[Music]
[Applause]
one of two ways the most common is Oh
how many languages do you speak when I
say 2 they tend to react with a mixture
of pity and encouragement as if to say
jeez Danny will you keep working and
maybe you’ll learn another one one day
the other common reaction to my
occupation is something like mock fear
oh I better watch what I say around you
as if I were going to chastise them for
using a naughty word or producing an
ungrammatical sentence if people are
feeling especially cheeky they might
tell me their favorite linguist joke
something like you know a linguist once
told me a preposition is a terrible
thing to end the sentence with these
reactions are so common that I’ve
started telling people that I’m a
musician at least then the look of pity
and encouragement comes from a place of
understanding let me take this
opportunity to say loud and clear that
you don’t have to be on guard around us
linguists we’re not the grammar police
nor are we professional polyglots we
don’t learn languages for a living
if you already knew these things
excellent if you didn’t and you do now
well then I’ve already achieved
something with my talk so with what
linguists don’t do out of the way what
is it that we actually do well while all
linguists
make a living studying human language we
focus on answering different questions
what’s the nature of linguistic
knowledge how is it stored in our brain
access when we have a conversation read
a book or listen to a lecture how do
babies learn to talk how did language
evolve in our species
why do languages vary in change over
time linguists have answered our still
formulating answers to all of these
questions a question that I would like
to provide an answer to today for you
all is this what’s the role of language
in society it’s clear to me that
language designed to be a bridge in 1883
this magnificent bridge came to span the
East River connecting Brooklyn to
Manhattan and making New York City as we
know it possible right now languages
spanning the distance between us
connecting me and my thoughts to you and
yours
language made it possible for me to
formulate a stupid joke about how
linguist or misunderstood and language
made it possible for me to coordinate
the activities of my my lungs my vocal
tract my tongue and my lips to disturb
atmospheric pressure in such a way as to
hit your eardrums activate neurons in
your brain and cause you to laugh some
of you at least I hope languages are
most powerful tool for connecting with
other human beings
so the answer to the question where’s
the role of language in society is to me
this in its capacity to bridge
individual human minds language makes
society possible ok then a great then
hold on I imagine some of you might be
thinking isn’t language also sometimes a
barrier doesn’t it feel like the exact
opposite of a bridge sometimes
absolutely it can sure feel that way
we’ve all had the experience of not
being able to find just the right words
to say what it is that we want or that
we want to communicate and if we’ve ever
had the opportunity to travel abroad
you’ve probably also had the experience
of being in a place where the people
around you are using words and sounds
that are unfamiliar to you nothing can
feel more isolating than not being able
to use the local way of speaking in a
community in which we find ourselves
however if you consider each of these
cases carefully what you’ll see
that the solution to the problems they
present breaking through the
communication barrier overcoming those
feelings of isolation lies in more
language it lies in finding the right
words to communicate what you have in
your mind
it lies in putting in the work to learn
the ways of speaking of the community in
which you find yourself I’d like you to
take just a moment to think about how
you felt when you’ve done that that is
when you’ve made a linguistic connection
that was difficult to make either
because it was a real struggle to find
the right words to communicate to
another person what you had in your mind
or because you put in the labor to learn
the ways of speaking of a new community
I hope you’ll agree with me that this
feels good satisfying even thrilling I
hope you’ll also agree with me that it’s
something that we have an instinct to do
that is we have strong natural urges to
connect with those around us via
language ok so now we know what it is
that linguist don’t do we have a sense
of what linguist actually do and we have
an answer to the question what is the
role of language in society it makes
society possible by bridging individual
human minds I’d like to take these ideas
and apply them to our American society
what if someone told you that in our
country there was a large group of
people who didn’t use language this way
that there were literally millions of
people who suppressed their urge to
linguistically connect with their fellow
Americans in light of what we’ve just
been talking about you might be
surprised by that you might even find it
strange or difficult to believe but this
is precisely what a number of powerful
and influential individuals are asking
you to believe when it comes to
Americans who were born outside of the
United States and who moved here later
in life I’m of course talking about
immigrants and I’m talking about the
