Luckily for society — but maybe not for NASCAR —John Baugh put the brakes on a career in auto mechanics and turned his attention to the study of linguistics.
“When I was first entering school, I was going to be a math major, to appease my parents, and an auto shop minor,” says Baugh, Ph.D., the Margaret Bush Wilson Professor in Arts & Sciences, professor of psychology and director of the African & African American Studies program, both in Arts & Sciences. “I wanted to work on cars.”
Though he owns a shiny blue, mint-condition 1958 Chevrolet pickup truck that he tinkers with, Baugh, a renowned linguistics expert and author of “Beyond Ebonics: Linguistic Pride and Racial Prejudice,” focuses on examining how we talk and the ways we sometimes judge others based on the sound of their voice.
Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., Baugh’s fascination with language grew in part just from observing the linguistic differences around him.
“The first part of my life in New York and Philadelphia was spent in primarily African-American communities,” Baugh says. “I observed a great deal of diversity there. I could tell the language used in church was very different from the language teenagers used on the street, and that, in turn, was different depending on someone’s relative education.”
The family moved to Los Angeles when Baugh was 8 and lived in a working-class, multi-ethnic neighborhood. There, many of his neighbors were learning English as a second language. The African-Americans who lived there came from different parts of the country, and few were Los Angeles natives.
When Baugh was 10, the family moved to the western San Fernando Valley, where they were one of few African-American families. It was mainly an upper-middle-class, white, affluent community.
In high school, Baugh joined many of the white students in smirking about the strong Southern accent of a math teacher who was from Alabama. The teacher sensed the students’ attitude, and Baugh, who had done well on tests in the class, was given a D.
The grade forced him to attend community college, where he studied accounting before transferring to Temple University.
“As part of being an accounting major at Temple, I was required to take public speaking,” Baugh says. “In that class, I noticed the majority of African-Americans and Puerto Ricans were getting D’s and F’s while most of the working-class whites were getting B’s and C’s. I had the linguistic dexterity to use different dialects in my speeches, and I was able to get an A.”
He was so fascinated by this that he changed his major to communications, focusing on rhetoric, persuasion and argumentation.
During this time, he read a now famous article by William Labov, Ph.D., professor of linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania, titled “The Logic of Nonstandard English.” Labov compared the logical constructs of middle-class African-American speech with that of teenage gang members who were using nonstandard grammar. Labov was able to show that from a purely logical point of view, the teenagers were actually more coherent semantically than the more educated African-Americans who often contradicted themselves.
Baugh again was fascinated, this time by his formal introduction to the study of linguistics.
A professor at Temple suggested he contact Labov. Baugh was able to get an appointment with Labov, who had just received a National Science Foundation grant to study the dialects of Philadelphia.
“Lucky for me,” Baugh says, “he needed a student who had intimate knowledge of African-American language and culture, and I feel blessed that I happened to be in the right place at the right time.”
While he had fully expected to continue doctoral work at Temple after earning a bachelor’s degree, “the opportunity to go to Penn and study linguistics with the leading expert in the field of socio-linguistics overwhelmed me, and I was prepared to go into great debt to do it.”
Fortunately, Labov was able to secure Ford Foundation funding to pay for Baugh’s first year of research, and Baugh earned a William Fontaine Fellowship to pay for the remainder of his education at the University of Pennsylvania.
A disturbing trend
After earning a doctorate in linguistics in 1979, Baugh taught at Swarthmore College and the University of Texas before being hired in 1990 as professor of education and linguistics at Stanford University.
It was at Stanford that Baugh conducted research on what has become his most famous study, leading to creation of the term “linguistic profiling.”
While still at the University of Texas, Baugh was invited to spend a year at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford. He started calling to find a place to live.
But he began to notice a disturbing trend.
“I called several places and in nearly every instance was told to come by and look at the place,” Baugh says. “It was on those occasions where I showed up and the landlords were able to see me that they told me there must have been a mistake and no more places were available.”
Baugh concluded that had they been able to tell his race by the sound of his voice, he probably wouldn’t have gotten the appointment in the first place.
“Because of where I grew up and how I grew up, I could speak in other dialects,” he says. “So out of curiosity, I started calling around to different apartments using different dialects to see what kind of reactions I’d get.”
It was then that he realized he had a research project on his hands.
“When I started working on the project in 1987, I was looking at language attitudes and linguistic discrimination,” Baugh says. “It wasn’t really until years later and the concept of racial profiling that I began to think about it in a larger context.”
Baugh’s evidence was the first to show that many people made racist snap judgments about callers with diverse dialects.
His study was expanded to include potential employers, real estate agents, loan officers and service providers, many of whom did it repeatedly. Long before they could evaluate callers’ abilities, accomplishments, credit rating or work ethic, they blocked callers based solely on linguistics.
Such racist reactions frequently break federal and state fair housing and equal employment opportunity laws.
The Ford Foundation backed Baugh’s research — which has been cited worldwide — with a three-year, $500,000 grant, which was recently renewed and extended until June.
“I realized through this work that linguistic profiling was happening to a lot of people, and they had no way of knowing it existed, to say nothing of the difficulties in the legal ramifications,” Baugh says.
The Ford Foundation’s funding has allowed Baugh to expand his research to examine linguistic profiling from a global perspective. He recently returned from a trip to South Africa, where he interacted with colleagues regarding linguistic profiling among the many varieties of English spoken by both blacks and whites.
Baugh also is looking at similar issues in Paris and in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil.
Making an impact
Hired two years ago, Baugh says a variety of things attracted him to WUSTL. One is leadership.
“[Chancellor] Mark Wrighton and Ed Macias [executive vice chancellor, dean of Arts & Sciences, and the Barbara and David Thomas Distinguished Professor in Arts & Sciences] really are doing extraordinary things to make this institution exceptional,” Baugh says. “I felt that there was tremendous growth potential for African & African American studies here.”
Baugh’s leadership also has made an impact.
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John Baugh Title: Margaret Bush Wilson Professor in Arts & Sciences, director of African & African American studies and professor of psychology, both in Arts & Sciences; holds appointments in American culture studies, anthropology, education and English, all in Arts & Sciences. Family: Married to Charla Baugh, Ph.D., since 1983. Children Chenoa, 28; John, 19; and Ariel, 17. Hobbies: Working on cars and sailing. |
“Professor Baugh’s great success in the relatively short time that he’s been a part of Washington University is due to his high standards and academic vision,” Macias says. “His leadership has been important to our African & African American Studies program, bringing creative enthusiasm to the position of director. His academic interests span disciplines, as reflected by his involvement in American culture studies, anthropology, education, English and psychology.
“As a leading authority in the field of linguistics, his research is critically important,” Macias adds. “Critics praise his research not only for its refined scholarly nature, but also for its straightforward accessibility. John is a tremendous asset for the University in all respects.”
When Baugh came to WUSTL, African & African American studies primarily focused on undergraduate programs.
“I’m currently developing proposals to consider expansion into graduate programs,” Baugh says. “Also, in the two areas where I have specialization, sociology and linguistics, the University does not yet have formal departments. The potential for departmental growth in areas where I have expertise, in addition to the opportunity to bring new growth to African & African American studies, was an opportunity I just couldn’t pass up.”