Style of language

The language Jennifer L. Eberhardt uses in her TED talk “How racial bias works – and how to disrupt it” is mainly formal. This matches the serious topic she discusses. Informal language features are rare and are mostly limited to more conversational sentence structures, such as “Now, people often will say to me …” (l. 63). Eberhardt also uses a serious tone throughout the talk, which highlights the importance of the topic.

When it comes to the choice of words, Eberhardt sometimes uses academic words such as “dataset” (l. 23) or “stimuli” (l. 35), which reflects her background and research experience. She also uses words with negative meanings to show the things people associate with blackness, such as “violent crime” (l. 20) or “capturing and shooting and arresting” (l. 22). 

When she discu...