Language and Talk

Abstract

Language and talk are central to the creation and reproduction of inequality. In this chapter, we address three major questions: How is inequality visible in language and talk? How do language and talk create and sustain inequalities? And how do people respond to inequality—whether to resist it, negotiate it, or manage it—through language and talk? After discussing the diverse intellectual roots of social psychological research on language, we review the current literature, focusing in turn on words and other elementary elements of talk, utterances, interaction, and discourse. We conclude with a critical evaluation of the field, noting the need for social psychologists to focus on a broader range of different types of inequality, synthesize findings across theoretical perspectives, disciplines, and dimensions of inequality, and attend to intersectionality and social structure.