Are you commercially aware?

Most people pay TV commercials as little attention as possible and use these as an excuse to make a nice cup of tea or quickly rearrange their sock draw. We tend to see TV ads as bothersome interruptions that have the audacity to order us around. Barry Pennock-Speck and Miguel Fuster-Márquez from the University of València wanted to check whether this ‘bossy’ perception of commercials was accurate.

There are various ways to ask people to do something, including using interrogative structures (Would you mind opening the book?), employing modal verbs such as must in statements (Dogs must be kept on a lead), or using certain adjectives (It is crucial/essential to...). However, the researchers found that all these forms were negligible in TV advertising compared to the use of imperatives (open the book!).

Because the addressee in TV commercials has no obligation to comply with a request, the researchers hypothesized that imperatives are carefully worded to express advice or recommendations in a way that would seem to benefit the viewer. To test this, they collected recordings of TV commercials from ITV and Channel 4 between 2009 and 2011. After removing duplicate ads and those without voiceovers, 785 ads were analysed.

The researchers identified the imperatives in the adverts and found a total of 804 examples in 424 of the ads. In the voiceovers which contained imperatives, just over half contained a single imperative, about a quarter contained two imperatives, 13% had three imperatives and just over 10% had four or more imperatives.

As adverts are short texts with an average of 37 words each, the researchers looked further into ads with more than one imperative. They discovered that in these ads the imperatives occurred mainly in demonstrations on how to use a product (Just cut the jumbo block to size and simply add water - JMLDoktorPower), and in offers to viewers of different ways of contacting the advertisers (Call 08009166100 or visit cruisethomascook. com - Thomas Cook).

The analysis showed that while frequent verbs such as CALL, VISIT, GET, SAVE, GO and TRY played a central part in the voiceovers, the ads included a wide variety of 224 distinct types of imperative. The researchers classified these into five groups according to their function:  

Function group	Items per group	% of all imperatives	Distinct types	% of all the distinct types
Attention focusers	258	32	75	33.5
Contact	228	28.5	20	8.9
Acquisition	138	17.1	33	14.8
Experiencers	137	17	74	33
Others	43	5.4	22	9.8
Total	804	100	224	100

The group of ‘Attention focusers’ includes the largest number of imperatives, making up a third of all instances. In addition to obvious examples such as LOOK and WATCH, this study showed many that more imperatives are used figuratively to attract viewers’ attention; for example, Spend more time with our little ones (KFC).

The second largest category, the ‘Contact’ group, was less diverse with three verbs, CALL, VISIT and GO (ONLINE) making up just under 70% of all contact verbs. These request viewers to contact the retailers or visit their websites.

The third category, the ‘Acquisition of Product or Service’ group, includes verbs like BAG and GET. The latter is particularly favoured by advertisers as it highlights the advantages of acquiring a product without referring to a financial transaction; there were only 7 instances of the imperative BUY with its unfortunate connotations of parting with money.

The ‘Experiencers’ category is similar in size to the ‘Acquisition’ group, but is much more diverse. This may be due to the many ways in which a product or service can be used.  Verbs in this group include, for example, ENJOY and TRY. ‘Experiencers’ may function as instructions on how to use a product (Just shake 3 times, foam it, work it all over from root to tip - Nice ’n Easy).

The ‘Others’ group represents less than 10% of all imperatives and features verbs such as PLEDGE and GIVE. Most of these were found in the small selection of 26 noncommercial ads for charities and public services and were more akin to pleas.

To summarise, one would expect that when the addresser lacks the power to impose their will, they would phrase requests politely, using hedges and words such as please. However this study shows that the opposite occurs. As TV viewers are under no compulsion to comply with imperatives, these requests are presented as disinterested advice or useful instructions.

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Pennock-Speck, Barry & Miguel Fuster-Márquez (2014) Imperatives in voice-overs in British TV commercials: 'Get this, buy that taste the other'. Discourse & Communication. published online 20 July 2014.

doi. 10.1177/1750481314537578

This summary was written by Danniella Samos

   HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

                                                             

Dear Digest readers,

The Digest team will be taking a break during August.