idea that immigrants are unwilling
unmotivated
or unable to learn English
if you doubt that this is something that
anyone actually thinks let me provide
you with three data points that not only
show this kind of thinking in action but
that demonstrate how it has made its way
into our highest levels of political and
academic discourse this is Harvard
political scientists in New York Times
bestselling author Samuel Huntington and
this is the first page of an article he
wrote in 2009 called the Hispanic
challenge according to Huntington unlike
past immigrant groups Mexicans and other
Latinos have not assimilated into
mainstream u.s. culture forming instead
their own political and linguistic
enclaves and this is Patrick Buchanan
also a New York Times bestselling author
and advisor to presidents Nixon Ford and
Reagan in his book suicide of a
superpower he warns of the undoing of
the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo which
ended the Mexican American War and gave
the u.s. claim too much of the American
West
according to Buchanan Mexico is moving
north ethnically linguistically and
culturally the verdict of 1848 is being
overturned will this Mexican nation
within a nation advance the goals of the
Constitution or has our passivity in the
face of this invasion imperiled our
nation finally consider a press
conference that was held in the
Roosevelt Room of the White House over
the summer during which President Trump
endorsed the raise act a bill proposed
by Senators Tom cotton and David Perdue
that would revise u.s. immigration
policy to include English proficiency
tests for hopeful immigrants in his
praise of the bill President Trump
signaled his belief that immigrants to
the United States are currently failing
to assimilate the reforms in the raise
act will help ensure that newcomers to
our wonderful country will be
assimilated
so our immigrants actually failing to
assimilate
is there a Mexican nation within the
nation is the Hispanic challenge real
might it be possible for us to
investigate these questions
empirically might there be a group of
people who have a professional interest
in collecting and analyzing the kind of
data that would allow us to do this yes
and it’s not the grammar police for the
last several years I and other linguists
have been studying the linguistic
behavior of spanish-speaking immigrants
and their us-born children in New York
City and Boston cities with large
long-established and growing Latino
populations as well as cities with
neighborhoods that are well known for
their high concentrations of
spanish-speaking residents and
businesses our data make it possible to
treat the Hispanic challenge as
hypothesis one that makes predictions
about the linguistic behavior of
spanish-speaking immigrants and their
us-born children
so the basic prediction is one of
linguistic non assimilation what would
this look like with respect to language
use and attitudes well presumably
spanish-speaking immigrants to the US
and their us-born children would you
Spanish a lot and also have positive
attitudes towards it by comparison we
would expect these people to use English
relatively infrequently and have at
least not as good an attitude towards
English as they do towards Spanish the
data that I’m going to share to you that
bear on these predictions come from
interviews with 332 spanish-speaking
adults these individuals range in terms
of how long they’ve been in the u.s.
some are very recent arrivals others
have spent their entire lives in the
United States they range in terms of
their regional or geographic origins and
ancestry they are representative of 20
different latin-american locales and
they also run the socio-economic gamut
all of our participants were paid for
their time they were interviewed in
Spanish they were assured that their
identities would remain in
and as far as I can tell I actually
think they had fun participating in our
study we have every reason to believe
that they answered our questions
truthfully and as best they could so I
want to show you results for three of
the many questions that we asked the
first has to do with language use which
language or languages did you speak with
your mother father siblings kids friends
boss co-workers classmates significant
other the options we gave people was
just Spanish exclusively Spanish just
English or both second question would
you like your children or grandchildren
and grandchildren to learn Spanish
English or both languages and then
finally are you in favor of our do you
oppose legislation that would make
English the official language of the
United States so to see whether answers
to these questions varied with respect
to experience in the United States we
grouped our participants into three
categories newcomers established
immigrants and u.s. born the newcomers
were people who were born outside of the
US who came here after their 16th
birthday and had spent less than six
years in the United States when we
interviewed them the established
immigrants were also born outside of the
US arrived after their 16th birthday but
had spent more than 6 years in the US
when we interviewed them and then
finally the u.s. born were just that so
let’s look at the results starting with
the usage of Spanish English or both
with mother now what you’re gonna see up
