linguistics

A linguistic expert from Washington University in St. Louis who participated in an elite 15-member committee announcing July 20 its findings on what he calls “potentially harmful” categorizing, said it’s time to nix the generational mindset in business.

John Baugh, the Margaret Bush Wilson Professor in Arts & Sciences, will begin research for a new book on linguistic profiling as part of an April 2016 scholar-in-residence program at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center on Lake Como in Italy.

John G. Baugh, PhD, the Margaret Bush Wilson Professor in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, is one of 10 distinguished scholars to be honored as 2015 fellows of the Linguistic Society of America.   

Cindy Brantmeier (left), associate professor of applied linguistics and Spanish in Arts & Sciences, has been collaborating with scholars from China to study the best methodologies and techniques for native Chinese speakers to learn English.

Many Americans can guess a caller’s ethnic background from their first hello on the telephone. Can the sound of your voice be used against you?However, the inventor of the term “linguistic profiling” has found that when a voice sounds African-American or Mexican-American, racial discrimination may follow. In studying this phenomenon through hundreds of test phone calls, John Baugh, Ph.D., the Margaret Bush Wilson Professor and director of African and African American Studies in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, has found that many people made racist, snap judgments about callers with diverse dialects. Some potential employers, real estate agents, loan officers and service providers did it repeatedly, he says. Long before they could evaluate callers’ abilities, accomplishments, credit rating, work ethic or good works, they blocked callers based solely on linguistics.