UC Berkeley asks incoming students to say more than ‘hello’
5,800 Berkeley freshmen and transfer students are asked to record their voices and accents, which will be mapped and compared to other students’ samples. The project is part linguistic experiment, part social science and part ice-breaker.
A UC Berkeley freshman orientation program triggered national debate last year when it asked new students to send in saliva samples for voluntary DNA testing for three dietary traits.
The goal was to spark getting-to-know-you discussions about medicine and ethics, but privacy concerns and other problems derailed parts of the plan.
This summer, UC Berkeley is asking new students to submit a less controversial part of themselves: Their voices and accents.
The university’s welcome-to-campus seminars in the fall will focus on linguistic diversity and the many cultural, scientific and psychological aspects of language. Along with helping the newcomers break the ice through shared readings and discussions, the campus’ College of Letters & Science wants students to record their own speech in an ambitious Internet-based experiment to map and match accents from across the state and world.
With about 30% of incoming UC Berkeley students reporting that English was not their first language, exploring that linguistic diversity is a good way to help students feel comfortable at such a large school, faculty organizers said.
“It seemed like a good opportunity for me to learn something about our population and also give the incoming class a chance to learn something about each other, just by listening to each other,” said linguistics professorKeith Johnson, who is leading the experiment.
Freshmen and transfer students have been asked to record, in English via the Web, a shout-out to Berkeley sports teams — “Go Bears!” — along with five mouth-stretching sentences, including: “She had your dark suit in greasy wash water all year.” They then read an arithmetic problem in their native tongues, which could total about 50 languages.