This year has been especially busy for the Digest team and we have sometimes been a bit erratic in the postings, but we hope to resume regular weekly postings in September.

There has been a huge growth in the number of people reading the Digest and the number of followers also continues to grow. Please tell your colleagues/students/friends about us so that we can reach as many people as possible.

We are also interested in hearing from our readers with comments about the Digest and suggestions for how we might improve.

Thank you for your continued interest in the Digest.

Best wishes from all at the Linguistics Research Digest team!

(stereo) type your questions into Google

click to see this better!

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

Accent on accent

image of Language Diversity from Tobias Mikkelson
http://www.tobiasmik.dk

"It is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman hate or despise him" wrote George Bernard Shaw in his preface to Pygmalion. He was, of course, referring to the way people evaluate accents and make (usually negative) judgements about speakers.

When we talk about accent, it is important to remember that this relates only to pronunciation and intonation rather than grammar or vocabulary. Thus, two people speaking the same language, who use the same grammar and word choices will give different cues about their social and regional origins, ethnic group membership or class. While we, as listeners, naturally pick up these cues about people’s ethnic, socioeconomic and geographical background, experimental research has shown that listeners can also make judgements on others’ intelligence, warmth and even height just by listening to recorded accented speech.

Although Shaw was referring primarily to British English accents in a class-oriented society, many studies from the UK, USA and Australia from the past six decades all show that foreign accented speech is negatively evaluated by native speakers of a language. People who view their own group or culture as the centre of everything, and who scale and rate all other groups with reference to it, can be said to be ethnocentric. Ethnocentric people tend to strongly identify with people in their own group and are biased against outsiders.

James Neuliep and Kendall Speten-Hansen hypothesised that there would be significant negative correlations between ethnocentrism and the way speakers with non-native accents are socially perceived. To test this, they recruited 93 male and female undergraduate students and randomly assigned 46 of them to an experimental group and 47 to a control group. All participants were native speakers of English.

In the experiment, participants in both groups completed a Generalized Ethnocentrism scale test to see how ethnocentric they were. This included rating on a 5-point scale items such as ‘‘My culture should be the role model for the world’’ and ‘‘I have little respect for the values and customs of other cultures’’.

Then, both groups watched a video of the same male speaker talking for 12 minutes about a non-controversial topic – the benefits of exercise. The videos were identical in every way except for the accent of the speaker. In the film viewed by the experimental group, the speaker had a non-native accent, and in order to try and reduce stereotypical judgments, this accent was left ambiguous, with no detectable regional, ethnic, or national associations. The speaker viewed by the control group spoke with a standard American accent. In both videos, the speaker wore the same clothes, spoke in the same location, at the same pace, and used the same number of gestures.

After viewing the video, participants were asked to complete tasks designed to assess their perception of how attractive the speaker was, and how credible and like themselves he was.

To rate speaker credibility, participants used 7-point semantic scales including scales asking about expertise (for example, a scale between “Qualified” and “Unqualified”) and character (for example, scales such as ‘‘Reliable-Unreliable’’ and ‘‘Honest-Dishonest’’).

Speaker attractiveness was assessed using 7-point scales testing for social, physical, and task attraction. The latter refers to the perception that someone is competent, trained, and qualified to perform a job. To assess attractiveness, participants had to rate items such as ‘‘I think he could be a friend of mine’’, ‘‘I find him physically attractive’’ and ‘‘I have confidence in his ability to get the job done’’.

Perceived homophily (how like the participant the speaker was judged to be) was also assessed by a 7-point semantic scale, where participants were asked to rate items such as ‘‘The Speaker is: Like me-Unlike me’’ and ‘‘The Speaker is: Of similar status to me-of different status to me’’.

As predicted, for the experimental group ethnocentrism was negatively and significantly correlated with perceptions of the speaker’s physical, social, and task attractiveness, his credibility, and perceived homophily. Moreover, this bias is not binary but continuous; the more ethnocentric a participant was, the lower their ratings of the non-native accented speaker’s attractiveness, credibility, and homophily. However, when presented with a speaker with a standard American accent, ethnocentrism played little to no role in the way that the speaker was socially perceived.

