ASSESSING LANGUAGE ATTITUDES: SPEAKER EVALUATION STUDIES

HOWARD GILES AND ANDFREW C. BILLINGS

Reported by:

Pene Mitchell C. Dalid

Subject: Eng. 9a (5:30 p.m. – 6:30 p.m.)

INTRODUCTION

The study of language attitudes frequently resides at the core of interaction analysis. Social scientists have approached this form of research from the perspective of both the listener and the speaker. While the findings have varied across variables of culture, dialect, accent, and context, scholars have argued that determining the effects of language on social judgment is an integral part of uncovering the communication process.

As Cargile et al. (1994) argued, “language is a powerful social force that does more than convey intended referential information”

EMPIRICAL ORIGINS

1st experiment was by Pear’s (1931)

Inviting audiences in Britain to provide personality profiles of various voices heard on the radio, finding that different forms of the British dialect caused integral changes in person perception.

Lambert’s Studies :

Lambert et al. (1960) study introducing the “matched-guise” technique (MGT).

He formulated the MGT as a means of eliciting attitudes to users of different language varieties. The procedure is built on the assumption that speech style triggers certain social categorizations that will lead to a set of group-related trait-inferences. In other words, hearing a voice that is classified as “French-Canadian” will predispose listeners (depending, of course, on their own group memberships) to infer that she or he has a particular set of personality-attributes.

MGT STUDY IS IMPORTANT – SIX REASONS

First, Lambert invented a rigorous and elegant method for eliciting apparently private attitudes that controlled for extraneous variables.

Second, it showed how certain individuals can attribute unfavorable traits to members of their own language community.

Third, the findings underscored the important role of language (and code and dialect choice) in impression formation.

Fourth, the study laid the foundations for an interface between sociolinguistic and socio-psychological analyses of language (see Milroy & Preston, 1999) and was an important factor in establishing the cross-disciplinary field of language attitudes. Arguably, Labov’s (1966) exploration into this arena, through his own “subjective reaction test” owes much to the innovations of Lambert.

Fifth, the original study spawned an enormous number of studies worldwide, particularly in Britain, Australasia, the United States, The Netherlands, and more recently Denmark (e.g., Jarvella et al., 2001). Indeed, the importance of the Lambert et al. paper can be gauged by the fact that Tajfel (1959) published a critique of it a year before the original was published.

Finally, the dependent variables used in the study gave rise to the now pervasively recognized (though often relabeled) judgment-clusters of status (e.g., confidence, ambition) versus solidarity (e.g., friendly, generous) traits (see, for example, Mulac, Hanley, & Prigge (1974) and Zahn & Hopper (1985) for the addition of dynamism traits such as active, lively, etc.).

By these means, it is argued that reactions to the “speakers” are dependent solely on social expectations based, in turn, on language cues.

Lambert and his associates also moved beyond “static” varieties of speech styles toward evaluations of language shifts, as in the case of language “convergence” toward and “divergence” away from, speakers, and showed how language could affect other forms of social decision-making in an educational context. In addition, the original empirical effects were monitored from time to time to appraise the influence of changing socio-cultural and historical climates in quasi-replication studies.

SUBSEQUENT EMPIRICAL EXPLOSION OF RESEARCH

Edwards (1982) points out that there are three broad possibilities for the underlying patterns of speech-style judgments they may reflect:

(1) intrinsic linguistic superiorities/inferiorities;

(2) intrinsic aesthetic differences; or

(3) social convention and preference

(1) suggests, as being “better/worse,” “correct/incorrect,” or “logical/illogical.”

(2), aesthetic judgments of language varieties do not in fact seem to be based on inherent qualities of beauty,” though they may be represented as such by members of speech communities. A series of studies showed that listeners rating totally unfamiliar (foreign) varieties, which judges could not categorize as class- or status-related varieties, did not discriminate between them on the grounds of aesthetic criteria, although they were perceived to differ sharply in these qualities within their own speech communities. It seems, therefore, that evaluations of language varieties do not reflect intrinsic linguistic or aesthetic qualities so much as

(3) the levels of status and prestige that they are conventionally associated with in particular speech communities (Trudgill & Giles, 1978).

SOCIAL DECISION-MAKING AND LANGUAGE ATTITUDES

Seligman, Tucker, and Lambert (1972) in fact found that speech style was an important cue in teachers’ evaluations of pupils, even when combined with other information, such as photographs of the children and examples of their schoolwork.

Choy and Dodd (1976) reported that teachers evaluating standard English and Hawai’ian speakers consistently favored the former. Overall, research indicates that the perception of children’s so-called “poor” speech characteristics leads teachers to make negative inferences about their personalities, social background, and academic abilities.

Evered (1980) showed that RP speakers are more likely to be perceived as having psychosomatic symptoms than non-standard accented patients, even when they are voicing exactly the same complaints.

Seggie (1983) presented voices of speakers (in RP, broad Australian, and Asian-accented English) in the role of defendants. RP speakers were adjudged more guilty when the crime was embezzlement, whereas Australian-accented speakers were more severely judged when the crime was physical assault.

Dixon, Mahoney, & Cocks (2002) asked raters, using the matched-guise technique, to evaluate an audio-taped interrogation by police officers with a criminal suspect who was pleading his innocence. They found that the Birmingham-accented suspect was rated significantly more guilty – and especially so when it related to a blue-collar crime (armed robbery) – than an RP-sounding suspect.

Hopper and Williams (1973) showed that speech characteristics (for Standard American, black, Mexican- American, and Southern white speakers) were relevant to employment decisions, but decreased in importance when the interviews were for lower status jobs.

Giles, Wilson, and Conway’s (1981) study in the British context showed a linear relationship between seven jobs, independently rated as varying in status, and the job suitability of RP and non-standard speakers.

Seggie, Smith, & Hodgins (1986) also elicited evaluations of employment suitability based on ethnic accent in Australia.

The businessmen have knowledge of the success of Asian business in Australia, whereas the female shoppers are more likely to think of Asians as restaurant workers; different evaluative profiles, it is suggested, emerge as a consequence.

LANGUAGE ATTITUDES AND LINGUISTIC ACTION

Fishbein and Ajzen (1975) proposed that the predictability of a behavior is increased by working with attitudes and behaviors defined at an equivalent level of specificity. According to their “theory of reasoned action,” an action is viewed quite simply as a person’s intention to perform (or not perform) a behavior. The basic determinants of a person’s intention are also specified.

The person’s attitude toward the behavior is a function of beliefs about the consequences of performing a particular behavior and the person’s evaluation of these consequences.

The second determinant of intention, subjective norms, are themselves determined by the person’s normative beliefs regarding the expectations of others, and the person’s motivation to comply with these expectations.

Jaccard’s (1981) “behavioral alternative” model which considers situations in which an individual can perform one of a number of alternative and mutually exclusive behaviors (e.g., one must choose to speak a standard or nonstandard dialect, assuming for simplicity, that code-shifting is not possible).

According to Jaccard, the individual may be said to possess an attitude toward performing each of the behavioral alternatives available. The individual will decide to perform that alternative for which the most positive attitude is held. Thus, the prediction of behavior is based on an intra-individual comparison of behavioral alternatives, and each person’s attitude toward speaking a variety of language might have to be measured (for a variety of situations) in order to predict accurately.