here are a number of squares and there’s
going to be three colors on each square
they’re going to correspond to the
answers and in each square there will be
three columns one column corresponding
to each of our immigrant groups I’ll
walk you through it okay so here in this
first square we see responses to the
question which language did or do you
use with your mother on the Left we see
a column for newcomers where we see
almost exclusively blue what that means
is about 98 percent of the people who we
put into the category newcomers answered
this question exclusively Spanish you
can see there’s a small
fraction of red indicating that some
small number of people in that in that
category you Spanish in English with
their mother if you shift to the middle
column the established immigrants you
see that the blue has diminished we all
of a sudden have some green which is
exclusive English use and there’s more
red the trend continues if you look at
the final column that is the column on
the right the us-born you see less blue
more red and more green we see a shift
away from exclusive Spanish use with
mother to an increased use of English we
see the same pattern among father
siblings and then children notice the
trend less blue from left-to-right
within each group more green and more
red an even more dramatic pattern of
language shift occurs outside of the
family here we have significant other
friends co-workers and boss so the thing
to note about these four squares is the
overall low level of blue compared to
inside of the family and the increase in
green and red across Newcomer
established immigrants and u.s. born
let’s look at our next question would
you like your children and grandchildren
to learn Spanish English or both
languages 99 percent of our respondents
said both only one percent said
something other than 99 percent and it
was a plug for English only finally are
you in favor of or do you oppose
legislation that would make English the
official language of the United States a
full two thirds of our respondents were
in favor of English only legislation
these results run across City which is
to say there’s no difference in these
trends in new york and boston they ruin
across men and women both men and women
participate in these trends and have
these answers to these questions
these trends also emerge across widely
varying regional origin which is to say
people of Mexican ancestry don’t answer
these questions differently than people
of Salvadoran ancestry or dominican
ancestry finally these answers and these
trends emerge across all levels of
socioeconomic status so are these
results surprising in the light of the
view that language is a bridge one that
we instinctively want to cross no
they’re not
in fact these results about the
linguistic behavior of spanish-speaking
immigrants in their us-born children are
consistent with what linguists have
known about immigrants to the US for a
very long time they adopt the ways of
speaking of the communities that they
immigrate to so you may have heard the
us described as a country of immigrants
this is a good description of its past
and present population between 1980 and
2015 nearly 30 million people immigrated
to the United States bringing with them
their own ways of speaking there is
arguably more linguistic diversity in
the United States now than there ever
has been
has this plagued our country with
linguistic separatism there are a series
of Nations within the nation no it’s
because the Hispanic challenge isn’t
real
nor is any other challenge claiming a
particular immigrant group is unwilling
unable or uninterested in making
linguistic connections with their fellow
Americans in fact all of the available
data studies like the one I just
described and others like it tell us
that English proficiency and linguistic
diversity are simultaneously on the rise
in the United States a recent report
from the migration policy institute put
it this way while a record sixty four
point seven million people ages five and
older in the United States spoke a
language other than English at home in
2015 a growing share of them are also
fully proficient in English there’s
nothing remarkable about this most
people on earth are multilingual
the human brain evolved to acquire and
use multiple ways of speaking we don’t
need the legislate English proficiency
no one is more aware of the power and
value of the words and sounds that the
majority of Americans use the ones I’m
using right now then an immigrant is it
seems fitting to me that this
magnificent bridge the one that brought
our biggest city into its modern
existence was designed by an immigrant
and built by his us born son along with
a lot of help from his wife it’s a
fascinating story for another day but I
love it because it’s a symbol of our
powerful urge to make linguistic
connections with each other and I hope
you keep it in mind
going forward the next time you think
about the role of language in society I
also hope that if you ever come across a
linguist at a party and they look a
little sad and dejected and
misunderstood you go up to them and you
tell them using your own capacity for
linguistic connection that you know what
they do for a living and that a linguist
once told you that language is a bridge
not a barrier thank you
[Applause]
[Applause]