The findings are important because previous research has shown that credibility, attractiveness and homophily are three of the most significant social perceptions we make about others, affecting the interpretation of what a person says.  What a non-native speaker is interpreted as saying, then, can depend on the ethnocentricity of their interlocutor.

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Neuliep, James W. & Kendall M. Speten-Hansen (2013) The influence of ethnocentrism on social perceptions of nonnative accents. Language & Communication 33:167–176

doi.10.1016/j.langcom.2013.05.001

This summary was written by Danniella Samos

The Jenny Cheshire Lecture in Sociolinguistics 2014

Professor David Britain: "English in Paradise? A new variety in the Pacific"

Friday 13th June 2013, 6.30pm, Maths Lecture Theatre, School of Mathematica Sciences, Mile End Campus, Queen Mary, University of London.

For more details and to book a free place at this event click here

Do birds of a feather tweet together?

Do you think you would be able to guess the gender of the author of an anonymous tweet? David Bamman, Jacob Eisenstein and Tyler Schnoebelen found some distinct but complex differences in the way men and women use language on the Twitter microblogging site.

The researchers amassed a corpus of over 9 million tweets from more than 14,000 American users. They then assigned gender to each account using historical census information on given names. Using computational methods and statistical tests, they found that:

·       pronouns are used more frequently by women. These include alternative spellings such as u and yr;

·      emotion terms (sad, love, etc.) and emoticons are also associated with female authors.;

·      although previous research has found that kinship terms are used more often by women, in this study  it really is a mixed bag. Most kinship words including mom, sister, daughter, child, dad and husband are used more by women. However, a few words, including wife, bro, and brotha, are associated with male authors;

·      some abbreviations such as lol and omg are used more by women, as are ellipses, expressive lengthening (e.g. coooooool), emoticons, exclamation marks, question marks, representations of sounds like ah, hmmm, and grr as well as hesitation words such as um;

·      assent terms such as okay and yess, are all used more by women, but yessir is used more by men. Similarly, negation terms nooo, and cannot are associated with women, while nah, nobody, and ain’t suggest the author is likely to be a man.

·      swearwords and taboo words are mostly used by male writers whereas women choose milder terms such as darn.

The researchers suggest that the male/female distinction used in much previous research is too simplistic. For example, some linguists claim that women use language in a more expressive way than men by lengthening words like yess and noo. However, using swearwords may also be seen as expressive, and this is done more frequently by men. Similarly, the fact that women use more abbreviations such as omg and lol goes against the common view that women prefer to use more standard language. And although men mention named 'entities' such as Apple or Steve about 30% more often than women, this does not support previous claims that men use language mainly to convey information while women tend to engage with others. When one looks more closely at the data it becomes clear that many of the named entities are sports figures and teams, and are  used by men to engage with others with similar sports interests.

The researchers then identified groups of tweeters who used similar sets of words, regardless of their gender. Many groups turned out to have a substantial majority of either men or women. While some of these clusters matched the linguistic expectations  for their gender, others didn’t. For example, although swearwords are generally preferred by men, some of the male-associated clusters used taboo terms far less often than women. On a closer look, many of these messages turned out to be work-related, where taboo language would be discouraged.

Finally, the researchers wanted to find out whether individuals with a greater proportion of same-gender people in their social networks use more linguistic items associated with their gender. In other words, do birds of a feather tweet together?

Well, sort of. There was a strong correlation between the use of gendered language and the composition of people’s social networks. The women in the dataset had networks which were on average 58% female. However, women whose tweets contained the most strongly marked female characteristics had social networks which were 77% female. Conversely, women who displayed the least gender-marked language had social networks that were on average only 40% female. The results for the men followed a similar pattern.

This fits with previous work showing that people change the way they communicate to match their addressees. People can use language to position themselves in relation to others, and they can do this by either conforming to or defying gendered expectations. So, it seems that it is not so straightforward to match language use with gender after all.

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Bamman, David, Jacob Eisenstein & Tyler Schnoebelen (2014) Gender identity and lexical variation in social media. Journal of Sociolinguistics 18(2): 135–160.

doi. 10.1111/josl.12080

This summary was written by Danniella Samos