First Encounters and Realizations
People watching has always been one of my favorite hobbies. I could spend hours just sitting and observing people go about their daily lives. Maybe that’s why I chose to do a psychology major at UMich and why my interest going from behavior to language felt natural. Whether it was the movie lines my dad always quoted “I’m walkin’ ‘ere”, treading the boundary of Asianness with my broken Korean, my mom’s Spanish and Korean learning, or my COVID dive into English accents, an interest in language has been present throughout my life. I just didn’t realize how much language could tell about someone and how much it’s used as a tool of power until the summer entering senior year. A chance encounter in the Dicken Elementary park made me truly interested in the question: How does language affect us?
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“Say hello to my little friend.”
My dad is good at language. Speaking, writing, a good listener, you name it. He’s fluent in English and respectable in Korean but what people don’t know at first is that he’s actually fluent in another language: media. Books, movies, TV shows…anything is fair game. His love for media made my dad decide his mission was to show a lot of classical films to me and my siblings, and I really appreciate this. I believe this sparked my initial interest in language and accents. References were constantly thrown around our household and quotes became the second language of our household. We would go back and forth in callback sessions as our mom would shake her head and say “You really are your dad’s children”. Those feelings of connection created by exchanges like “Where is my-” followed by “super suit” made me appreciate language a lot more (Bird, 2004). I could go from southern America with “Life is like a box of chocolates” to Australia with “That’s not a knife” in a single breath. The level of familiarity from quotes made me appreciate not only how varied just English is but also how language can be used to connect in ways other than direct communication.
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Accents in the media also reflect are no new phenomenon. Did any of the previous examples ring out with a southern tang? An African American English (AAE) accent? I strongly suspect my media upbringing spurred my dive in accent phonology during COVID. I could not stop watching The WIRED videos with the dialect coach Erik Singer. He examined English accents in the media and regional differences between English accents too. The latter applied to both differences across countries and for US accents too. Seeing the application of linguistic concepts to a real world context and popular media, my boathouse, spiked my interest in linguistics.
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"How do we learn language?”
I wasn’t always a Psychology major. Once I was a Cognitive Science major and that meant I decided to take a Linguistics/Psychology class sophomore year for the major requirements. LING 209, Language and Human Mind, was about introduction to phonology and language acquisition theories. Truthfully, I didn’t pay close attention to the material at the time. However, after the class I began to recognize how much the material applied to my general life. Phonology, the study of patterns of sounds, took the English I had known my entire life and made it feel like I was seeing language through the water (Hayes, 2009). It was filled with unfamiliar symbols that wrote out sounds I heard throughout my life. Suddenly, the terms from the WIRED videos such as digraphs and a hard r made a lot more sense and it made those videos so much more fun to watch again. When someone talked about their child learning their first words our class discussions about nativism or socioculturalism popped into my mind. The in-class discussions about language acquisition and how cultures may share differences and similarities in language perception went through my mind.
This connection of a biological basis or explanation for how we learn language didn’t sink in kept appearing in my day to day life. Talking about my niece’s learning their first words or watching 2nd graders learn new words made me consider how language is used as a tool, and how we can grab a hold of it. How do these kids grow their language bank? How are children able to put together the correct word pairs and tense?
Developing Interests
Overall, my previous experiences set me up to explore the broader societal implications of language.
“Are you from New York?”
I’m a medical assistant that helps out a woman, “Barbara” who was raised in New York and also spoke Greek. I’ve never noticed a distinct New York accent unless she said something like “youse”. Barbara sometimes accentuates certain words differently, but I didn’t know whether to attribute it to her Greek and New York background. Despite all the videos I’ve watched I’m pretty bad with accent placing. This was different for the husband of the couple we met during an afternoon walk at the Dicken Elementary park. They had just moved from New York and to my shock, within 5 minutes of talking to her he asked, “Are you from New York?”.
This BLEW my mind.
I stood in shock as they continued to talk, bonding over their experiences in the city. How does he know? Is there something he hears that I don’t? Was there a secret code? Is there an emphasis on a syllable that I didn’t notice? That conversation passed by in a blur as I replayed that exchange over and over. I wanted to understand what he heard so I began to watch even more linguistics/dialect videos. My interest in linguistics became really cemented with a class at UMICH: LING 390 or Community-Engaged Learning in ESL (English as Second Language) Teaching Contexts.
I decided to take LING 390 because I want to work in healthcare, ideally to become a doctor. Ultimately, I believe that working in a healthcare setting means I should be prepared to work with a diverse population. While my previous language escapades felt a lot more theoretical, in this class we’d be taught about how other cultures learn English. I thought having to take a teaching role would help me understand more and give me a realistic insight of hands-on work. I didn’t realize it but it would also teach me how language was used as a tool of power and discrimination.
"Welcome to LING 390!"
LING 390 applies linguistics to a real-world context. Unlike my accent dive it brought linguistic theories to be applied in the world and showed another area of the web. It examines English Learning (EL), general perceptions of it, and how it affects daily living worldwide with a focus in the United States. A reading from Auerbach (1993) talks about how language is used as a political tool. Most of the dominant narratives in society are from countries with English as its primary language. The US and England are prime examples of this. One study found that students’ perceptions of an instructors’ accent were the strongest predictor of teacher rankings (Rubin, 1992). If an instructor’s accent was foreign, non Standard American English (SAE) in this case, then the students perceived the instructor as a bad teacher even if the content was the same (Rubin, 1992).
