study 2: social perception of dialects (David Bowie and

Wendy Baker)Two types of social perception:• Status (we admire these people):intelligence, businesslike, correct,

dependable• Solidarity (we like these people):friendly, pleasant, funny, similar to you

Do we perceive speakers of some varieties of English as being more intelligent or more friendly?

background: Preston’s research on north/south

• Tested Northerners (Michiganders) and Southerners (Alabamans) on their perception of northern and southern speech

Participants rate speakers from different states on scales of solidarity and status:

Example:

Politeness

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

background: results

• Who scored highest on status characteristics?

Michigan• Who scored highest on solidarity

characteristics?AlabamaIn other words, we tend to admire

speakers of some dialects, but think they are unfriendly. We think speakers of other dialects are friendly, but kind of dumb

replication with Californians, Floridians

and Utahans

Student participants were given map and were asked to rate each state on a scale from 1 “strongly does not have characteristic” to 6 “strongly has characteristic”

characteristics examined (among others)

Status: correct, intelligent

Solidarity: pleasant, similar to you

States marked in red on the following maps indicate that participants thought this state “very strongly” had this characteristic; pinks and blues indicate that participants thought this state “very strongly” did not have this characteristic

California

Utah

Florida

1. correct

California

Utah

Florida

2. intelligent

California

Utah

Florida

3. pleasant

California

Utah

Florida

4. similar to you

study 2: conclusions• Californians: think they are correct, pleasant

and very intelligent• Floridians: think they are correct, intelligent

and pleasant and that no one is like them• Utahans: Don’t think they are correct, don’t

think anyone is intelligent and think everyone is pleasant

• Utahans display the most linguistic insecurity• Californians and Floridians think they score

high on both status and solidarity characteristics

• Don’t see as strong north/south prejudice as in eastern U.S.