Linguistic Insights

To kick off our newest topic, On Language, John Baugh, the Margaret Bush Wilson Professor in Arts and Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, shares two stories of personal linguistic epiphanies. Baugh researches linguistic profiling, or the ways in which people react to and treat one another based on speech. His initial interest in this line of work began when he himself encountered linguistic profiling earlier in his career. Baugh shares that experience, as well as a childhood incident in which he first realized that accents can carry as much meaning as words. Baugh will also be featured next week on Hold That Thought, when we'll hear more about specific research projects and the types of policies that he believes would help Americans accept linguistic diversity.