You Are How You Sound

Imagine that you're walking down the street and hear someone speaking with a British accent. What assumptions might you make about that person based on his or her voice? Would you come to the same conclusion if that person had a heavy southern drawl or sounded like he or she spoke Spanish as a first language? John Baugh, the Margaret Bush Wilson Professor in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, continues his discussion of linguistic profiling and describes how he hopes his research will lead to policies that increase Americans' acceptance of linguistic diversity. To hear Baugh's personal story about how first became interested in this line of research, be sure to listen to Linguistic Insights, the first episode in our ongoing series about language.