one of two ways the most common is Oh
how many languages do you speak when I
say 2 they tend to react with a mixture
of pity and encouragement as if to say
jeez Danny will you keep working and
maybe you’ll learn another one one day
the other common reaction to my
occupation is something like mock fear
oh I better watch what I say around you
as if I were going to chastise them for
using a naughty word or producing an
ungrammatical sentence if people are
feeling especially cheeky they might
tell me their favorite linguist joke
something like you know a linguist once
told me a preposition is a terrible
thing to end the sentence with these
reactions are so common that I’ve
started telling people that I’m a
musician at least then the look of pity
and encouragement comes from a place of
understanding let me take this
opportunity to say loud and clear that
you don’t have to be on guard around us
linguists we’re not the grammar police
nor are we professional polyglots we
don’t learn languages for a living
if you already knew these things
excellent if you didn’t and you do now
well then I’ve already achieved
something with my talk so with what
linguists don’t do out of the way what
is it that we actually do well while all
linguists
make a living studying human language we
focus on answering different questions
what’s the nature of linguistic
knowledge how is it stored in our brain
access when we have a conversation read
a book or listen to a lecture how do
babies learn to talk how did language
evolve in our species
why do languages vary in change over
time linguists have answered our still
formulating answers to all of these
questions a question that I would like
to provide an answer to today for you
all is this what’s the role of language
in society it’s clear to me that
language designed to be a bridge in 1883
this magnificent bridge came to span the
East River connecting Brooklyn to
Manhattan and making New York City as we
know it possible right now languages
spanning the distance between us
connecting me and my thoughts to you and
yours
language made it possible for me to
formulate a stupid joke about how
linguist or misunderstood and language
made it possible for me to coordinate
the activities of my my lungs my vocal
tract my tongue and my lips to disturb
atmospheric pressure in such a way as to
hit your eardrums activate neurons in
your brain and cause you to laugh some
of you at least I hope languages are
most powerful tool for connecting with
other human beings
so the answer to the question where’s
the role of language in society is to me
this in its capacity to bridge
individual human minds language makes
society possible ok then a great then
hold on I imagine some of you might be
thinking isn’t language also sometimes a
barrier doesn’t it feel like the exact
opposite of a bridge sometimes
absolutely it can sure feel that way
we’ve all had the experience of not
being able to find just the right words
to say what it is that we want or that
we want to communicate and if we’ve ever
had the opportunity to travel abroad
you’ve probably also had the experience
of being in a place where the people
around you are using words and sounds
that are unfamiliar to you nothing can
feel more isolating than not being able
to use the local way of speaking in a
community in which we find ourselves
however if you consider each of these
cases carefully what you’ll see
that the solution to the problems they
present breaking through the
communication barrier overcoming those
feelings of isolation lies in more
language it lies in finding the right
words to communicate what you have in
your mind
it lies in putting in the work to learn
the ways of speaking of the community in
which you find yourself I’d like you to
take just a moment to think about how
you felt when you’ve done that that is
when you’ve made a linguistic connection
that was difficult to make either
because it was a real struggle to find
the right words to communicate to
another person what you had in your mind
or because you put in the labor to learn
the ways of speaking of a new community
I hope you’ll agree with me that this
feels good satisfying even thrilling I
hope you’ll also agree with me that it’s
something that we have an instinct to do
that is we have strong natural urges to
connect with those around us via
language ok so now we know what it is
that linguist don’t do we have a sense
of what linguist actually do and we have
an answer to the question what is the
role of language in society it makes
society possible by bridging individual
human minds I’d like to take these ideas
and apply them to our American society
what if someone told you that in our
country there was a large group of
people who didn’t use language this way
that there were literally millions of
people who suppressed their urge to
linguistically connect with their fellow
Americans in light of what we’ve just
been talking about you might be
surprised by that you might even find it
strange or difficult to believe but this
is precisely what a number of powerful
and influential individuals are asking
you to believe when it comes to
Americans who were born outside of the
United States and who moved here later
in life I’m of course talking about
immigrants and I’m talking about the
idea that immigrants are unwilling
unmotivated
