Did you see Chet Hanks on Z Way, Yes, unfortunately.
I mean, I just don't understand why anyone would want to make a fool out of themselves like that.
It's just embarrassing.
And I am a huge fan of Thomas Jeffrey Hanks, and I cannot believe that this is the spawn of an American treasure. So Chet Hanks is out there doing patois and he thinks it.
What he thinks is patois.
Yes, And he said he thinks he put it on the map. That's colonizer language. You can't put something on the map that was already on.
The map map.
Yeah, And so I think it really makes me think about people laying claim to other people's language and culture and the way they speak. We see this with people saying, oh, this is TikTok talk and I'm like, no, it's not.
No, it's not. And it's just really got.
Our wheels turning right, And I think it's time we put it under the microscope. I think this is very important. I'm t T and I'm Zachiah and from Spotify.
This is Dope Labs.
Welcome to Dope Labs, a weekly podcast that mixes hardcore science, pop culture and a healthy dos of friendship. You know, on the show, we love to talk too much, and this week we're talking all about how much we love to talk and how it influences how we talk.
All of it.
Yes, from you know, where we were born, from where our parents are from.
Everything influences how we talk.
And so this week we're talking all about linguistics specifically. We really wanted to know more about how the science of linguistics shows up in our everyday lives and some of the reasons that we speak the way we do.
Yes, let's jump right into the recitation. So what do we know? Tt?
I think one thing that we know is that language is complex. I mean, when you think about the number of languages in the world and how many languages can appear in like small sections of the world, it's really wild. It's such a big part of our culture and how we move.
Through the world.
Yes, I think we also know that there's so much nuance even in the same words that you might say how you say them. This is reminded me of like a tweet that while where people were saying okay, oh, okay, okay, like it was all the different things like bruh, yeah, bruh, Like you know, the same word all these different ways. So even like intonation and emphasis in different areas can mean so many different things.
And what we also.
Know is is that language is influenced by everything that is happening around us. So when we were younger, you know, we spoke a little bit differently what you knew hip young whipper snappers are saying these days, we're still trying to catch up. Oh my goodness, t T is one thirty two years old. Even if we take all of those things into account, right, there's still so much more I want to understand, like what does it mean, like when we consider linguistics as a field, Like what's the
difference between a dialect and an accent? And is there a such thing as an American accent? Right, you know, like because it's just a melting pot.
That's a good point.
I want to know the linguistic history in the United States, and I think specifically for us, I want to know some of the roots of black or African American vernacular English, like where we got some of our terminology from. Yes, it's reminded me of when my friend from the Midwest recently said, well better lick your caf over and I was like, this is a real cowboys were long line cowboys.
Okay, so let's jump into the dissection. Our guest for today's lab is doctor John Ball.
I'm the Margaret Bush Wilson Distinguished University Professor at Washington University in Saint Louis, and I am currently President of the Linguistic Society of America.
Doctor Ball has written several books on linguistics and is known for his theory on linguistic profiling, which happens when people discriminate agains others based on the way that they talk. So let's start with some linguistics basics. We act doctor bad to break down what he means by linguistic science.
Linguistics is the science that tries to evaluate what all human languages have in common, including sign language, and to evaluate those commoniolies through some shared scientific principles and methodologies. And my own specialty is called socio linguistics, which takes all of this linguistic science and then looks at it in a social realm. It really is a science you can measure and break down all of the elements in language.
Okay, So linguistics is the study of languages, and there are thousands of different languages in the world. Many of them are very different from one another, but doctor Boss says they all have certain elements in common.
They all have a sound system produced through articulation that divides into me meaningful units of sound, whether it's full words or prefixes or suffixes, and then they have to be strung together in a grammatical sequence to have meaningful leutterances.
Doctor Bab says that we can see this in English with the prefix un un by itself doesn't mean anything, but when you use it as a prefix, it means not so like unfulfilled means not fulfilled, or unreal means not real. And whether you're a fan of prefixes or not, one thing that we know is that where you grew up in the world can determine how you speak a language.
Right, we were just talking about this.
