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How Does Language Influence Society – Speaking, writing and reading are an integral part of everyday life, where language is the main tool of expression and communication. Studying how people use language (what words and phrases they choose and combine unconsciously) can help us better understand ourselves and why we behave the way we do.
Linguistics scholars seek to determine what is unique and universal about the language we use, how it is acquired, and the ways in which it changes over time. They consider language as a cultural, social and psychological phenomenon.
How Does Language Influence Society
“Understanding why and how languages differ speaks to the breadth of what is human,” said Dan Jurafsky, the Jackson Eli Reynolds Professor of Humanities and chair of the Department of Linguistics at Stanford’s School of Humanities and Sciences. “Discovering what is universal about languages can help us understand the core of our humanity.”
Inclusive Language Principles That Will Make You A More Successful Recruiter
The following stories represent some of the ways in which linguists have investigated many aspects of language, including its semantics and syntax, phonetics and phonology, and its social, psychological, and computational aspects.
Stanford linguists and psychologists study how people interpret language. According to research, even the slightest differences in language use can correspond to speakers’ biased beliefs.
One study showed that a relatively harmless phrase, like “girls are as good as boys at math,” can subtly perpetuate sexist stereotypes. Because of the grammatical structure of the statement, it implies that being good at math is more common or natural for boys than for girls, the researchers said.
Language can play an important role in how we and others perceive the world, and linguists work to discover which words and phrases can influence us, unknowingly.
Detecting And Mitigating Bias In Natural Language Processing
New research from Stanford shows that sentences that frame one gender as the standard for the other can unintentionally perpetuate biases.
New research from Stanford shows that, over the past century, linguistic changes in ethnic and gender stereotypes correlated with major social movements and demographic shifts in US census data.
Stanford doctoral candidate Katherine Hilton found that people perceive interruptions in conversation differently, and those perceptions differ depending on the listener’s conversational style and gender.
Professors Jennifer Eberhardt and Dan Jurafsky, along with other Stanford researchers, detected racial disparities in police officers’ speech after analyzing more than 100 hours of Oakland police body camera footage.
Chomsky’s Theory Of Language Acquisition
People speak approximately 7,000 languages around the world. Although there is much in common between languages, each is unique, both in its structure and in the way it reflects the culture of the people who speak it.
Jurafsky said it is important to study languages other than our own and how they develop over time because it can help scholars understand what is the basis of humans’ unique way of communicating with each other.
Fifth-year doctoral student Kate Lindsey recently returned to the United States after a year of documenting an obscure indigenous language of the South Pacific nation.
In a research project spanning eight countries, two Stanford students search for Esperanto, a constructed language, in the context of European populism.
The Influence Of Social Contacts On Language And Culture In A Changing Society
Using digital tools and literature to explore the evolution of the Spanish language, Stanford researcher Cuauhtémoc García-García reveals a new historical perspective on linguistic changes in Latin America and Spain.
Linguists analyze how certain speech patterns correspond to particular behaviors, including how language can affect people’s purchasing decisions or influence their use of social media.
For example, in one research paper, a group of Stanford researchers examined differences in how Republicans and Democrats express themselves online to better understand how belief polarization can occur on social media.
“We live in a very polarized time,” Jurafsky said. “Understanding what different groups of people are saying and why is the first step in determining how we can help bring people together.”
Mapped: The World’s Indigenous Peoples
New research by Dora Demszky and her colleagues examined how Republicans and Democrats express themselves online in an attempt to understand how belief polarization occurs on social media.
A Stanford senior studied a group of bilingual children at a Spanish immersion preschool in Texas to understand how they distinguished between their two languages.
Stanford linguist Dan Jurafsky and his colleagues have found that products in Japan sell better if their advertising includes polite language and words that invoke cultural traditions or authority.
By examining the conversations of elderly Japanese women, linguist Yoshiko Matsumoto discovers language techniques that help people overcome traumatic events and regain a sense of normality.
Is English Changing?
The Stanford Law Criminal Justice Center reported on the number of women in prison for intimate partner violence-related homicides. Her work drove policy change, and quickly. Normative influence in social psychology refers to the pressure to conform to social norms or expectations to gain acceptance and approval from others.
