Linguistic Distortion with Suzanne Wertheim

Strong Feelings

Last year, we saw the media regularly call Black Lives Matter protesters “rioters,” “violent,” or “thugs.” Yet on January 6, those who attacked the U.S. Capitol were often described as “passionate protestors” and “Trump supporters.” Linguistic anthropologist Suzanne Wertheim explains why these language disparities matter—and how biases like these show up in our workplaces, too.

Dr. Suzanne Wertheim is an anti-bias consultant, researcher, and educator. She is also the founder of Worthwhile Research & Consulting, a firm that optimizes workplace culture through anti-bias and communication training. She is an expert in how cultural biases are expressed and perpetuated through language, and trains tech companies to spot and dismantle these biases in their workplaces.

It's not your fault that you were born with a human brain. It's not your fault that your entire lifetime you've been fed garbage distorted data. And it's not your fault you were born into the body you were born into… But it is your responsibility, once you learn things, to make sure that you are looking for problems and then using your power to address them.

—Dr. Suzanne Wertheim, founder, Worthwhile Research & Consulting

We talk about:

• The role of a linguistic anthropologist
• The dangers of softening language and other linguistic distortions
• How bias impacts workers in the tech industry
• Which populations are most at risk for workplace bias and how to effectively fight against it
• What we can learn from research on trans workers who transitioned gender presentation in the workplace

Plus: in this week’s You’ve Got This, Sara talks self-care, self-confidence, and how to better understand our inner critic. When does that inner critic rear its ugly head? What does it say? Who does it sound like? If you can learn about where that critic comes from, you can start to recognize when it’s not serving you. For all this and more, check out https://www.activevoicehq.com/podcast.

Links:

• Suzanne Wertheim
• Worthwhile Research & Consulting
• Suzanne’s newsletter
• Active Voice