I feel like if I'm on the phone with somebody for like thirty seconds, I can figure out, Oh, this person is from the East coast, or they're from the West coast, or they're from the South, like my friend who is Southern, Okay. And sometimes even when I hear Southern folks h depending on what we're talking about. There might be some key words in there, and if I listen long enough, I can maybe narrow down the state. And I feel the same way about folks that are
from the area of the country where I'm from. So I'm from Maryland, and so they call the DC, Maryland and Virginia area the DMV. And there's some slang or ways of speaking that people from the DC metro area the way they speak, so I can usually I hear that and I'm like, oh, what's up. I have seen her say that person is from DC, that person is from the neighboring county, Okay, PG County, and then this other person is from Baltimore. Yeah, because Baltimore is not a part of what I'm talking about.
Baltimore is on separate state. I feel like we have different accents.
But somebody recently told me that they can't tell the difference between us on the podcast, and so I want you to yes, So I.
Really want you to let that sink in. I don't know what. Welcome to the South, you know what, I'll take it as a compliment.
I feel like we have very different acts and speak very different dialects at times.
But doctor All explain to us the difference between dialect and accent.
When someone speaks a dialect of a language, that means that they do so in a way that has unique grammatical properties, and that often intersects with the fact that speakers of different dialects will also have shared accents. But accents are based on your pronunciation.
Okay, So some examples of different accents in English are Southern United States, that's your girl, Midwestern New England, and New York.
And there's a bunch of other ones too. Yeah.
Some examples of dialects of English in the United States are Southern again, African American English, and Appalachian English. And within these accents and dialects, there's still even finer kind of differences. So there's variation based on region, generation, socioeconomic status, so many other factors that we can't even name. So let's take a minute for a pole, because tt I know you have a very good ear and you can tell somebody's accent in the United States where they're from.
But I wonder if everybody else can too. I feel like it's easy for a lot of people.
Okay, So check the app right now and tell us which one of these accents. Can you easily distinguish no problem, no trouble, just hands down, I know this person's from the Midwest, hands down, I know they're from the southern US.
I want to hear from you.
Doctor bad told us about the concept of linguistic dexterity, and that's when people have the ability to modify their speech based on their environment.
I think that's a really great point, tt and I really like the term linguistic dexterity because it feels like it's dignifying the skill that it takes to use language in different ways to connect and communicate with people from different backgrounds.
And we see this happening also with Native English speakers depending on their environment.
We call this code switching.
But doctor Boss, it's technically a little bit of a misnomer.
Code switching is a term that's used quite commonly by a lot of Americans. But if you're looking at it from a scientific point of view, what most people mean when they're talking about black people who code switch is in linguistics either called bi dialectalism or style shifting, and that's because you're not changing languages.
MM.
We talk about style shifting a lot.
Yes, absolutely, Like when we started doing dope labs. That was really important to us to not style shift, yes, and to speak authentically to who we are based off of our life experiences and where.
We grew up, right, and to be honest. We've received some pushback.
Right, people have said, oh, you should more academic or more scholarly, and I'm like, this is what a scholar sounds like exactly, you know, like, oh, you know, it sound like a vad Well, I have one, so by defaults.
It is.
Doctor Bab helped highlight the difference between the two. Style shifting is happening more along a continuum, whereas code switching is when you have complete switching of languages.
And then even with code switching, there are distinctions between something like Spanglish, which is a mixture of Spanish and English, and code switching where part of the sentence might be English and then you flip and then have the other part of the sentence exclusively in Spanish, whereas Spanglish actually kind of combines elements of some English words with Spanish words.
Who that is a lot to wrestle, Honestly, it's a lot. And when you think about it, I mean in the linguistic dexterity of it all. What we are able to achieve through language is fascinating, and people are able to do it at the drip of a dime so quickly. It makes me think about people from immigrant communities who speak English as a second or third or even fourth language. They're going to have a lot more linguistic dexterity than someone who was born in the US and raised in
an English only household. If you've ever tried to learn a language, you know that the sentence structure changes, how we handle verbs are differently than a lot of other languages, and so it doesn't always overlay perfectly.
And so it can be really tough.
I think it sounds like a superpower to have this type of linguistic dexterity and the ability to styleship at the drip of a dime. But that's not how folks are treated like in everyday life, and it's just like everything in our society. Racism plays a huge role in how society deems people who are in the linguistic majority versus the minority.
