Have you ever heard raindrops falling and felt happy all of a sudden? Then, perhaps you remembered running in the rain as a child, enjoying a warm plate of khichuri or hot tea with pakoras on a rainy afternoon, or even getting scolded after coming home completely soaked. What a remarkable thing it is that such a simple sound can instantly bring back so many memories. The same thing happens when we hear the voice of someone familiar to us. For example, we may hear our grandfather calling our name, our friends laughing, or our teachers offering words of encouragement, and suddenly be transported back to another time and place, filled with nostalgia.
Our ability to speak is one of humanity’s greatest gifts as it helps us communicate even before we learn how to write. It is a source of celebration of our victories, a way to comfort friends and relatives, a means of storytelling, and an expression of our emotions. However, it should be noted that speech is much more than just words. In fact, every time we speak, we convey subtle verbal or non-verbal cues about socio-cultural background that can be decoded if our speech is critically listened to and analyzed. For example, due to dialectal influence, a Bangladeshi individual from Sylhet or Chattogram or any other region may produce certain vowel or consonant speech sounds differently or modify their speech rate and intonation patterns when they are speaking in Standard Colloquial Bangladeshi Bangla Language. Listening to only a few sentences often enables language experts or enthusiasts to notice these phonetic peculiarities and help them evidently identify the speakers’ social factors such as place of origin, educational and familial background, linguistic exposure and so on. It should be noted that these variations are not in any sense ‘incorrect’ or ‘less correct’ use of the Standard Colloquial Bangla. From a descriptive sociolinguistic point of view, these differences reflect linguistic diversity. Likewise, members of different ethnic communities such as Marma, Chakma, Garo, Tripura, Santal, Mro, and others in Bangladesh are often seen carrying or transferring the influence of their heritage languages into their use of Standard Colloquial Bangla. They often use distinctive pronunciation patterns, vocabulary, grammar, and intonation that are greatly influenced by the features of their native languages. These features of their spoken language not only distinguish them from Bangla speakers of other regions in the country but also help them convey their communal identity and culture through language. Such interrelation of language and culture is one of the reasons why ethnolinguistics is such an interesting field for researchers. Ethnolinguists examine how the use of different languages reflects people’s lifestyle, which allows capturing both words and their cultural meanings.
The role of linguists turns out to be crucial here. While most people only listen to the language of a person to understand the meaning at the surface level, linguists do more than that. They notice pronunciation, emphasis, rhythm, intonation, pauses, and other implicit phonetic features that usually go unnoticed by a vast majority of people. For instance, a person’s specific pattern of pronunciation can be an indicator of one’s origin whereas peculiar intonation might help identify a person’s tribe. Therefore, we can think of linguists as language detectives because they can identify subtle linguistic hints in ordinary speech.
Moreover, using advanced recording equipment and acoustic measurement software, linguists are also capable of documenting and conducting acoustic research on the variations in people’s language use. The socio-cultural significance of their research increases when it documents the linguistic patterns and peculiarities of people whose voices are often ignored. Regional dialects, endangered languages, neurologically disabled children’s speech, speech of elderly people, and people with special abilities represent a great variety of speech diversity. If researchers only focus on the majority or prestigious varieties of languages, the marginalized voices may be overshadowed or lost completely. Every language, dialect, and accent deserves recognition because each one represents a unique way of understanding the world.
The significance of documenting and critically analyzing different varieties of languages goes far beyond academia into practical, real-world applications. For instance, when delivering lectures, the instructors who understand and appreciate linguistic diversity can provide a more inclusive learning environment by accepting their students’ diverse speech patterns rather than marginalizing them for their distinct use of language. Moreover, in the field of technology, voice-recognition devices, AI assistants, and AI-based systems become more precise with the help of spoken data from different regions, ages, and language groups. If AI works only on one particular variety of a language, it will be unable to reach many users. Linguistic research helps train Spoken Language Technologies (SLTs) to recognize and process different languages, dialects, and accents so that they can serve everyone more effectively. This interdisciplinary field where linguistics and computer science come together is known as computational linguistics.
Linguistics also has several fascinating branches that many people may have never heard of or know very little about. For example, I became very curious about one aspect of linguistics after watching the movie Arrival (2016), directed by Denis Villeneuve. The film tells the story of a linguist who tries to find a way to communicate with aliens by decoding their language. This made me learn about and explore the exciting science of xenolinguistics, which is the study of the languages of aliens, even though no such language has ever been found or properly documented yet.
Another captivating branch of linguistics is forensic linguistics, wherein language serves as a key source of evidence in solving crimes. Imagine receiving an anonymous threatening phone call or a suspicious voice message. The identity of the speaker might not be known, but their speech subtly gives away valuable information about their background. Forensic phoneticians can look at different aspects of the speech like pronunciation, accent, intonation, rate of speech, quality of voice, pauses, and other speech features to help law enforcement agencies compare different speakers, identify their regional or social backgrounds, and sometimes even uncover the exact person who made the call or recording. For a phonetic expert, a suspect’s voice is no less crucial than his or her fingerprints. In many crime investigations, forensic linguistics has played a crucial part in solving crimes, revealing the truth about confessions, identifying plagiarism cases, and avoiding wrongful convictions.
In short, each voice, no matter how apparent or nuanced, carries its own history, culture, secrets, identity, experiences, and memories. The more we are exposed to diverse people’s and communities’ voices, the more we understand and learn about the subliminal layers of meaning embedded in every language. For me, the study of linguistics has never been about decoding the standard units of language in isolation. It has always been gaining an understanding of language as a channel through which individual and collective stories are delivered. Such stories should be studied, analyzed, and remembered by present and future generations, as every voice tells a unique story. So, what story does your voice tell?
Vincent Dip Gomes is a lecturer in the Department of English and Humanities (DEH) at the University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh (ULAB)
Views expressed in the article are his own and do not reflect those of any organisation
