Lets say I’m talking to a complete stranger on the phone. This person speaks only English (United States), has no noticeable regional accents and uses no regional slang. From my experience it would be very difficult to guess the ethnicity of the person on the other end of the phone if I had never met them, with the exception of African Americans. Is there a name for a consistent speech pattern that is not necessarily regional (southern, Boston, New York, etc) or at all influenced by a spoken second language that still allows you to potentially identify the ethnicity of the person who is speaking on the phone. Also I am not considering ebonics as a second language nor am I trying to start an ebonics/race/language debate. More interested in a name for this phenomenon and/or other instances when there is potential for this situation to occur.
I don’t know about the name for it but I can usually guess whether people are white or black just by hearing their voice. I think black people tend to have deeper voices. Pizzabrat posted something in another thread about tone and inflection or something like that which seemed to very accurately describe it.
I think the phenomenon you’re looking for is called confirmation bias. You hear a voice that sounds “black” and you think, “huh, there it is again - why do black people sound black?”. You hear a voice that sounds “white” and you think, “See? White people sound white and black people black, I don’t get it!” But do you actually know the color of the skin on the hand holding the phone? Sometimes you do, and that reinforces your perception. Sometimes you don’t, but you assume you do, and that reinforces your perception.
Other than that, yes, it is regional dialect and cultural speech patterns, which include pronouncing sounds slightly differently and tone and inflection. But these are taught and reinforced by proximity. “They” may not all live together, but “they” live in lots of pockets with other people of like ancestry, and common speech patterns and accents are reinforced. Except when “they” live in an area with a different dialect - say, a white suburb, and then they’ll sound “white”. At least until they get to a mixed race school and get beat up for it.
One of my best friends growing up was a black kid adopted as an infant by a white family. He sounded just like us whiteys. When he came back from his first semester at college, he “sounded black” - he’d started hanging out with other black kids for the first time in his life and picked up their dialect. He picked it up very quickly and with intention after being teased for sounding “white”. Now he chooses which dialect to use depending on the situation.
So if you were talking to a white person over the phone who had a deeper voice and was raised by blacks and had a similar speech pattern to blacks, would you still be able to tell they were white? Or would you assume they were black because of the WAY they spoke as opposed to how deep their voice was? And what if someone of another ethnicity has a deep voice, do you always assume they’re black? I was wondering if there was a name for that extra something besides the tone that would allow you to tell the difference
I’m not really trying to make this only a white/black thing. Because my friends of other ethnicities (Asian, Hispanic,Indian) who do not speak another language don’t sound “white” to me they just sound American, and over the phone I wouldn’t be able to differentiate one of those ethnicities from another.
The link that describes the bias I think would make more sense if I was speaking to the person face to face. If I’m talking to a black person face to face then I might be more prone to notice/look for what one would consider common black speech patterns. However if I was talking over the phone to a stranger I wouldn’t develop that bias until something in their speech pattern tipped me off to the fact that they might be black.
We have done this one a bunch of times. I will try to find some threads but others are welcome to try as well. There are studies that show the phenomenon is real. People can easilly detect black voices and can often do it based on one recorded word.
Funny enough, while I do think that there are some inflections that are “black” or “white” – my ex-husband (who was almost translucent, he was so white) was the “voice of black history month” for a bunch of commercials years back. It always cracked me up to hear him do his “black voice” as it wasn’t any attempt at ebonics or slang, it just had the inflections that you expect to hear. I also have a very dear (black) friend who is so cute and country that people inevitably are shocked meeting her for the first time if they only have spoken on the phone – she sounds like a white teenager over the phone. She used to do the hiring for a local company, so would speak to people over the phone first – to invite them in for interviews. One time, she had a man go off about “working with too many blacks” she had a lot of fun telling him off – he actually called back to ask the receptionist if the girl that did the hiring really was black.
It is just confirmation bias in many cases.
Ok assuming that we have a name for this noticeable inflection (which I’m not too convinced of yet), what I’m really looking for is any other ethnicity that does not have a distinct regional accent or speak a second language that can still be identified. Or is this phenomenon exclusive to blacks? If not, does anyone have any other examples?
I don’t know if this counts, but some hispanic americans who only speak English do so with a peculiar accent. However, I would say it was an absorbed spanish accent (what is the proper term for an absorbed accent?)
Sure, I believe you. But can they detect the voice of a black person raised by white folks in a white neighborhood speaking to white people? That’s the part I don’t believe. There’s nothing distinctive about the shape of a black person’s lips, teeth and palate that make speaking in any “white” dialect impossible.
On the other hand, dialects, in this day of mass media, are no longer only situated by region (if they ever were - after all, people live very close to other people in New York, but distinctive dialects remain) but are maintained to identify one as a member of a social group. So while the regional dialect may be slight, a cultural dialect will remain. There’s literally no way to speak without SOME dialect.
Black American English is most certainly a recognized and studied dialect of American English. It’s really not entirely accurate to say that this dialect has no regional roots, it certainly has ties to the South, and its passed along within a community and from parent to child, just as any other dialect is. And just with any other dialect, it is identifiable to non-speakers, which is not to say that speaking Black English correlates exactly with race.
I don’t think this is exclusive to blacks. I find that I feel confident in recognising Asians (even those with no discernable accent) and Native Americans by their peculiar inflections. I work in a call center, so I talk to a lot of people on a daily basis.
I honestly think that it is just like anything else, though and mileage will vary.
There was a story on NPR radio many years ago about post-war Viet Nam. They had a brief interview with a Vietnamese boy who had learned English from a group of black American servicemen, and the kid sounded exactly like a prototypical urban African-American.