Diversity and Inclusive Language

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(upbeat music) Welcome to Diversity and Inclusive Language. According to anthropologist Gary Ferraro, "The language we speak helps us articulate who we are and how we experience the world." For example, when we introduce ourselves, we don't say that we're humans. Instead, we identify ourselves as people by using names that symbolize us. Then we might mention what culture we belong to and include our native languages as a way to further introduce ourselves. So I might give my name and also say, "I'm from the Southern United States and I'm proud of my accent," or, "I'm Moroccan and I speak Darija and Spanish." When we describe ourselves, we might also talk about our race, ethnicity, sex, age, and culture. The way we refer to ourselves and each other helps distinguish who we're discussing from every other person on the planet. How others address us or refer to us communicates their understanding of who we are. Because we aren't born already knowing everyone's names and identities, we usually take cues from what we can observe when first meeting a person through their verbal and nonverbal language. To learn more about them, we can consider their accent or speech patterns, clothing, hairstyle, mannerisms, and body posture. Here's an example that illustrates how these details show up in speech. You might meet a family and later say to a coworker, "I met this wealthy Scandinavian couple and their child this morning. She might join my afternoon class." Your coworker might know the family is Scandinavian because that's how they introduced themselves, but the other details weren't discussed out loud, just inferred through visual cues and nonverbal communication. Your coworker might infer that this is who you understand the family to be based on your own perception of what wealthy people look like, which could differ significantly from your coworker's perception if you both come from different socioeconomic classes. Language is a part of culture that comes from the people we grew up around. Culture is commonly defined as learned behaviors and symbols that foster community. This can include having the same food, music, and religious beliefs as these aspects of life often connect people through shared communal experiences. Attuning to culture is the main way people adapt to their environments, which is called assimilating or learning to share characteristics with a group to develop a more united identity. Gary Ferraro writes that culture also refers to a specific group's lifestyle and people can belong to more than one culture at the same time. For example, Juan grew up speaking both Spanish and English and Santa Fe, New Mexico. He is considered bilingual, American, and Latino. He holds the same religious views as his extended family in Central America. He also identifies with their history and celebrates the same holidays. Juan even adopts many of their same social habits like the way he socially interacts with his family versus his classmates, but the music he likes isn't at all similar to what his family in Central America listens to. It's closer to what his friends in New Mexico enjoy. When he shops, he selects between the same brands that his neighbors in Santa Fe buy. This is the culture within which his education and much of his lifestyle are based. And even with the similarities, Juan sometimes speaks differently from his Spanish-speaking social circle in the United States as his dialect comes from his extended family down south. So Juan could be what Gary Ferraro calls multicultural or culturally hybrid because Juan belongs to more than one culture. In countries with large immigrant populations like the United States, many households speak more than one language at home. Language and culture intersect in the way we present who we are and how we want others to understand us.