2-047 - "Language in the Eye of the Beholder" - Social Preferences in Bilingual Children

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

Spoken language provides cues to individuals’ ethnic group, social status, and shared experiences. Previous research indicates that monolingual children prefer speakers who speak the same language and share the same native accent as them, but little is known about the preferences of bilingual children, who have exposure to another language and accent. This symposium explores the social preferences of bilingual children towards individuals whose language varies. The first paper examines bilingual children’s social preferences for people who speak in different accents. Children preferred native-accented speakers even when compared to other accents that they are familiar with. The second paper explores this preference further by examining which components of an accent are important for children in the identification of speakers as non-native. The third paper extends children’s preferences to novel label endorsement. Bilingual children were more willing than monolinguals to learn labels from speakers of two different languages, even if they do not share a common language. The fourth paper examines bilingual children’s social preferences in the context of code-mixing (the use of two or more languages in a single unit of discourse). Children demonstrated preference for and willingness to endorse labels from speakers who spoke in familiar languages versus those who code-mixed with an unfamiliar language. Together, the papers in this symposium provide important insights into the development of social preferences in bilingual children towards those who share similar or different language characteristics, and raise questions regarding the mechanisms that influence the development of children’s social preferences in a multilingual context.

Sub Unit

• Social Cognition

Chair

• W. Quin Yow, Stanford University

Individual Presentations

• Bilingual Children Prefer Familiar Native Accents to Familiar Foreign Accents - Presenting Author: Katherine D. Kinzler, University of Chicago; Jasmine DeJesus, University of Chicago; Jocelyn B Dautel, University of Chicago; Hyesung Grace Hwang, Washington University in St Louis

• Understanding the Perception of Accented Speech: Children’s Sensitivity to Language-specific Acoustic Cues - Presenting Author: Cynthia Blanco, University of Texas at Austin; Colin J. Bannard, University of Liverpool

• Exposure Matters: Children's Willingness to Learn from Speakers of Familiar and Unfamiliar Languages - Presenting Author: Dolly Rojo, University of Texas -Austin; Catharine H. Echols, University of Texas at Austin

• Bilingual Children’s Social Preferences Towards People Who Code-Mix in Two Languages - Presenting Author: W. Quin Yow, Stanford University; Xiaoqian Li, Singapore University of Technology & Design