[Linganth] Ling anthro research on language variation and ethnicity in tech?

Sun Jun 5 17:58:38 UTC 2016

Hi Nate,

You may find this recent piece from a neighboring field (communication studies) useful even though it doesn’t have an explicit focus on race and ethnicity:

Hart, T. (2016). Learning how to speak like a “native”: Speech and culture in an online communication training program. Journal of Business and Technical Communication, 30(3), 285-321. doi: 10.1177/1050651916636363

This article examines the oral communication training that took place in Eloqi, a virtual language-learning community. Eloqi (a pseudonym) was a for-profit start-up that built and operated a proprietary Web-based, voice-enabled platform connecting English-language learners in China with trainers in the United States. While it existed, Eloqi’s unique platform was used to deliver short, one-on-one lessons designed to improve students’ oral English communication skills. Using the ethnography of communication and speech codes theory, a theoretical–methodological approach, the author presents an analysis of the speech code, or code of communicative conduct, employed at Eloqi. This code of English logic, which Eloqi’s community members associated with native English speech, comprised six locally defined rules for oral English speech; namely, speech had to be organized, succinct, spontaneously composed rather than rehearsed, original and honest, proactively improved, and positive. This article discusses the significance of this code, particularly as it pertains to cultural communication, and concludes with some implications for researchers and practitioners in business and technical communication.

Cheers, David

--
David Boromisza-Habashi, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Department of Communication
College of Media, Communication and Information, University of Colorado Boulder

From: Linganth [mailto:linganth-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org] On Behalf Of Nathaniel Dumas
Sent: Sunday, June 05, 2016 11:28 AM
To: Jacqueline Messing
Cc: LINGANTH at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG
Subject: Re: [Linganth] Ling anthro research on language variation and ethnicity in tech?

Thanks everyone who responded! I think for the most part what I am seeing is that while we have research on digital use outside of tech companies (such as in homes and in peer groups across income levels and ethnic groups), tech companies have remained virtually untouchable as a research site when it comes to language use and, more problematically, the production of ethnicity and race through institutional discourse from startups to established companies. (My guess is this has a lot to do with the NDAs that many of us who work in it have to sign or even research in.)

As such, this suggests that much of the discourse on 'diversity' in tech has been reduced to a numbers game of quantitative research and little to no systematic qualitative research on the production of ethnicity and race in interracial workplace settings, which, ironically, is actually one of the main reasons many historically-underrepresented ethnic groups (and minorities within those groups) cite leaving the tech industry (i.e., interactions they position as 'micro-aggressive').

Might be a research project for some of us to consider as a means of 'studying up,' in Laura Nader's terms.

Cheers,
Nate

On Sat, Jun 4, 2016 at 3:51 PM, Jacqueline Messing <jacquelinemessing at gmail.com<mailto:jacquelinemessing at gmail.com>> wrote:
Hi Nate,
My former graduate student Glenn Abastillas completed an MA thesis in Linguistics at Georgetown last year on a relevant topic.  He looked at Cebuano/English code-switching in the Philippines, primarily through the study of Twitter.  I think you will find it relevant to your project.  The abstract and link to the full text are below:
DIVERGENCE IN CEBUANO AND ENGLISH CODE-SWITCHING PRACTICES IN CEBUANO SPEECH COMMUNITIES IN THE CENTRAL PHILIPPINE
Glenn Abastillas, BSN

Thesis Advisor: Jacqueline Messing, Ph.D.

Abstract
The Philippines is a diverse linguistic environment with more than 8 major languages
spoken and a complicated language policy affected by its colonization history. With this
context, this research investigates Cebuano and English code-switching (CS) in the
Central Philippines and Mindanao. This research draws from prior studies placing
multilingual and code-switched language practices at the center of an individual’s
identity rather than at the margins (Woolard, 1998; Stell, 2010; Eppler, 2010; Weston,
2013). Code-switching is defined to be the hybrid of multiple languages and,
subsequently, multiple identities (Bullock & Toribio, 2009). I expand on these ideas to
examine the homogeneity of Cebuano identity across four Cebuano speaking provinces in
the Central Philippines and Mindanao through their CS practice in computer mediated
communication (CMC) on Twitter. I demonstrate that the Cebuano speech community is
divergent in their CS practices split into two general groups, which are employing CS
practices at significantly different rates.

Using computational tools, I implement a mixed methods approach in collecting and
analyzing the data. My data consist of short manually tagged messages called tweets from
the social media platform Twitter. Tweets were collected at various times during the day
and night over a period of 3 months from the Cebuano speaking provinces of Cebu,
Negros Oriental, Misamis Oriental, and Davao del Sur. Collectively, there were 2,652
users, tweeting 7,729 times, who contributed to this corpus, representing language from
all four provinces in both rural and urban contexts. A chi-square (χ2) analysis on CS with
respect to province found that the four provinces employ CS at significantly (χ2 = 84.75,
p < .001) different rates. A chi-square analysis also showed that there was a strong relationship
between CS and population density (χ2 = 3.47, p < .1). Lastly, a T-test
analysis showed that longer tweets are significantly more likely to have CS than shorter
tweets (one-sample t(105) = 6.7963, p < .001).

