Speaker: Katherine Kinzler, Cornell University
Beyond the literal content it provides, language conveys social meaning. My research explores the developmental origins of humans’ thinking about language as a social category. I provide evidence that language provides a critical, and potentially primary, way in which people divide their social worlds. People judge others based on their speech, and in some cases social attention to language and accent can surpass attention to race. Yet, while linguistic diversity may cause social divisions, it can also facilitate social understanding: children exposed to diverse linguistic environments exhibit more effective social communication skills than children in monolingual environments.
Katherine Kinzler is an Associate Professor in the Departments of Psychology and Human Development at Cornell University. Prior to joining the faculty at Cornell, she was the Neubauer Family Assistant Professor and then an Associate Professor at the University of Chicago Department of Psychology. She completed her Ph.D. at Harvard in Psychology and her B.A. at Yale in Cognitive Science, and she was a Fulbright Scholar at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris. Much of her research focuses on the origins of prejudice and ingroup/outgroup thinking, with an emphasis on understanding how language and accent mark social groups. Her research is funded by the National Institutes of Health and the John Templeton Foundation.