You have many well educated speakers of mainstream, dominant forms of American English who have very little linguistic dexterity. But because they speak from a position of linguistic privilege, they are not penalized for their lack of linguistic dexterity. Right, The burden is always upon the group who is not the dominant group. And we could take it international. You can go to France or Germany or England, and the well educated speech of the upper classes is the norm
by which everyone else is judged. And then that's true here in the United States except for one wonderful exception, and that's the fact that many very wealthy educated Americans, most of them tend to be white, often speak with different regional dialects. We see this beautifully displayed in Congress and the Senate. You don't see somebody saying to Lindsay Graham, oh, you need to sound more like a TV broadcaster. Right, Lindsey Graham's going to sound like the southern senator he is.
And oh, by the way, that's helpful to him in his political context.
Right.
You know when sometimes people say, oh, there are sometimes terms, there are sometimes accents, those are the hidden signals that, oh, this person is like me. You know, where we get different people associating grouping and social grouping when they hear someone speak. This also makes me think about the linguistic heritage when we talk about the South, right, Yeah, the heritage and what has happened historically and how that's influenced linguistics.
And so, you know, we both want to learn more about the linguistic heritage of black people in the United States and understand how history has shaped the words and phrases that show up in African American dialects, specifically in the past and the present.
There are unique properties to the linguistic dexterity exhibited by African Americans. And then we need to take into account that at this point in time, not all African Americans are slave descendants, right, So the linguistic legacy that we're speaking of has to do with the fact that slavery created a unique set of linguistic circumstances that are not shared by any other group that came.
The Transatlantic slave trade stole people from their lives in Africa, taking away their freedom, family, culture, and languages, and so much more. This experience is unique to the victims of the slave trade.
Every immigrant group that's come to the United States had their own volition. In other words, they decided, come on, y'all, we're going to back up. We're moving to America right where it was their decision. Where they were not enslaved, they did so with others who spoke their same language. That's why we have communities where Polish, Italian, German, Korean, Russian, Japanese, Vietnamese. They all came to America intact. So how come no
African language made it across. Some people with racist stereotypes would say, well, because well, the black people aren't smart enough to remember their language.
No. When African people were captured during the Atlantic slave trade, they were often separated by language to restrict and limit their ability to communicate and to prevent uprisings.
One of the very first things they did, even before the Atlantic crossing, was let's divide them up. Who speaks Tweet, who speaks Ebo, separate them And so that created a situation where you've already got dislocation from the mother tongue even before you board the slave ships. You've already snatched somebody from their family. You're about to put them into slavery for the rest of their lives. They're going to
be trying to figure out out to escape. Well, if everybody speaks the same language, they're going to be firing pretty quickly.
This intentional separation and denial of language continued once enslave people arrived in America.
Once you get to America and you're put on the auction block, it's illegal to teach you to read and write. Okay, you don't get to go to school. There's no such thing as a public school for slaves. You're out there into plantation. We need you picking cotton. So where do you get exposed to English? You get exposed to English by the white slave over here. Well, it turns out most of them they didn't get here by their own choice.
They happened to be, for the most part, indentured servants from Scotland and Ireland, and they would say things like the bucket done be over yonder in their brogue. Well that done be over yonder. You hear black people say all the time, I'll be done. Told you that. That's from the Scots Irish. And the fact that we were denied access to schools for hundreds of years. That linguistic fossilization, which is grammatically productive, is passed from one generation to the next in a very useful way.
I really like that phrase.
Grammatically productive people understand it and when you think about the words, they make sense.
Absolutely.
Let's take a break and when we come back we'll get into more of the linguistic nuances of Black American English. We're back, and don't get too sad, but next week we're going to be out of the lab.
Don't worry. Don't worry.
We've got you covered with one of our favorite labs until we return. Before the break, we talked about the linguistic heritage of black people in the United States and how the legacy of slavery shows up in our speech today.
Now that we understand that the slave trade was integral to the way African American dialects formed in resistance to the violence of white supremacy, we want to understand some of the linguistic differences that we hear in these dialects.
So African Americans who are familiar with the colloquial vernacular dialect will know well that one of the common words used in ways that are not similar to other dialects of English is the word be as in you know, they be talking right, or she be sick. And what a lot of people don't realize is that doesn't mean the same thing as she is sick. Or sometimes that particular expression where is would be used, the word is doesn't appear. They just say she's sick.
