Interesting, but some of the writing, and particularly the repetition, was annoying ( )

I debated giving this book 3 or 4 stars. Went with 4 because I’m feeling generous. Liked the first half of the book pretty well, but then she segued from talking about about how people with non-standard English accents face discrimination (true, and a problem) into urging that they be a legally protected class from discrimination (not a good idea, you can’t keep adding to the already long list of protected classes). The very end of the book was a chapter about sexist language, more or less correct but this has been hashed out since the seventies and I don’t think she added anything new.

I think she should have had some more interesting details about what accents are, how they evolve, how people perceive different accents, etc in the first half of the book and just skipped the second half. ( )

This is an interesting book from a psychological perspective. I was hoping for a more linguistic analysis. I didn't wreathe book thoroughly, but grammar seems not to be mentioned. Code switching was mentioned but not class bias. Some people "elevate"their speech in some situations. ( )

This is a must-read for anyone who seeks to learn more about racism and related issues. The author shows that our tribalism is more deeply rooted in language than in skin color. Simply put, we have biases against people who don't speak like us, and particularly those who speak a so-called non-standard dialect or have a pronounced accent. (Of course, everyone actually has an accent.) This form of bigotry is not (yet) recognized as such and is considered a permissible prejudice even among those of us who consider ourselves to be woke. This book should be required reading, along with Wilkerson's "Caste," in every school and book club. ( )

Katherine Kinzler's How You Say It is an engaging dive into language and perception.

We are all familiar with the impact of race and gender discrimination, but if you are like me you don't often think about how our perceptions of each other can be negatively impacted by bias toward non-standard versus standard dialects, or biases toward accents, of both native and non-native speakers.

Kinzler, a professor of psychology at the University of Chicago, digs pretty deeply into a number of facets of linguistics - both how we speak and how we listen - with an absence of jargon that keeps the book accessible to the lay reader. She makes a compelling case that bias based on accents or dialect does exist and should be a concern for society to address. Kinzler argues for legal remedies to linguistic bias similar to those for bias due to race, gender or national origin.

Perhaps the most well known example of linguistic bias she brings forward is in the trial of George Zimmerman for the killing of Trayvon Martin. In the trial, compelling testimony was given by a friend of Trayvon's, Rachel Jeantel, as to his state of mind at the time of the killing. Her testimony was so compelling that it should have swayed the jury against Zimmerman, who claimed to have been threatened by Trayvon and to have acted in self defense. But, because Jeantel spoke in an African American dialect, most of the White jurors found her not to be credible, thus they discounted her testimony, leading to what many consider to be a miscarriage of justice in Zimmerman's acquittal.

I found the first part of the book to be the most interesting. This is where Kinzler marshals facts from studies (some of which she had a hand in) to demonstrate how dialects and accents work and how they impact formation of groups and "who's in / who's out" thinking. The second part, where she argues for a legal approach to linguistic bias, while convincingly argued, was not enough to completely win me over, though it did make me think.

I rate How You Say It 4 Stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐ - I really liked it and was glad I read it. I learned quite a bit from it and it's caused me to ponder my own subconscious perceptions of accents and dialects. I recommend it. ( )