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Research from Columbia Business School professors Adam Galinsky and Michael Slepian shows that merely saying a name aloud sparks an instant connection to a specific gender, evoking a cascading pattern of stereotypical judgments about the masculinity or femininity of an individual, often in the first second of hearing a spoken name. "Names give cues to social categories, which in turn, activate stereotypes," says Slepian. "By considering how names symbolically represent stereotypes, we link sounds to social perception. The most basic social category division is gender and the most distinction between phonemes (the sounds that make up words) is voiced versus unvoiced. We found that female and male names differ phonetically." The Columbia Business School researchers believe that names become established as for males or females through their spoken sounds. They conducted eleven studies focused on distinguishing the different sounds of spoken names. The findings provide consistent evidence that voiced names (those pronounced with vocal cord vibration which often sound "harder") such as "Gregory," "James," and "William" are given more frequently to males, and unvoiced names (those pronounced without vocal cord vibration which often sound "softer" and breathier) such as "Heather," "Sarah," and "Tiffany" are more frequently given to females. These name assignments fit stereotypical gender categories - men as "hard" and tough, and women as "soft" and tender. The researchers also noted other naming trends, namely 1. A rise in gender-neutral names. 2. Parents are more likely to give their baby a name that has recently grown in popularity. 3. Parents often give names that phonetically resemble their social category. 4. Female names go in and out of style faster than male names. 5. Current naming inspiration includes social media and technology, celestial themes, and royal birth announcements.

The notion of a "gay lisp"-an offensive stereotype to many people-has been a confusing phenomenon for linguists. For decades, popular depictions of gay men have sometimes portrayed them pronouncing the letter "s" as more of a "th" sound-even though studies have failed to find "lispier" speech in gay men than in straight men. Now, however, preliminary data from a small study presented here last week at the biannual Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America (ASA) show that young boys who don't identify with their assigned gender use "th"-like pronunciation at slightly higher rates than their peers who do, although they seem to grow out of that tendency. The authors speculate that stereotypes of gay adults may be rooted in the speech of boys who go on to identify as gay.

Wordles of commonly used words in television commercials advertising boy and girl toys.

This article writes about the variation in speech rate. Some languages tend to have more syllables per a second. For example, French, Japanese, and Spanish speakers tend to have speak more syllables per a second (almost 8/s) than German, Vietnamese, or Mandarin speakers (roughly 5/s). Although stereotypes exist relating to speech rate, there is no connection between intelligence and speech rate. One significant and consistent variable in speech rate is age. Children speak slowly, then speed up until their 40s, then slow down again in their 50s and 60s.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - A tone-deaf inquiry into an Asian-American's ethnic origin. Cringe-inducing praise for how articulate a black student is. An unwanted conversation about a Latino's ability to speak English without an accent.This is not exactly the language of traditional racism, but in an avalanche of blogs, student discourse, campus theater and academic papers, they all reflect the murky terrain of the social justice word du jour - microaggressions - used to describe the subtle ways that racial, ethnic, gender and other stereotypes can play out painfully in an increasingly diverse culture.

This short documentary explores the reasons that some men sound stereotypically gay, whether they are or not.

Analyzing the verbs that followed male and female pronouns in 100K stories, the following patterns were observed: 1. Women are more likely to be in the role of victims- "she screams", "she cries", or "she pleads." Men tend to be the aggressor: "he kidnaps" or "he beats". Not all male-oriented terms are negative- many, like "he saves"/"he rescues" are distinctly positive- but almost all are active rather than receptive. 2. There's an old stereotype (that's appeared in works like Game of Thrones and Sherlock Holmes) that "poison is a woman's weapon", and this is supported in our analysis. Female characters are more likely to "poison", "stab", or "kick"; male characters are more likely to "beat", "strangle", or simply "murder" or "kill". Men are moderately more likely to "steal", but much more likely to "rob". 3. Based on this text analysis, a fictional murderer is about 2.5X as likely to be male than female, but in America (and likely elsewhere) murderers are about 9X more likely to be male than female. This means female murderers may be overrepresented in fiction relative to reality. David Robinson, the data scientist who ran the text analysis, offers these questions for future research: 1.Is the shift stronger in some formats or genre than another? We could split the works into films, novels, and TV series, and ask whether these gender roles are equally strong in each. 2. Is the shift different between male- and female- created works? 3. Has the difference changed over time? Some examination indicates the vast majority of these plots come from stories written in the last century, and most of them from the last few decades (not surprising since many are movies or television episodes, and since Wikipedia users are more likely to describe contemporary work). 4. I'd also note that we could expand the analysis to include not only pronouns but first names (e.g. not only "she tells", but "M

""Wait, what?" you may be asking yourself. "Mele" for "merry", OK - obviously /l/ is the closest thing to /r/ in Hawaiian, we're used to that from stereotypes (and even facts) about Japanese and other varieties of "Engrish".  But where did that kalikimaka come from?"

