How You Say It: Why You Talk the Way You Do―And What It Says About You

Think of all the phone conversations you’ve had with strangers and the pictures you’ve drawn of the talker’s appearance just from the sound of the voice and how they speak. Psychologist Katherine Kinzler from the University of Chicago claims that it is what we say and how it is said that determines our social status in the minds of the listener. From studies with infants and young children, psycholinguists have found that it is not physical appearance or color differences that provoke favor or disfavor, rather it is the speaking voice that affects emotion. The more similar and familiar, the more comfortable; we tend to shun strange foreign or accented tongues. Those speaking with strange or foreign accents do not rate high on approval scales. Many studies indicate that those who are bilingual show greater empathy for foreigners than monolingual speakers. While learning a second language in youth was formerly discouraged, it has been shown that young children can easily acquire multilingual capability during the early years when the language center is malleable and developing. This is an interesting look at how language and speaking dexterity develop and is filled with many illustrative anecdotes. While it is an easy and quick read, the only complaint is an excessive repetition of the same material.