Who counts as a speaker of a language? | Anna Babel | TEDxOhioStateUniversity

Have you ever thought about what it means to speak a language? As it turns out, the answer to this question is complex and deeply intertwined with the question of who we are - and how we are seen - as human beings.

Anna Babel studies the complex relationship between language and social categories. She is particularly interested in language contact, the politics of minority languages, and migration.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx

People say that a long, long time ago,
everybody on earth spoke the same language

and belonged to the same tribe.

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

because they decided
they were going to work together

to become as great as God.

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

God saw this and was angry.

And to punish the people
for their arrogance,

God destroyed the tower

and scattered the people
to the ends of the earth

and made them all speak
different languages.

This is the story of the Tower of Babel.

And it's probably not a literal,
historical truth.

But it does tell us something

about the way that we understand
languages and speakers.

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

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

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

and that we can work together.

Modern linguists know

that the relationship
between language and social categories

is intricate and complex.

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

to the point that even
a seemingly simple question like,

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

can turn out to be
really, really complicated.

I'm a Spanish professor at Ohio State.

I teach mostly upper level courses

where the students have taken four to five
years of university-level Spanish courses.

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

they listen to me speaking Spanish,
they turn in written work in Spanish.

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

"Who considers themselves
a Spanish speaker?"

not very many of them raised their hands.

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

and still not consider yourself
a language speaker.

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

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

But when we look at kids
who speak Spanish at home

but mostly English at work or in school,

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

They sometimes feel like they exist
in a state of languagelessness

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

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

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

we have to be two
monolinguals in one body.

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

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

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

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

it can also be about
how other people see us.

I do my research in Bolivia,
which is a country in South America.

And in Bolivia, as in the United States,

there are different social groups
and different ethnic categories.

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

who are indigenous people.

And people who are Quechua
speak Spanish a little bit differently

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

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

when many Quechua speakers use them.

So a colleague and I designed a study

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

And they were similar-sounding

in exactly the the same sorts of ways
that Quechua speakers often sound similar

when they speak Spanish.

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

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

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

and the other half of the listeners

that they were going to hear
a Quechua speaker.

Everybody heard the same recording.

But what we found was

that people who thought
they were listening

to a run-of-the-mill Spanish speaker

made clear differences
between the word pairs.

And people who thought they
were listening to a Quechua speaker

really didn't seem
to make clear differences.

So if a visual would help,
here are the results of our study.

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

That's what you would expect

from people making clear differences
between the word pairs

and for people who thought
they were listening to a Spanish speaker.

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

And that's what we expect to see

when people are not making
clear differences,

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

Now, since nothing
about the recording changed,

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

that changed the way
that they perceived the language.

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

Research has been carried out
in the United States, in Canada,

in New Zealand,

showing exactly the same thing.

We incorporate social categories
into our understanding of language.

There have even been studies
carried out with American college students

who listened to a university lecture.

Half of the students were shown a picture
of a Caucasian face as the instructor;

half of the students were shown a picture
of an Asian face as the instructor.

And students who saw the Asian face

reported that the lecture was less clear
and harder to understand

even though everybody listened
to the same recording.

(Whispering) Yeah.

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

And this is an issue
that became especially personal to me

when my children started school.

My children are Latino.

And we speak Spanish at home,

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

with their grandparents.

When they started school,
I was told that the district requires

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

that children have to be tested

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

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

But that's not what happened.

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

She got a perfect five out of five

for comprehension:
for reading and listening.

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

And I was like,

"This is really weird because this kid
talks my ear off all the time."

(Laughter)

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

Until several years later,
my son started school.

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

on the exam.

And I was like, "This is really weird,
and it doesn't seem like a coincidence."

So I sent a note in to the teacher,
and she was very kind.

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

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

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

might not score
at advanced level on this test,

depending on what kinds
of resource and enrichment

they were getting at home.

Now, this tells me

that the test wasn't doing a great job
of measuring English proficiency.

But it may have been measuring

something like how much resources
kids are exposed to at home.

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

They really don't need
English language assistance.

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

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

"Who has Jane's pencil?"

And he repeated, "Who has Jane pencil?"

She said this is a typical error

made by a non-native
English-speaking student

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

The reason this caught
my attention is because I know

that there is a systematic
rule-governed variety of English

in which this possessive construction
is completely grammatical.

That variety is known to linguists
as African American English.

And African American English
is actually a group of dialects

that's spoken across the United States,

mostly in African American communities.

But it just so happens

that my son's school
is about 60% African American.

And we know that at this age,

children are picking things up
from their friends,

they're experimenting with language,

they are using it in different contexts.

I think when the teacher saw my son,

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

And so instead of evaluating him

as a child who was natively acquiring
multiple dialects of English,

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

Language and social categories
are intricately connected,

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

When you ask me a question like,
"Who counts as a speaker of a language?"

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

But what I can tell you
is that people are pattern-seekers.

And we are always looking for ways
to connect the dots

between different types of information.

This can be a problem

when our underlying biases
are projected onto language.

When I look at children like my own -

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

being racially profiled
as non-native speakers of English,

it makes me wonder

what's going to happen as they move
from elementary school on to high school

and college and on to their first jobs.

When they walk into an interview,

will the person sitting
across the table from them

look at their color or their last name

and hear them as speaking
with a Spanish accent

or just as speaking bad English?

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

on people's lives.

So I hope that that person, just like you,

will have reflected
on the naturalized links

between language and social categories

and will have questioned their assumptions

about what it really means
to be a speaker of a language.

Thank you.

(Applause)