You Speak You | Kory Stamper | TEDxAsburyPark

Kory wants the audience to realize that “language is not black and white; it’s not right or wrong; it’s not good or bad…language is about communication and communication is about context.”

How we speak is one of the markers of our identity and our individual dialects are what keep the English language dynamic and evolving.

Instead of making moral judgments about how someone speaks, we should simply listen and appreciate the speaker’s unique dialect as part of his or her identity.



Kory Stamper is a lexicographer at Merriam-Webster, America's oldest dictionary company, and an author. In addition to writing definitions, she appears in Merriam-Webster's online video series at merriam-webster.com, and writes and speaks on the role of language and dictionaries in society. Her blog about dictionaries, "Harmless Drudgery," has been mentioned in "The Paris Review" and "The New York Times." Her debut book, "Word by Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries," was released in 2017.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx