In time

'What does it take for us to celebrate that vast diversity of sound, rather than judge it,' asks Samara Bay.

In fact, “considerations of what makes for good English or bad English are to an uncomfortably large extent matters of prejudice and conditioning.” After all, it is up to us to determine what we take seriously. What does it take for us to celebrate that vast diversity of sound, rather than judge it? [code-switching](https://hbr.org/2019/11/the-costs-of-codeswitching) to hide their difference or obsessively count their “um”s, policing themselves before anyone else does. Consider just how many different ways the people around us communicate in sound, style, volume of words, and what’s left unsaid. In a [study](https://www.fuqua.duke.edu/duke-fuqua-insights/vocal-fry-limit-success) founded by Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, analysts concluded that “relative to a normal speaking voice, young adult female voices exhibiting vocal fry are perceived as less competent, less educated, less trustworthy, less attractive, and less hirable.” Bill Bryson, in The Mother Tongue: English and How It Got That Way, What do most of us do with this onslaught of information? Any of us, for example, who endeavor to speak low and slow and [use abstract and visionary language](https://hbr.org/2022/12/research-men-speak-more-abstractly-than-women), or who aim for [direct](https://hbr.org/1995/09/the-power-of-talk-who-gets-heard-and-why) speech rather than roundabout. “We rarely talk explicitly about social class, and yet, people with hiring experience infer competence and fitness based on socioeconomic position estimated from a few seconds of an applicant’s speech,” Kraus said. After all, you likely speak differently to your mom than you do to a lawyer or a little kid or your partner. Ocasio-Cortez suggested that sometimes, despite our best efforts, when we think out loud, we’re told our words are impossible to follow—because really, what the listener means is they have no intention of trying to follow someone who doesn’t sound like them.