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While searching for information on the web, Paul Baker and Amanda Potts noticed that Google’s auto completion algorithm was inadvertently reproducing stereotypes. Troubled by this phenomenon, they set out to investigate which social groups elicited more stereotyping questions than others and how these differed in nature.

In 2010 Google added auto-completion algorithms to offer a list of suggestions when users type words into the search box. The predicted text shown in a drop-down list has either been entered by previous users or appears on the web. While this process can save time, it also has some unintended consequences. For example, when one types ‘why do gay’ into the search box, the information in the picture above appears.

These suggestions are stereotypical; they ascribe characteristics to people on the basis of their group membership, reducing them to certain (often exaggerated) traits.

To carry out their study, the researchers first created a list of identity groups to investigate. They found that the terms which produced the most questions were related to ethnicity, gender, sexuality and religion. The groups eventually chosen were: black, Asian, white, Muslim, Jewish, Christian, men, women, gay, lesbian and straight. In each category, a selection of similar terms was used, so for example the male category included men, boys and guys. The researchers also chose people as a control group to show how humans are characterised when they are not associated with particular identities.

Next, they paired these terms with question forms in order to elicit auto-suggestions. The question forms included items such as why do, how do, where do as well as questions beginning with do, should and are. Each question was entered individually and the top suggestions were recorded.
Some of the elicited questions did not refer to social groups and were excluded. Finally, 2690 queries were analysed and it was found that the groups which elicited the most queries were Jewish, Black  and Muslim with over 300 results each, whereas People only elicited 70 and Lesbian a mere 41 queries.
The questions were then divided into the following categories:

Each question was also rated with regards to evaluation, and was classed as positive, negative or neutral. While the majority of the questions were classed as neutral, most groups tended to have more of their questions categorised as negative than positive. Surprisingly, the control category people elicited proportionally the most negative questions, which tended to be about why people engage in hurtful behaviours such as bullying and self-harming.

The relatively high proportion of negative questions for three groups was particularly concerning. For black people, these involved constructions of them as lazy, criminal, cheating, under-achieving and suffering from various conditions such as fibroids. Gay people were constructed as contracting AIDS, going to hell, not deserving equal rights or talking like girls. The negative questions for males positioned them as catching thrush, under-achieving and treating females poorly.

Conversely, all ethnic groups also elicited many positive questions. Black people were constructed as stronger, more attractive and virile. Asians were viewed as smart, slim and attractive, while white people were viewed as attractive and ‘ruling’ other groups.

In general, race and gender searches elicited questions concerned with the level of interest of one group for another. Indeed, top results for both genders featured the opposite sex. However, sexual fulfilment and references to orgasm appeared more frequently for the female questions.

The straight category included fewer questions (perhaps as this is seen as the ‘norm’). These tended to be about whether straight men enjoyed stereotypically gay entertainment such as TV show Glee or singer Cher, and whether straight men could ‘turn’ gay or have homosexual thoughts.

Whereas the Gay results included questions about whether gay people should be allowed to marry, adopt, join the military or give blood, Lesbian questions included negative stereotypes such as acting/looking like men, questions about sexual and emotional behaviour towards men and the mechanics of lesbian relationships.

While the researchers do not claim that people who are exposed to such questions will be influenced by the stereotypes they encounter, it is important to acknowledge that these do exist. In addition, this paper raises the moral question of whether content-providers should ‘protect’ their users and remove offensive auto-suggestions (and indeed who decides what is inappropriate?), or should they simply reflect the phenomena that people are interested in?