Like we learned earlier, different dialects have their own unique grammar, and it's not as simple as swapping out one word for another. The grammar allows for meaning to change, and we see people doing it wrong on the internet all the time.
I'm like, that's not that's not for you. Talk about what you know about.
Oh, come on, somebody, So what's the difference between he happy and he'd be happy? He be happy means he's usually happy all the time. It's an habitual state of affairs. He happy, or he's happy, or he is happy could be a momentary state. Unfortunately, because of the history of the country, when people didn't know anything about linguistics and slaves would say things like, you know, i'd be going to the store or we be jumping, they would say, oh,
you know, they're not educated. They don't understand English properly.
And this just goes back to that myth where people think that they can tell how educated someone is based on the way that they talk.
The next example is ben.
Doctor Ba discusses the research of his colleague, doctor John Rickford, a professor of linguistics at Stanford University.
The difference between the emphasis on the word ben as in b e n as in we've been to the movies, and the difference that he pointed out is if you ask someone is your sister married? If you answered, oh, she'd been married, okay, that means not only is she married now, she's been married a long time. But if you said she'd been married, that means she's no longer married, but.
She used to be.
In this example, the difference in meaning comes from the tonal difference in the word ben. English is not a tonal language, but some African languages are tonal languages.
So the slaves hearing the word ben began to impose a grammatical distinction using tone that was not part of English. And again, because they weren't going to school, it wasn't anybody correcting them.
It's so amazing how black people are able to maintain that tonal aspect of their native languages in the creation of this new dialect of English. Like one of my favorite words that has a lot of different intonations, I guess or tonalities is all right, like all right, like all right, that kind of like all right, we're gonna keep messing around, is gonna be a problem, all right, all right, I got you.
Like, it's just so many things. Ah, I feel like okay.
Too, and bet and baby baby. The next example is one that a lot of people have opinions on the way we say ask, so ask and how Some folks say acts.
So, like different pronunciations for the same word yes.
So ask and how some people say, oh, can I ask you a question? The linguistic term for this is metathesis, where you invert to sounds.
If you're a parent of a child, when your child was growing up, they said pasketti rather than spaghetti. Now why would they do that? Well, Technically, having the syllable S before a P and then a vowel sound is difficult to produce, whereas pasketti has a consonant followed by a vowel then followed by an S sound. Well, it turns out that ask a vowel and then what we in linguistics call a sibilant consonant and then a stop consonant is more difficult to produce than a vowel followed
by a stop consonant. So ax versus ask is easier to pronounce in terms of just the phonology of it. And some people say, oh, well, on't they get confused because an ax is a tool, Well, an ax is also and ask is a verb. So therefore, if I say, let me ask you a question, unless you don't speak English, you're not going to assume that the person has substituted a noun for a verb. Those two pronunciations live quite compatibly.
Let me tell you something, Hey, I want to go all the way back to the fifth grade.
No, actually it was second grade, missus Schmidt and shot to fire.
And I would always always say asks, Oh, I want to ask the question.
She'd be like, no, I don't want you to ask me. And I'd be like, that's okliating.
And just like we talked about exactly like you were talking about a now and a verb and you know, you know, And so language is a tool to communicate how everything, and when folks try and box you in to only speak it in a certain way, it prevents that dexter that doctor Ball was talking about. So when we're talking about I knew what you were talking about nomadic productivity.
You knew what I was talking about, and you knew it made sense. You were just giving me a hard time.
Doctor Bo's next example is about the linguistics of hip hop.
Not only do people notice these linguistic differences, you get some pride taking place. Right, So this slang term fat comes into existence. Oh that's fat, but it spelled phat in rap culture. Let's think about that. Did those young brothers that came up with that, were they really thinking, oh, that's pahat. No, they had taken the English classes that showed them that Philip was spelled pH and they're like, oh,
so pH is the F sound okay? Well, if pH is f and fat is a slang term and I spell it with pH, but I pronounced it fat, I'm reinforcing my linguistic loyalty too much. Culture.
That's another great one that I like, reinforcing my linguistic loyalty to my culture. And when you learn about that rich linguistic culture and heritage, it just makes you feel even stronger that those phrases and dialects should be preserved and that we should continue to exercise our linguistic dexterity.