English has become a worldwide language seen in many professional work and research settings which makes it associated with a higher status. The US uses language as a criteria for education in that native speakers generally have a higher social power (Auerbach, 1993). Certain accents are seen as less valued, or an indicator of lower social status despite the ability to learn another language being indicative of a long-term skill (Rubin, 1992). People will react to a French accented English more positively than a Korean accented English. “The Queen’s English” still has maintained its prestigious status while Indian or African accents may be seen as less prestigious (Adams, 2022). This can have a significant impact on people’s perceptions of someone which can in turn reduce work opportunities or opinions about someone. The idea of an English only (EL) classroom has been decreasing as the cognitive benefits of multilingualism have been discovered. However, these ideas hit me pretty hard considering how my family has been impacted by the English dominative narrative.
Looking Back
“I knew Korean as a kid but your grandparents didn’t want me put in the ESL class so they stopped talking to me in it.”
I didn’t know it then but that was my first encounter with language being used as a tool of power. My maternal and paternal grandparents are immigrants from Korea but neither of my parents speak Korean at home. My dad can understand Korean and speak at an intermediate level but never did at home. I think he fell out of practice considering how Korean wasn’t as well known as it is now. My mom knew very little and had multiple periods of learning Korean but didn’t enforce the lessons with us. I had assumed that just like me, she was never taught. Turns out, she was.
My mom was fluent in Korean up until 2nd grade. However, my grandparents started only using English with her because the school said they would place her in an ESL class. To them, her placement in an ESL class could hinder her chances of success in life. Though Asians are considered a model minority they are not excluded from language discrimination (Lippi-Green, 2012). People who speak English with an “Asian” accent, a big simplification, may not be taken seriously or be mocked (Lippi-Green, 2012). I don’t know every detail but I know my mom did not struggle in school because of her bilingualism. So I can’t help but wonder if it could’ve been handled differently. Her English was fine at that point so was it because of the accent she had then? Would I have grown up being more fluent in Korean if this didn’t happen?
“Hola chica, how’ve you been?”
Alongside English, Korean, and quotes, Spanish was one of the most spoken languages in my home. I never had a strong connection to the Korean language since it was only used practically but not recreationally. The most I used it was for saying food names or other basic phrases like please and thank you for family gatherings. Instead growing up my mom spoke more Spanish to me than Korean. I’d wake up to her playing Spanish and Korean dramas out loud in our kitchen. Hearing her say “chica” and practicing it with the Hispanic workers at our local grocery store became more familiar than hearing “Miyoung”. Language has an influence on our psyche and I think my mom saw the separation created between ourselves and our Korean heritage. Starting 8th grade she started using our Korean names more.
“You speak English really well”
Standard Language Ideology (SLI) is the bias towards an idealized spoken language that is supported by dominant institutions in society (Lippi-Green, 2012). The current dominant institutions are consistent primarily of an Anglo, middle-American background in the US (Lippi-Green, 2012). An idealized language is promoted through the education system because it is difficult for the system to be truly neutral (Lippi-Green, 2012). This is why many English learning programs had an English only format at first. This shows how there is a general standardization process in many larger institutions, and that in itself generally reflects a majority culture (Lippi-Green, 2012). Though marginalized groups may be able to speak up in today’s culture, the power imbalance between marginalized groups and mainstream ones make it difficult (Lippi-Green, 2012). If there isn’t room for acceptance of a minority’s language one’s language may be neglected if not in speech communities even if use is still happening (Lippi-Green, 2012).
These revelations made me consider how my experience as an Asian-American has been shaped by dominant culture. Accents can indicate someone’s background, be a tool for cultural representation, and status (Piece, 2023). Stigmatized varieties of English may find it more difficult for everyday privileges because the ideology and social structures are connected through language (Lippi-Green, 2012). They demonstrate identity but also can be used to discredit groups (Piece, 2023). Difficulties in communication because of personality or intelligence with English is more accredited to a Korean accent than a British one (Lippi-Green, 2012). The strength of someone's accent should not be used as an indicator of skill or competency in a target language. Nevertheless, accent is seen as a primary barrier in communication instead of a lack of wanting to take a communicative burden (Lippi-Green, 2012).
The attitude towards language is always shifting with general world events and changes in culture. I never expected South Korea to have the global influence it has now. The positive shift in attitude and perception towards South Korea from when I was young to now is such a stark difference. When I told other kids I was from South Korea most of them would stare blankly at me and say, “What is that?”. Over time I just assumed no one would name what kimchi or bulgogi was. These foods would never have left home in elementary or middle school. I still remember chuckling with my sister at how someone said gimbap was their favorite food during class icebreakers in college. My own growing interest in Korea has highlighted why embracing language diversity is important. Acceptance by the dominant society helps people feel comfortable with themselves (Lippi-Green, 2012).