Half of the students were shown
a picture of a Caucasian face

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as the instructor.

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Half of the students were shown
a picture of an Asian face

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as the instructor.

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And students who saw the Asian face

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reported that the lecture was less clear
and harder to understand,

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even though everybody listened
to the same recording.

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So social categories really influence
the way that we understand language.

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And this is an issue that became
especially personal to me

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when my children started school.

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My children are Latino,

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and we speak Spanish at home,

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but they speak mostly English
with their friends out in the world,

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with their grandparents.

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When they started school,

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I was told that the district requires

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that any household that has a member
who speaks a language other than English,

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the children have to be tested

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to see if they need
English as a second language services.

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And I was like, "Yes! My kids
are going to ace this test."

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But that's not what happened.

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So you can see behind me the results
from my daughter's ESL placement exam.

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She got a perfect five out of five
for comprehension,

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for reading and listening.

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But she only got three out of five
for speaking and writing.

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And I was like, "This is really weird,

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because this kid
talks my ear off all the time."

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(Laughter)

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But I figured it's just one test
on one day, and it's not a big deal.

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Until, several years later,
my son started school,

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and my son also scored
as a non-native speaker of English

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on the exam.

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And I was like, "This is really weird,

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and it doesn't seem like a coincidence."

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So I sent a note in to the teacher,

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and she was very kind.

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She sent me a long message explaining
why he had been placed in this way.

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Some of the things that she said
really caught my attention.

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For one thing, she said that
even a native speaker of English

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might not score at advanced level

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on this test,

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depending on what kinds of resource
and enrichment they were getting at home.

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Now, this tells me that the test
wasn't doing a great job

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of measuring English proficiency,

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but it may have been measuring
something like how much resources

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kids are exposed to at home,

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in which case, those kids need
different types of support at school.

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They really don't need
English language assistance.

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Another thing that she mentioned
caught my attention as a linguist.

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She said that she had asked my son
to repeat the sentence,

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"Who has Jane's pencil?"

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And he repeated, "Who has Jane pencil?"

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She said this is a typical error made
by a non-native English-speaking student

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whose native language does not contain
a similar structure for possessives.

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The reason this caught my attention

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is because I know

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that there is a systematic,
rule-governed variety of English

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in which this possessive construction
is completely grammatical.

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That variety is known to linguists
as "African-American English."

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And African-American English
is actually group of dialects

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that's spoken across the United States,

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mostly in African-American communities.

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But it just so happens
that my son's school

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is about 60 percent African-American.

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And we know that at this age,

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children are picking things up
from their friends,

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they're experimenting with language,

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they're using it in different contexts.

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I think when the teacher saw my son,

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she didn't see a child who she expected
to speak African-American English.

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And so instead of evaluating him
as a child who was natively acquiring

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multiple dialects of English,

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she evaluated him as a child
whose standard English was deficient.

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Language and social categories
are intricately connected,

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and we bring so much baggage
to the way that we understand language.

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When you ask me a question like,

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"Who counts as a speaker of a language?"

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I don't really have
a simple answer to that question.

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But what I can tell you

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is that people are pattern seekers,

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and we're always looking for ways
to connect the dots

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between different types of information.

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This can be a problem

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when our underlying biases
are projected onto language.

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When I look at children like my own,

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and I see them in the gentlest
and most well-meaning of ways

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being racially profiled
as non-native speakers of English,

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it makes me wonder:

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What's going to happen

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as they move from elementary school

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onto high school and college
and onto their first jobs?

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When they walk into an interview,

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will the person sitting
across the table from them

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look at their color or their last name

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and hear them as speaking
with a Spanish accent

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or as speaking bad English?

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These are the kinds of judgments
that can have long-reaching effects

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on people's lives.

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So I hope that that person, just like you,

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will have reflected
on the naturalized links

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between language and social categories

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and will have questioned their assumptions
about what it really means

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to be a speaker of a language.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)