Language and Society: What Your Speech Says About You

By: Valerie Fridland, The Great Courses

Narrated by: Valerie Fridland

Language is not a passive means of communication. In fact, it's the active process through which we construct societies, and, within them, our own social lives and realities. Language - as we use it in our day-to-day interactions - fundamentally shapes our experience, our thinking, our perceptions, and the very social systems within which our lives unfold.

Nowhere is the social role of language revealed more clearly than in the fascinating field of sociolinguistics. Among many eye-opening perspectives, the work of sociolinguistics points out that:

• Language is strong social capital, and our linguistic choices carry both costs and benefits we rarely consider.
• Our identity is strongly tied to the speech we use and our perceptions of the speech we hear.
• Our children are raised, our relationships are made, and our careers succeed, in large part, through how we use language.
• Language embodies a worldview: Your linguistic system reflects and affects the way you organize and understand the world around you.

In these 24 thought-provoking lectures, you'll investigate how social differences based on factors such as region, class, ethnicity, occupation, gender, and age are inseparable from language differences. Further, you'll explore how these linguistic differences arise, and how they both reflect and generate our social systems. You'll look at the remarkable ways in which our society is a reflection of our language, how differences in the way people use language create differences in society, how people construct and define social contexts by their language use, and ultimately why our speech reveals so much about us. Join a brilliantly insightful sociolinguist and teacher in a compelling inquiry that sheds light on how our linguistic choices play a determining role in every aspect of our lives.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your My Library section along with the audio.

©2014 The Teaching Company, LLC (P)2014 The Great Courses

Worst Great Courses I've Heard

Painful attempts at humor, sudden yelling, and a subtitle so inaacurate I'd call it deceptive.

Very informative

This is a very useful and comprehensive overview of English phonology, dialects, and sociolinguistics. I felt like the speaker really wanted this to be a lecture with in person listeners which is why she kept laughing at her own jokes, and although this did make her seem a bit out of touch I think her humor also served to make the whole lecture seem more personal. I'm not sure she's the best at reproducing some of the sounds she was giving an example for but this should only serve as an overview not as an actual phonetics course.

Good info, narration not so much.

Content was very good. Presentation was difficult to listen to at times. It does get better later in the course. A little.

Presenter speaks too fast and consequently trips over her own words often. Later she seems unfamiliar with her own lecture material and restarts sentences multiple times. Too many attempted witty one-liners that fall flat, and while I appreciate her efforts for professional reasons to modulate her native dialect, she brings it up almost every lecture and it gets tiresome. Feels like she's trying too hard to be relatable and/or funny. Perhaps she should have simply spoken naturally, though at one point she notes she's lived in Nevada for a few years at the time she recorded these lectures.

I also felt she had some slightly negative attitudes or comments towards certain geographical areas and states. I grew up in the northeastern US and then moved to the Upper Midwest as a tween, and after military service (as a linguist), currently reside in the northern part of the South. I'm familiar with all the specific accents and dialects she references from these locations, and some from outside the US as well. A few of her overexaggerations of the Upper Midwest dialects earned her a side eye as I listened. Probably wouldn't have been as bad if she hadn't started laughing at herself immediately afterward.

Not enough of the recorded native speakers (and the recordings were not the best quality), and it could do with less of her attempt to mimic some of these same speech patterns. I don't know if her academic speaking was over the top for other listeners (I'm finishing up my PhD and using a heavily language-based methodology so it was fine for me), so I'm not going to comment on that portion.

She speaks too fast, tries too hard to be funny.

Content was actually extremely interesting all the way through, if you can get past her delivery of the material.

Like nails on a chalkboard

Would you try another book from The Great Courses and/or Professor Valerie Fridland?

Yes but not if Mrs Fridland narrates it. One of the other reviewers pointed out how annoying her voice is and I have to agree. It's shrill, weirdly chipper,and just not comfortable to listen to for more than a few minutes.

What was one of the most memorable moments of Language and Society: What Your Speech Says About You?

I zoned out a lot during this audio book, something that very rarely happens. Mrs Fridland just didn't keep me interested all that long. The few points I do remember were interesting though.

What didn’t you like about Professor Valerie Fridland’s performance?

She has a high pitched voice, too shrill. Not pleasant.

Was Language and Society: What Your Speech Says About You worth the listening time?

I didn't retain a lot of the concepts. This might be a lecture better ingested from a written source material.

Any additional comments?

The content is interesting but I just couldn't finish it. Mrs Fridland's voice and fact that visualizing language-based concepts is hard make this for a fairly tough audio book to get through.

Lots of asides

I love language and linguistics and this lecture is great if you want more information on how language functions in society. The main drawback for me was the high number of corny jokes and asides the author makes. They add a nice touch of casualness if you like that kind of thing in a lecture, but I wasn't particularly impressed by them. (and there's a lot of jokes and asides)

handbook for anyone on the spectrum

This is a handbook for aspies to understand the reasons why saying something gets taken the wrong way. Nobody knows the rules for me to follow therefore they can't really tell me why they are mad. I don't understand what I need to do, because I can't figure out the rules. It doesn't come naturally to me. Everything I understand about communication, has taken hours of note taking in areas where I can listen to many different conversations. I so wish I could have had this explained to me in at a much younger age.

The English language and the US society maybe a more precise title

The 24 lectures focuse on different aspects of English as the main language of communication in the US. There are some mentions of other cultures or languages but they are few and minor. A positive aspect of the course is providing from time to time a recorded example of speech that illustrates some issue. Less positive aspects: some issues are discussed like in a research paper for experts not for students who need concrete examples; the second lecture - whose subject is whether language shapes our perception of the world - is treated superficially; the audiobook may be enjoyed by a native American but less - in my opinion - by people who are fluent in English but did not live in the US.

Sad Clown

This poor uncharismatic women comes across as a squawkingly brainless air-head with her vapid, annoying American housewife voice and superficial, disqualifying nonsense of humor. No matter how solid her scholarly authority is (and to me it is only satisfactory, on a high school level), she undermines any academic legitimacy or popular appeal with butterfly frivolity, incoherence and stupid, insecure attempts at being cute. The first eight lessons are enough to stifle anyone's interest (there is some improvement after), she repeats herself, including painful jokes, and presents examples and illustration with clumsy ineptness. There should be more and better spoken clips, and they need more vivid analysis. Though she is qualified in her field, she murders the subject. Slow down, don't try to be funny, stop giggling, and go into greater depth in at least a few aspects of sociolinguistics.

Interesting, but not illuminating

I suppose I would recommend this lecture series to people who already understand the technical descriptions of enunciation. About the only one I know is "glottal stop," but that didn't get me very far when listening to the lecturer describe styles of speaking.

Other comments on the series pointed out the lecturers rapid speech. It did take some getting used to, but I think I understand where it comes from: Nevada. Years ago I interacted with a medical person who spoke the same way and in the course of our conversation, she said she was from Nevada and that everyone spoke rapidly.

The lecture information gives some historical information about where various styles of speech in the US originated, but I'd have liked to know more -- in everyday English and with actual examples of the speech rather than people reciting a written script. I still don't know what well over half the tech terms mean.

I may go through the PDF file at the Audible site to look for information that may have whipped past me, but I don't think I'll listen to this lecture series again. I did listen to all the lectures.

Mocking

I know that Dr. Fridlund is trying to be funny, but she isn't. The continued mocking of caught/cot and especially the accent found in the Inland North, she just comes off as mean spirited. She can do better.