Two of my favorite things: shoes and linguistics

[cimorene]

languagelog_feed just posted on The Communicative Properties of Footwear, linking two not-funny Cathy strips about the "language of shoes" to scholarly projects that actually are about the language of shoes. You'll find links to a website and a few individual scientific papers there:

• A small study using US graduate students tested perceptions of female physicians using transcripts of an outpatient interview either with or without a photograph of the female physician wearing conservative vs. trendy boots. (That study found no statistically significant effect of footwear on approachability, professional image, ability to empathize with the patient, or amount of specialist experience; but they did find a "near-significant" effect on approachability, with "trendy" boots being less approachable.)



• A British study found university students' "free response" to female airline attendants' footwear favored safer, practical styles - like aviation safety guidelines but unlike the styles prescribed by airline corporate policies (according to the abstract).

One of my favorite books to browse through when I was home alone and feeling nervous (I was home sick a fair amount, and the library is one of the sunniest rooms in my parents' house; I felt safe curled up in the bed there, since it doubled as a guest bedroom for much of my childhood) was The Language of Clothes, a nonfiction sociolinguistics book about fashion written in I guess the 80s or 90s. My mom had probably got it used somewhere since it isn't quite her usual cup of tea.

Comments

[msilverstar]

yay for proper shoes!

[isilya]

The shoe thing continues to haunt me, omg. One of the female consultants (years of seniority, highly respected) has an awesome wardrobe of knee-hi boots. I'm always interested to see which ones she is wearing! But I personally simply refuse to do heels at the hospital.

[cimorene]

From the abstract, it looks like they only used one pair of "trendy" boots, which would probably have been heeled, but we know the language of shoes is more complex than that, and far more dimensional. Even if the results would become significant at a bigger sample size, one could easily imagine that more than two options could produce more effects. I imagine they'd probably stay small though, if the results weren't even significant. That is rather reassuring to me actually.