It also makes me think about.
Mmm, oh my god when we see non black people trying to use phrases or words in a dialect that they didn't grow up with. And so we see them doing this a lot. I see it a lot on social media, but they're using it in the wrong way, trying to look cool.
Ooh Chile, Yes, you mean woo child.
Yes. And we talked about cultural appropriation in black music in last week's episode. Yes, but we wanted to know what doctor Bob thought from a linguistic perspective about the mainstream consumption and use of African American English and its impact on the dialect and meaning of the words.
So as a linguist, one of the things that it's important to realize is that all languages constantly undergo change, and so when people adopt a style of speaking that's not native to them, you have to ask what's their motivation. And when I was a child, and we're talking in the nineteen fifties and nineteen sixties, the vast majority of times that you would see white's imitating black speech was
in a very overt racist and discriminatory way. That's very different than fourteen year old white boys that trying to sound like Tupac, who they think of as kind of an urban hero. And they're not coming from a place of racism when they try to say it.
But it's still not right. Yeah, it might not be coming from a place of racism, but it's still not right. And I think it makes me think about On z Way's show recently, she talked to Chitt Hanks about him saying that he thought he was putting Patois on the map. Kind sir, that's how you being generous. Yeah, you're totally oblivious. You're not appreciating the rich linguistic heritage here. No, he's just doing a caricature of it and for clicks and likes,
which is not what it's about. And nobody's saying he must be dumb because he's not speaking in a certain way the way they would if a native Patois speaker was speaking right. Same thing for the adoption of different phrases from Black American English.
Let me tell you, I think those.
Examples really point to how aspects of black culture and speech have become popular and valuable in mainstream media, but it's often non black people who are profiting off of that culture and history.
That we created and experienced.
Doctor Bod told us about a concept he coined called econo linguistics, and that's when your linguistic behavior has economic realfe events.
From an econo linguistic perspective, the slave descendant dialects have historically been devalued, but in the contemporary context, the econo linguistics of the ability to wrap can actually make you a lot of money. Jay Z is a billionaire. I'm old enough that I remember the difference in reaction to Vanilla ice as opposed to eminem right, and eminem is seen as being more authentic. Right. He grew up in
Detroit in eight Mile. He knows what to say and enough about black culture that his adoption of the vernacular is seen as respectful. But there's a white woman who's from Australia who tries to wrap in black dialect.
That's Iggy Iggy.
I think that's what he's talking about. Yes, that is what he's talking about.
It's strange and it's problematic, you know, Iggy Azalia, because why.
Do you talk like it just doesn't even make sense.
You would think that she would rap like an Australian would rap, but she doesn't how she's rapping like she grew up with Trina and mia X and I'm like, you don't know naw one of them.
Okay, oh my goodness.
But I think that nuance about Eminem and Iggy Azelia is really important to recognize. This feels like a little bit of the conversation I've seen online about Jack Harlow, Like I think a lot of black folks feel like if you didn't grow up in these neighborhoods, then you don't understand. And sometimes people are overdoing it and it's like, are you making fun of us?
Like, you know, what is it really about?
But then there are also people that feel like they're really respecting the art and the culture and the history. So I think about mac Miller, who had a very different reception, you know, And so it can just really be contentious, and it really depends on how you came up. There's so much to talk about when it comes to linguistics, and we've only talked about us small slice today, but before we wrapped up with Doctor Bob, we wanted to learn about the linguistics behind sign language.
The basic thing with sign language is that when a baby can't hear, their brain still has the capacity to process language, and if they're fortunate enough to be in an environment where they're exposed to sign language users, that developing brain will then begin to process visually what the developing child processes through their brain auditorially. If you're too young, you don't know how to read and write, well, if you're a young signer, you don't know how to finger spell,
so finger spelling comes in later. But it's just as complex, if not more complex, than speech, and it goes through a different modality. So sign language, you know, encoded through your eyes, it uses gesture.
Doctor Boss said is very important for brain development for children to start learning a language, regardless of if it's sign language or spoken language, and this will help them later when they learn to read and write. Doctor Boss shared that deaf and hard of hearing people have their own experiences with linguistic bias and discrimination.