In a 2011 survey, Renee Engeln, Professor of Psychology at Northwestern University and a colleague found that more than 90 percent of college women reported engaging in fat talk - despite the fact that only 9 percent were actually overweight. In another, 2014 survey, she canvassed thousands of women ranging in age from 16 to 70. Contrary to the stereotype of fat talk as a young woman's practice, she found that fat talk was common across all ages and all body sizes of women. Engeln notes that fat talk is not a harmless social-bonding ritual. According to an analysis of several studies published in 2012 in the Psychology of Women Quarterly, fat talk was linked with body shame, body dissatisfaction and eating-disordered behavior. Engeln also found that fat talk was contagious. She ran an 2012 experiment where young women, "confederates" secretly working for the researchers, joined two other young women seated at a table to discuss magazine advertisements. The ads started out innocently enough. One was for an electronics store. Another was for a water purifier. But the third was a typical fashion ad showing a model in a bikini. In the control condition, confederates commented on the visuals in the background of the fashion ad, but avoided any mention of the model or her appearance. In the "fat talk" condition, the two confederates (neither of whom was overweight) commented on the model. One said: "Look at her thighs. Makes me feel so fat." The other responded: "Me, too. Makes me wish my stomach was anywhere near flat like that." Then it was our subjects' turn. In the control condition, when neither of our confederates engaged in fat talk, none of our subjects fat talked. But when our confederates engaged in fat talk, almost a third of the subjects joined in. These subjects also reported higher levels of body dissatisfaction and shame at the end of the study than did their counterparts in the control condition.

Because of the role they play in our thought processes, the metaphors we choose to use can dramatically impact people's perceptions in ways that have real-world consequences. Metaphors may also reinforce culturally-ingrained stereotypes.

This article speaks of the ways people of different areas shape their mouths in order to speak. This is what particularly forms accents. For example, A cocky London accent could be replicated by elongating the mouth when saying "I". The muscles and ways the mouth is formed is different for each language and should be noted. However, beware not to fall into offensive stereotypes.

Homeschooled children are typically seen as having less social skills and slower language development, but in fact this stereotype is not true. According to this scholarly article, homeschooled students actually performed better on the SAT in the language section than the math section. Homeschooled children also performed better overall on the SAT than the average public school student. The article also found that due to the advent of technology and social media, homeschooled students have much less social interaction than public school students.

Across the workld, girls routinely outstrip boys at reading. In two of the largest studies ever conducted into the reading habits of children in the United Kingdom, Keith Topping-a professor of educational and social research at Scotland's University of Dundee-found that boys dedicate less time than girls to processing words, that they're more prone to skipping passages or entire sections, and that they frequently choose books that are beneath their reading levels. "Girls tend to do almost everything more thoroughly than boys," Topping told me over email, while conversely boys are "more careless about some, if not most, school subjects." And notably, as countless studies have shown, girls are also more likely to read for pleasure. The literacy gap also produces disparities in educational achievement overall. The disparity, researchers believe, is not rooted in biology, as the brain is a unisex organ; most gender differences are mostly a result of socialization. Boys tend to be more vulnerable than girls to peer pressure, and that could discourage them from activities like reading that are perceived to be "uncool." David Reilly, a psychologist, points to the stereotype that liking and excelling at reading is a feminine trait. He suggested that psychological factors-like girls' tendency to develop self-awareness and relationship skills earlier in life than boys-could play a role in the disparity, too, while also explaining why boys often struggle to cultivate a love of reading. "Give boys the right literature, that appeals to their tastes and interests, and you can quickly see changes in reading attitudes," he says, citing comic books as an example.

In this TED talk video and transcription Anna Babel a Spanish professor talks about how social categories, stereotypes, and discrimination can change a person's perception of a speaker. Babel also uses scientific evidence to back her claims and poses questions as to what these findings say about discrimination in our society.

This article covers the word 'like' and talks about how the negative beliefs that are associated with using this word such as "it is a sign of stupidity" are inaccurate. I was originally attracted to this article because I tend to say 'like' a lot when I talk, and I've always been told that this is something I want to avoid. However, after reading this article, I no longer think that saying 'like' often is a bad thing.

This is an article about the experiences, inner thoughts, and struggles of a girl who is deaf. From this article, I learned and realized many things such as how difficult lipreading can be. Originally, I was amazed at how deaf people could read lips and thought they could understand every word someone said. However, I learned from this article that that is NOT true and things such as accents and a lack of expression can make it difficult for one to decipher what is being said.

This article examines different ways that casual racism is seen in our daily lives. Due to certain stereotypes engrained in our society, racism is often unintentional, and people don't understand the weight of their words.

This study explores the use of filler words through the lens of gender. Filler words are more commonly associated with women due to the "valley-girl" stereotype. However, these researchers found that, while filler words were used more frequently by women in the past, men use tend to use more filler words than women present-day. This paper discusses how the shift in gender roles and social dynamics between the genders contributes to speech patters.

This article talks about the possible costs of code-switching. In the article, they talk about how people of color, mostly black people, are most likely to code-switch because it allows them to steer away from the negative stereotypes in-bedded in different racial groups and increases their likelihood of being hired. However, they find that code-switching can cause a professional dilemma; Suppress their cultural identity or sacrifice their job to be themselves?