or unable to learn English
if you doubt that this is something that
anyone actually thinks let me provide
you with three data points that not only
show this kind of thinking in action but
that demonstrate how it has made its way
into our highest levels of political and
academic discourse this is Harvard
political scientists in New York Times
bestselling author Samuel Huntington and
this is the first page of an article he
wrote in 2009 called the Hispanic
challenge according to Huntington unlike
past immigrant groups Mexicans and other
Latinos have not assimilated into
mainstream u.s. culture forming instead
their own political and linguistic
enclaves and this is Patrick Buchanan
also a New York Times bestselling author
and advisor to presidents Nixon Ford and
Reagan in his book suicide of a
superpower he warns of the undoing of
the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo which
ended the Mexican American War and gave
the u.s. claim too much of the American
West
according to Buchanan Mexico is moving
north ethnically linguistically and
culturally the verdict of 1848 is being
overturned will this Mexican nation
within a nation advance the goals of the
Constitution or has our passivity in the
face of this invasion imperiled our
nation finally consider a press
conference that was held in the
Roosevelt Room of the White House over
the summer during which President Trump
endorsed the raise act a bill proposed
by Senators Tom cotton and David Perdue
that would revise u.s. immigration
policy to include English proficiency
tests for hopeful immigrants in his
praise of the bill President Trump
signaled his belief that immigrants to
the United States are currently failing
to assimilate the reforms in the raise
act will help ensure that newcomers to
our wonderful country will be
assimilated
so our immigrants actually failing to
assimilate
is there a Mexican nation within the
nation is the Hispanic challenge real
might it be possible for us to
investigate these questions
empirically might there be a group of
people who have a professional interest
in collecting and analyzing the kind of
data that would allow us to do this yes
and it’s not the grammar police for the
last several years I and other linguists
have been studying the linguistic
behavior of spanish-speaking immigrants
and their us-born children in New York
City and Boston cities with large
long-established and growing Latino
populations as well as cities with
neighborhoods that are well known for
their high concentrations of
spanish-speaking residents and
businesses our data make it possible to
treat the Hispanic challenge as
hypothesis one that makes predictions
about the linguistic behavior of
spanish-speaking immigrants and their
us-born children
so the basic prediction is one of
linguistic non assimilation what would
this look like with respect to language
use and attitudes well presumably
spanish-speaking immigrants to the US
and their us-born children would you
Spanish a lot and also have positive
attitudes towards it by comparison we
would expect these people to use English
relatively infrequently and have at
least not as good an attitude towards
English as they do towards Spanish the
data that I’m going to share to you that
bear on these predictions come from
interviews with 332 spanish-speaking
adults these individuals range in terms
of how long they’ve been in the u.s.
some are very recent arrivals others
have spent their entire lives in the
United States they range in terms of
their regional or geographic origins and
ancestry they are representative of 20
different latin-american locales and
they also run the socio-economic gamut
all of our participants were paid for
their time they were interviewed in
Spanish they were assured that their
identities would remain in
and as far as I can tell I actually
think they had fun participating in our
study we have every reason to believe
that they answered our questions
truthfully and as best they could so I
want to show you results for three of
the many questions that we asked the
first has to do with language use which
language or languages did you speak with
your mother father siblings kids friends
boss co-workers classmates significant
other the options we gave people was
just Spanish exclusively Spanish just
English or both second question would
you like your children or grandchildren
and grandchildren to learn Spanish
English or both languages and then
finally are you in favor of our do you
oppose legislation that would make
English the official language of the
United States so to see whether answers
to these questions varied with respect
to experience in the United States we
grouped our participants into three
categories newcomers established
immigrants and u.s. born the newcomers
were people who were born outside of the
US who came here after their 16th
birthday and had spent less than six
years in the United States when we
interviewed them the established
immigrants were also born outside of the
US arrived after their 16th birthday but
had spent more than 6 years in the US
when we interviewed them and then
finally the u.s. born were just that so
let’s look at the results starting with
the usage of Spanish English or both
with mother now what you’re gonna see up
here are a number of squares and there’s