The results of the chi-square analysis demonstrate a divergence in the Cebuano speech
community in the Philippines. That is, the southern provinces of Misamis Oriental and
Davao del Sur (Southern Group) adopt CS significantly more than the northern provinces
of Cebu and Negros Oriental (Northern Group), which were less likely to adopt CS.
Because of a strong pro-Cebuano sentiment in Cebu, I reason that the Northern Group
adheres more strongly to the Cebuano identity resulting in less CS. Conversely, the
Southern Groups may be identifying less with Cebu and the Cebuano identity, which
results in more CS. In summary, the Cebuano speech communities in the Philippines
express their differentiating identities through adoption of CS.
Permanent Link
http://hdl.handle.net/10822/760907
Date
2015
Subject
Cebuano; code-switching; computer mediated communication; corpus linguistics; identity; Twitter; Linguistics; Asia -- Research; Communication; Oral communication; Linguistics; Asian studies; Communication;

On Sat, Jun 4, 2016 at 2:42 PM, Rachel Flamenbaum <rnflame at gmail.com<mailto:rnflame at gmail.com>> wrote:
Nate,
You've hit on a major lacuna in ling anth and its allied fields--there is a ton of work out there on digital learning and computer mediated communication, but it tends to be sited in informal (ie non-institutional) white middle class post-industrial contexts, and few are oriented from a language ideologies or language-as-social-action perspective.

I'm about a week away from filing my dissertation on socialization into digital literacies (and their related ideologies) across class in Ghana, which speaks to many of these issues. I have some work in the publication pipeline, but the only thing currently out is a small piece as part of a AA vital topics forum on Anthro in and of MOOCs<http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/aman.12143/abstract> edited by Graham Jones--all of the authors are troubling a priori assumptions of monolithic user experience in some way.

If you haven't come across their work already, you might also look at what Mark Warschauer and Morgan Ames have done (separately and together) on the design of the XO laptop and the One Laptop Per Child program's claims re: "the world's poor," as well as Lisa Poggiali's work in the burgeoning tech sphere in Nairobi and Lily Irani's work on HCI and entrepreneurial citizenship as tied up with tech in India. I'm sure I'm forgetting important additions to this list, but I plead dissertation brain!

Outside of academia, the Joan Ganz Cooney Center (housed in the Sesame Workshop) has some really useful publications<http://www.joanganzcooneycenter.org/publications/> on media use in lower-income and ethnically-diverse families, geared towards shifting policy and design.

Would love to continue the conversation more with you and others interested in this work!

Back to the dissertating grindstone,
Rachel

Rachel Flamenbaum, M.A.
Doctoral Candidate
Department of Anthropology, UCLA

On Sat, Jun 4, 2016 at 7:57 AM, Nathaniel Dumas <nadumas at ucsc.edu<mailto:nadumas at ucsc.edu>> wrote:
Good morning colleagues!

I hope all is well. I'm emailing to ask if anyone knows of any work that is specific to the tech industry on language ideologies and their intersections with race/ethnicity? I ask because I am about to start working with a non-profit aimed at increasing African American participation in tech, particularly to train critical user experience researchers. Yet much of the work that is out there on speech events like the 'user interview' and 'diary studies' do not take ethnicity and language ideologies into account. Moreover, a majority of the work excludes and omits much of the work done by critical native anthropologists who have raised critiques of traditional anthropological methods that the tech industry often uses in UX research without doing any critical appraises of it that really challenge status quo ideologies.

Also, most of the work, except in the context of international user experience research, assumes a cultural homogeneity within work in the US, and has consequences for how persons of color who come from different backgrounds may be evaluated as 'effective' and 'non-effective' interviewers as tech begins to push for more people of color to be a part of their teams without a critical understanding of all this entails. Of course, I could point my colleagues to Charles Briggs' work, but tech people, I've found, like to read things a bit more closely aligned to their industry and it's a long hard battle since user experience research has had a particular bent towards psychology/cognitive science.

That said, does anyone know of any linguistic anthropology work on this, or graduate students currently working on this? I'd also like to use these materials to start reshaping the diversity and inclusion training as well at levels higher up, so if anyone has any best practices for that, that too would be great.

Cheers,
Nate

--
Nathaniel Dumas
Research Associate, Department of Anthropology
University of Santa Cruz
nadumas at ucsc.edu<mailto:nadumas at ucsc.edu>

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--
Jacqueline Messing, Ph.D.
Instructor, Department of Anthropology
University of Maryland-College Park

Instructor, Department of Linguistics
Georgetown University

--
Nathaniel Dumas
Research Associate, Department of Anthropology
University of Santa Cruz
nadumas at ucsc.edu<mailto:nadumas at ucsc.edu>
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