Evaluation Reactions of College Students to Dialect Differences in the English of Mexican-Americans

Abstract

The English of Los Angeles Mexican-Americans ranges from the local standard to Chicano English, a non-standard ethnic dialect. Speech approaching Chicano English was negatively stereotyped by Anglo-American university students on scales related to success, ability, and social awareness. Forty-eight UCLA students rated 4 pairs of matched guise voices on 15 semantic differential scales. Dialect differences consistently affected their rating. But raters also attended to non-dialect voice differences, especially for more standard English voices. In rating standard English, students used a different, more complex procedure for judging personality.