going to be three colors on each square
they’re going to correspond to the
answers and in each square there will be
three columns one column corresponding
to each of our immigrant groups I’ll
walk you through it okay so here in this
first square we see responses to the
question which language did or do you
use with your mother on the Left we see
a column for newcomers where we see
almost exclusively blue what that means
is about 98 percent of the people who we
put into the category newcomers answered
this question exclusively Spanish you
can see there’s a small
fraction of red indicating that some
small number of people in that in that
category you Spanish in English with
their mother if you shift to the middle
column the established immigrants you
see that the blue has diminished we all
of a sudden have some green which is
exclusive English use and there’s more
red the trend continues if you look at
the final column that is the column on
the right the us-born you see less blue
more red and more green we see a shift
away from exclusive Spanish use with
mother to an increased use of English we
see the same pattern among father
siblings and then children notice the
trend less blue from left-to-right
within each group more green and more
red an even more dramatic pattern of
language shift occurs outside of the
family here we have significant other
friends co-workers and boss so the thing
to note about these four squares is the
overall low level of blue compared to
inside of the family and the increase in
green and red across Newcomer
established immigrants and u.s. born
let’s look at our next question would
you like your children and grandchildren
to learn Spanish English or both
languages 99 percent of our respondents
said both only one percent said
something other than 99 percent and it
was a plug for English only finally are
you in favor of or do you oppose
legislation that would make English the
official language of the United States a
full two thirds of our respondents were
in favor of English only legislation
these results run across City which is
to say there’s no difference in these
trends in new york and boston they ruin
across men and women both men and women
participate in these trends and have
these answers to these questions
these trends also emerge across widely
varying regional origin which is to say
people of Mexican ancestry don’t answer
these questions differently than people
of Salvadoran ancestry or dominican
ancestry finally these answers and these
trends emerge across all levels of
socioeconomic status so are these
results surprising in the light of the
view that language is a bridge one that
we instinctively want to cross no
they’re not
in fact these results about the
linguistic behavior of spanish-speaking
immigrants in their us-born children are
consistent with what linguists have
known about immigrants to the US for a
very long time they adopt the ways of
speaking of the communities that they
immigrate to so you may have heard the
us described as a country of immigrants
this is a good description of its past
and present population between 1980 and
2015 nearly 30 million people immigrated
to the United States bringing with them
their own ways of speaking there is
arguably more linguistic diversity in
the United States now than there ever
has been
has this plagued our country with
linguistic separatism there are a series
of Nations within the nation no it’s
because the Hispanic challenge isn’t
real
nor is any other challenge claiming a
particular immigrant group is unwilling
unable or uninterested in making
linguistic connections with their fellow
Americans in fact all of the available
data studies like the one I just
described and others like it tell us
that English proficiency and linguistic
diversity are simultaneously on the rise
in the United States a recent report
from the migration policy institute put
it this way while a record sixty four
point seven million people ages five and
older in the United States spoke a
language other than English at home in
2015 a growing share of them are also
fully proficient in English there’s
nothing remarkable about this most
people on earth are multilingual
the human brain evolved to acquire and
use multiple ways of speaking we don’t
need the legislate English proficiency
no one is more aware of the power and
value of the words and sounds that the
majority of Americans use the ones I’m
using right now then an immigrant is it
seems fitting to me that this
magnificent bridge the one that brought
our biggest city into its modern
existence was designed by an immigrant
and built by his us born son along with
a lot of help from his wife it’s a
fascinating story for another day but I
love it because it’s a symbol of our
powerful urge to make linguistic
connections with each other and I hope
you keep it in mind
going forward the next time you think
about the role of language in society I
also hope that if you ever come across a
linguist at a party and they look a
little sad and dejected and
misunderstood you go up to them and you
tell them using your own capacity for
linguistic connection that you know what
they do for a living and that a linguist
once told you that language is a bridge
not a barrier thank you
[Applause]
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