This concept involves individuals adjusting their behavior to align with a group’s norms, often to avoid disapproval or rejection. It is a key form of informal social control in societies (McDonald & Crandall, 2015).
An example of normative influence is when a boy wears a certain style of clothing to fit in with his classmates, even though he personally doesn’t like it, but because he wants to be accepted by her classmates.
“….normative influence occurs when we conform to the expectations of others. We do what we “should” do.”
Many, Many Examples Of Essential Questions
From these definitions, normative influence in social psychology can be understood as the pressure that individuals experience to conform to social or group norms, driven by the desire to meet the expectations of others and obtain their approval (note: this is similar to, but different from, the concept of subjective norms in the theory of planned behavior).
This type of influence shapes behavior by encouraging individuals to act in ways that align with what their social environment deems acceptable, ultimately promoting harmony and cohesion within the group.
The term “normative influence” arises from research on social conformity within social psychology and, to a lesser extent, sociology.
The concept was developed in the mid-20th century by the following prominent social psychologists: Muzafer Sherif, Solomon Asch, and Harold Kelley.
Social Cues: What They Are And How To Read Them
Sherif’s (1935) autokinetic effects experiments were instrumental in demonstrating how individuals are gently forced to conform to group norms through the gentle influence of the group.
Sherif emphasized that the more ambiguous the situation, the more likely a person is to draw on the opinions and judgments of others to form their own beliefs.
A negative consequence of unloading your moral thinking into groups is deindividuation, which leads to uncritical, cult-like thinking (see my full article on this phenomenon: Deindividuation).
Following Sherif, Deutsch, M. and Gerard, H. B. (1955) carried out a series of experiments on conformity, in which they highlighted the role of normative influence in decision making, which supported what is now known as social influence theory.
Influence Of Language On Society
They argue that many people even conform to the group norm even when they know it is obviously incorrect.
Based on this research, they categorized two key ways people were influenced; Differentiated normative influence and informational influence:
It involves conforming to group norms and expectations in the hopes of being liked and accepted, or to avoid disapproval.
It involves conforming to group norms and expectations based on information that leads you to believe they are accurate or trustworthy.
Intriguing Cause And Effect Essay Topics For Students
Behavior can change quickly to fit the norms of the group one is in; Beliefs and attitudes are often temporary or situational.
Dressing similarly to your friends, using slang or popular expressions within a social group, or adopting certain behaviors to be accepted (for example, undergoing hazing within fraternities).
Seek advice from experts or wise group members, follow instructions in an emergency situation, or adopt new evidence-based practices.
It can generate too much trust in authority and authorized institutions; requires strong critical thinking and media literacy skills.
The Power Of Language: How Words Shape People, Culture
It can lead to conformity and suppression of individuality: it can harm people who feel they don’t fit into group expectations.
Can result in harmful or unhealthy behaviors: Entire societies can engage in groupthink behaviors that are objectively harmful.
Inhibits social change: People who stand out from the crowd are excluded from the in-group, so social and cultural innovation is stifled.
Promotes a sense of belonging and social identity: By submitting to group norms, you can develop a strong sense of inclusion.
Examples Of Sociological Imagination: Making Connections
Normative social influence is a powerful driver of cultural identity. It helps people join and adhere to a strong, shared and protected cultural group. We all experience it through socialization and informal social sanctions that show us how to behave in ways that generate optimal social capital within our societies. However, it can also lead to a lack of critical thinking and group mediocrity, as societies require individuals with new and innovative ideas to achieve social progress.
Collado, S., Staats, H. and Sancho, P. (2019). Normative influences on adolescents’ self-reported pro-environmental behaviors: The role of parents and friends.
Deutsch, M., & Gerard, H. B. (1955). A study of normative and informational social influences on individual judgment.
Dr. Chris Drew is the founder of Helpful Professor. He has a doctorate in education and has published more than 20 articles in academic journals. He is the former editor of the Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education. [Image Descriptor: Photo by Chris] The occurrence of social change is not always traceable. The origin of these changes is not always obvious in terms
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