Lessons - The Power of Language | Valerie Fridland - “Like, Literally, Dude” Author
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How do everyday language choices reveal our identity and social relationships?
In this lessons episode, explore how everyday language choices reveal identity and shape human connection. Discover how speech patterns build trust and social bonds, understand why certain language features become stigmatized across gender and class, and uncover how cultural power dynamics influence the evolution of language over time.
When we look at language and like our language choices Forget bias, but just our personal language choices. What does that say about our our identity and our personality and our social relationships?
An enormous amount. And I think that's the thing that people tend not to realize. Um, you know, we see language in two ways, either good language or bad language. And if you speak good language, you're a good person. If you speak bad language, there's something wrong with you. Um, but in reality, language is about social identity just as much as it's about communication. So think about, you know, things like, Hi, how you doing? That we say five million times a day. Uh they're they're really about making connection, right? It's there's nothing informational in that other than, hey, I like you, I just want to check on you, and let's have some connection here. Let's build a relationship. So it's relationship building.
So a lot of times language is about talking in such a way that it invites connection, camaraderie, solidarity, and closeness, or it it tells someone the way that you're approaching them. Um so I, you know, you we were talking before we went on about how you can change your speech over time if you become more informal, more casual, and that you've heard podcasters do that sort of over a couple of years. Well, the idea with more casual informal speech is it's inviting. When you when you go home and you used an overly formal way of approaching your family, they're going to look at you like what the hell is is going on with you because who are you? You know, it because it's weird. It's not it doesn't speak to your relationship.
So when you are in a conversation that with someone you just met, for example, and you sort of get that sense that you like them, that you're making a connection, do you stay stiff and formal in your speech or do you switch and start using maybe more contractions like gonna wanna have to? Do you start saying, you know,
I always switch
gonna instead of will. Do you say things like walking instead of walking? Those are very subtle cues that we give each other about the relationship. So if you've ever been in a conversation where someone does not shift, it's very off putting. And in fact you probably walk away with a bad impression about them. And that's the same thing as using things like discourse markers. Well, oh, so like, you know. Those are about connection. And actually, if you look at research on them, we find that when people take personality tests, more conscientious speakers tend to use more discourse markers. So it's actually the linguistic version of kindness when you think about discourse markers. So our dislike of them is really more about who has tended to use them historically more.
So women tend to use more discourse markers. And it's probably a lot with women's speeches related to the position and the role that they've had um compared to men for centuries and women's voices have always been um sort of vilified and um told to be silent for you know since Aristotle. Uh I think w Aristotle had a saying that said, uh, silence gives grace to woman. So, you know, that sort of tells you what what he thought about women's voices in the public sphere. And then, you know, we used to put them in uh scold bridles in the Middle Ages if they talked too much and said things that we thought was blasphemy, which was mainly saying, you know, he he sucks, we should get rid of this guy. or, you know, talking around the y gossip circles and the w water well that you had these feelings about maybe those in governance or people that were doing things you didn't like.
Well that was dangerous. Especially when women were saying it because women talked to a lot of other women and they talked to their husbands and then it could spread like wildfire.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
How do everyday language choices reveal our identity and social relationships?
0:00–4:31
2
Why do simple greetings like “Hi, how you doing?” function as trust‑building tools?
4:31–10:01
3
What role do discourse markers play in signaling politeness and personality?
10:01–14:04
4
How have historical power dynamics shaped the stigma around women’s speech features?
14:04–19:20
Speakers
1 identifiedMore from Success Story with Scott D. Clary
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