Trait Assessments of Monolingual and Bilingual Speakers

• In Event: An Intersectional Exploration of Language Attitudes: How Young Children Reason About Dialect and Accent

Abstract

Language-based judgments represent an important yet understudied aspect of children’s social cognition. Children’s early reliance on linguistic cues to make judgments about people, lays the critical groundwork from which linguistic prejudice can manifest later in life. The present research assessed the role of linguistic multiplicity (i.e., monolingualism or bilingualism) and language status on U.S. children’s character judgments. Ninety-six children between 5-10-years-old were sequentially presented with a monolingual English speaker contrasted with one of five speakers: 1) Monolingual French; 2) Monolingual Spanish; 3) Bilingual English-French; 4) Bilingual English-Spanish; and 5) Bilingual French-Spanish. Children made a series of trait assessments, selecting the speaker they thought was the “better leader”, “smarter” and “nicer”, with the option to choose “both the same”.

Children’s choices for who would make the better leader revealed a strong monolingual English speaker bias. Surprisingly, even though two trials involved bilingual speakers who also spoke English (i.e., a bilingual English-French speaker and a bilingual English-Spanish speaker), children still favoured the monolingual English speaker as the better leader. These findings suggest that monolingualism may hold special privileges in beliefs about leadership. The only trial in which children did not favour the monolingual English speaker was when there was no overlap in a shared language; children showed no such monolingual English bias when monolingual English speakers were contrasted with bilingual French-Spanish speakers.

Children’s judgments of intelligence patterned differently. Children generally believed bilingual speakers were smarter than monolingual speakers, suggesting a multilingual advantage in perceptions of intelligence. That said, children’s responses regarding intelligence also varied depending on the speaker’s language, with more mixed responses for trials involving Spanish speakers. Children’s assessments of warmth revealed interesting status considerations. Children believed the monolingual English speaker was nicer only when contrasted with any of the French speakers (i.e., children believed monolingual English speakers were nicer than monolingual French speakers, bilingual English-French speakers, and bilingual French-Spanish speakers). Yet, children did not show a similar pattern when monolingual English speakers were contrasted with Spanish speakers, for whom they showed a mixed pattern of results. One possibility is that children show a general bias towards monolingual English speakers. Children may also be less familiar with French compared to Spanish and therefore less likely to favour French speakers. Moreover, children may be knowledgeable of warmth stereotypes about French and Spanish speakers, using this knowledge as a barometer for their warmth judgments.

Across the three trait measures, we also observed notable variance based on age and children’s own linguistic background. Together, these findings demonstrate the dual and intersecting considerations of linguistic multiplicity and language status in children’s developing character judgments. Children showed a monolingual bias in their conferral of leadership and a multilingual bias in their conferral of intelligence. Importantly, linguistic status influenced children’s judgments; children treated French and Spanish speakers differently − compared to their French counterparts, children conferred more warmth but less competence towards Spanish speakers. Linguistic multiplicity and language status represent important social category markers upon which children make trait assessments.

Authors

• Radhika Santhanagopalan, University of Chicago
  Presenting Author

• Jesús Bas, Universitat Pompeu Fabra

• Katherine D. Kinzler, University of Chicago