LL-L: "Pronunciation" LOWLANDS-L, 01.SEP.2000 (01) [E]

[Lowlands-L]

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From: Matthew McGrattan [matthew.mcgrattan at bnc.ox.ac.uk]
Subject: LL-L: "Pronunciation" LOWLANDS-L, 31.AUG.2000 (06) [E]

>Friday's "Daily Telegraph" contained the following in an article headed
>"Umlaut explains why Germans look so sauer".
>
>Professor David Myers, a psychologist from Hope College, Michigan,
>said -speaking at the Royal Society of Edinburgh - "Germans are regarded as
>
>grumpy and humourless because their language includes sounds that make them
>
>frown when speaking. The harsh language causes Germans to exercise facial
>muscles involved in frowning and looking sad, as frequently demonstrated by
>
>Chancellor Gerhard Schröder. Umlauts on vowels such as "u" cause the mouth
>to turn down. The English sounds of "e" and "ah", on the other hand, create
>
>happy faces."

>To my mind, this illustrates how language is still immune from political
>correctness, and how ethnic and social stereotypes can apparently be
justified
>with impunity by reference to language, in contrast to discredited factors
>such as skin colour or skull measurements. Language is one of the last
refuges
>of ethnic and class prejudice; and because no-one is taught anything about
>linguistics, such claims are 'too scientific' to argue against.

While I don't doubt that the Telegraph's reasons for printing this story
stem from their usual xenophobia (especially about Germans), that doesn't
mean that there might not be something to the research.

Facial expressions are, at least as far as I know, more or less universal
and many cross-cultural studies seem to show that basic facial expressions
(frowning, smiling, disgust, fear, etc) are common to all cultural and
linguistic groups.

If the phonology of a particular language meant that the "set" of the
speaker's face more closely resembled some of these universal facial
expressions more than others then that might account for some subtle shading
in people's (presumably speaker's of other languages) perception of them.

However, before any such conclusion could be drawn one would need to do
properly controlled and blinded studies to avoid any racial, social or
cultural prejudice colouring the results.

[Would, for example, people viewing videotapes of speakers of different
languages, who were unaware of the person's nationality and unable to hear
which language they were speaking, consistently rate speakers of one
language differently - in terms of perceived emotional state - from speakers
of another?]

I would be surprised if there was any major effect but there is no logical
reason why there shouldn't be...

That is not to distract from John's main point, that linguistic prejudice is
more acceptable than racial prejudice. From personal experience that is
clearly true... I have a Central Scots accent which is relatively
class-neutral (to non-Scots) and that is typically perceived by non-Scots as
being relatively "attractive" or "soft" and people have said extremely
disparaging things to me about others' Scots accents (typically about
Glaswegian accents and how they sound "harsh" or "uneducated") and then said
things like "Of course, your accent isn't like that..." as if that makes it
OK.

ON another note, the social psychologist responsible for the research has a
homepage at www.davidmyers.org but I couldn't find much on this research
(possibly I didn't look hard enough)...

Anyway,

Cheers,

Matt

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