All of them, regardless of background, are strong proponents of linguistic human rights. Deaf people get linguistic discrimination right because they're at McDonald's signing and depending upon how people react to them, I mean, for heaven's sakes, people used to say deaf and dumb right, So the stereotype that if you can't hear, you're less intelligent is very similar to oh, if you speak with a slave descendant dialect, you must not be smart.
And doctor Ball also revealed a little more history within the deaf community, sharing that African Americans tended to be isolated from white Americans and develop their own dialect of sign language.
There's actually a black dialect of sign language. Essentially. The best way that I can describe the differences there is it's got more soul, it's got more movement. Black signers are just using a lot more emphasis in their gestures. There's a lot more body movement.
That's so amazing to hear. It shows that black folks, no matter our circumstance, we persist, We push through and have the mental fortitude to make a way for ourselves.
And I love that.
If you take anything away from this conversation today, one thing is please appreciate the unique linguistic heritage of slave descendants. It is different than any of every other immigrant group. Please try to accepting of others whose linguistic backgrounds are different from your own, and that applies to everybody. And if we can be more accepting, not just that you tolerate these people, but do you actually accept the fact that, if you live in the United States, your fellow citizens
are going to come from very diverse linguistic backgrounds. If we all do our best to try to understand one another, that will be progress of a certain kind.
All right, all right, it is time for one thing? Tt what's your one thing this week? My one thing this week is a clothing brand that is definitely new to me. It's called Kids of Immigrants and it was founded by Daniel Buazo and Wayle Dennis and they are based in Los Angeles. In the mission statement is Kids of Immigrants is a movement to recognize that we are all cut from different fabrics, but together we make a whole. And it's such an amazing brand. I really love all
the stuff that they put out. Things sell out very quickly, but if you can get your hands on something, it is really great. Street where on almost all of their items they have this little patch that says, shout out to immigrant parents who came here with nothing but gave us everything, which I love. You know, my parents are both immigrants. Yes, shout out to all the immigrant kids.
Love it. What's your one thing?
My one thing is a book this week back on my reading cheeks.
Yes, yes, I want to hear it. I want to hear it. Okay.
So you know we did this episode before about science denial, Yes, and people ask us all the time like, how do you help people understand this is the science?
You know?
We talked to doctor Barbara Hofer and Gail Sinatra, Yes, and they had a book about science denial.
There's a new book out that's called How Mind's Change.
It's from David mcgrainey, who hosts the podcast You Are Not So Smart.
Okay. I think it feels like the next step.
So once we figure out what's making people believe certain things, how do we get them to change their mind and what's the science behind that? So I just got that book in the mail and I'm reading it now. So that's my one thing this week. I can't wait to hear all about it and read it myself. Yes, you know, I'm going to pass it to cats, it to your neighbor. All right, that's it for this lab. Did this make
you think about anything? Did it make you look at some of your favorite Internet personalities who are adopting some different dialects accents?
If it did let us know. If it didn't, we want to know that too.
Call us at two zero two five six seven seven zero two eight and tell us what you thought about this lab, and don't forget you can always give us.
An idea for a lab that you want to hear this semester.
That's two zero two five six seven seven zero two eight.
And don't forget that.
There is so much more to dig into on our website. There'll be a cheap keeper today's lab, additional links and re sources in the show notes. Plus you can sign up for our newsletter check it out at Dope Labs podcast dot com. Special thanks to today's guest expert, doctor John Ba. You can find out more about his work and his ted talk on our website Dope labspodcast dot com, and you can find us on Twitter and Instagram at
Dope Lab Podcast. TT's on Twitter and Instagram at dr Underscore t Sho, and you can find Zakia at z said So. Dope Labs is a Spotify original production from Mega Ownmedia Group. Our producers are Jenny radlit Mass and Lydia Smith of WaveRunner Studios. Our associate producer from Mega Ohmedia is Brianna Garrett.
Editing in sound design by Rob Smerciak, Mixing by Hannis Brown.
Original music composed and produced by Taka Yasuzawa and Alex Sugier from Spotify. Creative producer Miguel Contreras. Special thanks to Shirley Ramos, Jess Bison, Jasmine Afifi, camu Elolia, tillcrat Key and Brian Marquis, Executive producers from Mega Own Media Group, all Right US, T T Show, Dia and Zekiah Wattley