Baker and Potts warn that auto-complete suggestions could perpetuate stereotypes, and that not all people would view them with a critical eye. They therefore recommend that there should be a facility to flag certain auto-completion suggestions as problematic, and that Google should consider removing those that are consistently flagged.
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Baker, Paul & Amanda Potts (2013) ‘Why do white people have thin lips?’ Google and the perpetuation of stereotypes via auto-complete search forms, Critical Discourse Studies,10:2, 187-204

doi.10.1080/17405904.2012.744320

This summary was written by Danniella Samos

Welsh and English in Wales

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Language policy and planning initiatives devoted to the revival of the use of Welsh in Wales appear to have been successful in halting the decline of the language. In fact, census data in 2001 showed that the use of the Welsh language among speakers had increased by an impressive 1.8% in the previous decade. Coinciding with this increase has been an increase in the public visibility of Welsh and English bilingualism, for example in road signs and public notices and on more personal items such as T-shirts. Is this increased visibility of bilingualism simply an index of the revival efforts? Researcher Nik Coupland says that ‘this is too sparse an account’ and argues that there is a wide range of social forces that impact on language display in Wales.

Coupland has looked at a range of images that are currently on display in Wales and suggests that they can be ‘framed’ in five different ways. The first two are indicative of the way that visible bilingualism in Welsh has been institutionally promoted in Wales. The other three frames tend to reflect the context in which Welsh is being used and, to an extent, the attitudes of those displaying the images.

Nonautonomous Welsh refers to the display of Welsh throughout most of the 20^th Century, when Welsh was either considered to be inappropriate for use as a public code or it was heavily anglicized, particularly along the Welsh/English border. Examples are street names, which clearly draw on Welsh but which use English orthography followed by the English word street or road e.g. Danycoed Road. In this frame, then, Welsh can be seen to be ‘delegitimized and publicly subordinated to English’.

Parallel-text bilingualism describes the dominant pattern of bilingual signage over the last two decades and which promotes Welsh and English as being on an equal footing, as in the car park image above. In this case the sign has Welsh first, common in areas where there is a high proportion of bilingual speakers, but in areas where there are fewer bilingual speakers the signs are often English first. It is noteworthy, though, that an equal amount of visual space is given to both languages. These parallel-text displays reflect the current language policy of Wales.

The third frame is what Coupland calls The frame of National Resistance and links to images which are displays of language activism in Wales and tend to promote the idea that Welsh is under threat, primarily from English. One example given is a caravan parked in a field with the slogan ‘SPEAK OUR LANGUAGE!’ painted on its side, which clearly speaks to potential English-speaking incomers to the area. These activist images are perhaps seen more in northwest Wales in the denser Welsh-speaking areas. 

The fourth frame, Welsh exoticism, looks at images which promote Welsh as what Coupland calls a ‘consumable cultural curiosity’ and which are generally embedded within the promotion of Welsh in the tourist industry. The most obvious example is the name of the town Llanfairpwllgwyngychgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch  which is displayed, along with a syllable-by syllable guide to its pronunciation, at the town’s railway station. The town is conventionally known as LlanfairPG or Llanfairpwll but here the sign promotes Welsh as being exotic, a language that cannot be pronounced without assistance.

In the final frame of Laconic Metacultural Celebration Coupland looks at the way that language display can be a ‘personalized and personalizing practice’. He discusses the way that a small commercial company in north Wales projects Welsh language and culture onto T-shirt and sweatshirt images. One example, for instance, promotes the historic value of Welsh by parodying a well-known beer-advertising slogan: the T-shirt text reads Cymraeg (meaning Welsh) with the subscript Probably the oldest living language in Europe. Other texts allude to Welsh historical events or cultural phenomena; the use of 62 on a T-shirt for instance is a reference to an important year, 1962, in the revitalization of Welsh and the year that the Welsh Language Society was formed. The slogans invite the reader to puzzle over and work out the references for themselves but, as Coupland points out, they are all celebratory.

Coupland concludes by highlighting that institutions are not the only agents in the process of imprinting language ideologies on public spaces; individuals and small companies can also contribute to the linguistic landscape. The different frames of language display show that ‘there are competing ways of visualizing what “being bilingual” actually means’.

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Coupland, Nikolas. (2012). Bilingualism on Display: The framing of Welsh and English in Welsh public spaces. Language in Society 41, 1-27.

doi: 10.1017/S0047404511000893

This summary was written by Sue Fox