Speech Patterns and Racial Labor Market Inequality

描述（由申请人提供）：语言学家已经记录了标准美国英语（SAE）和非洲裔美国英语（AAE）之间的许多差异，AAE是许多非洲裔美国人使用的方言。社会心理学家已经证明，AAE语言模式会影响听者对说话者的态度。社会学家已经证明，房东不太可能把公寓展示给那些说话带有明显非裔美国人特征的潜在房客。然而，经济学家还没有分析语言和种族劳动力市场不平等之间的联系，尽管有充分的理论理由可以预测这一点。一个主要障碍是缺乏将语言与劳动力市场行为联系起来的数据。这个应用程序试图解决这个问题。其目标是转录和编码从1997年全国青年纵向调查（NLSY97）队列受访者中获取的音频语音样本；将这些音频样本的定性和定量措施添加到NLSY97公共使用文件中；分析这些数据；并利用它们来检验种族劳动力市场不平等的其他解释。劳动力市场不平等是更广泛的种族不平等问题的一个方面，种族不平等问题表现为教育、卫生和儿童福利等方面的种族差异。此外，语言模式的差异具有重要的发育成分，因为语言的许多方面在很大程度上是由说话者进入青春期的时间决定的。我们建议产生的语音数据将是任何主要社会科学数据集中可用的语音模式的第一个定量测量。我们建议进行的分析将比我们初步工作中可用的小样本提供更深入的见解，以了解语言、种族和劳动力市场之间的联系。通过在NLSY97中增加公共使用的言语测量，包括受访者的教育、健康和其他社会经济福利的测量，该项目将使未来的研究人员能够分析言语在种族不平等的许多方面所起的作用。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Linguists have documented many differences between Standard American English (SAE) and African American English (AAE), a dialect spoken by many African Americans. Social psychologists have shown that AAE speech patterns influence listeners' attitudes toward the speaker. Sociologists have shown that landlords are less likely to show apartments to prospective renters whose speech exhibits distinctively African American features. Economists, however, have yet to analyze the link between speech and racial labor market inequality, despite ample theoretical reasons to expect one. A major barrier is a lack of data connecting speech to labor market behavior. This application seeks to remedy that problem. Its goals are to transcribe and code audio speech samples taken from respondents to the 1997 cohort of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY97); to add qualitative and quantitative measures of those audio samples to NLSY97 public use files; to analyze those data; and to use them to test alternative explanations of racial labor market inequality. Labor market inequality is one dimension of the broader problem of racial inequality, which manifests itself in the form of racial differences in education, health, and child well-being, among others. Furthermore, differences in speech patterns have an important developmental component, since many aspects of speech are largely determined by the time the speaker reaches puberty. The speech data which we propose to produce would be the first quantitative measures of speech patterns to be available with any major social science data set. The analyses we propose to conduct would provide much deeper insights into the links between speech, race, and the labor market than those from the small sample that was available for our preliminary work. By adding public-use speech measures to the NLSY97, which includes measures of respondent education, health, and other measures of socioeconomic well-being, the project will enable future researchers to analyze the role that speech plays across numerous dimensions of racial inequality. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: Recent research suggests that racial differences in speech may mediate racial labor market inequality. Labor market inequality is one dimension of the broader problem of racial inequality, which manifests itself in the form of racial differences in education, health, and child well-being, among others. The proposed project will add quantitative and qualitative measures of speech to a large, nationally representative survey of young adults, which in turn will permit researchers to analyze the links between speech and racial inequality not only in the labor market, but also in health and numerous other aspects of socioeconomic well-being.