Social Categories Influence Mexican and Mexican-American Children’s Friendship Preferences and Judgments

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

Abstract

Social categories (e.g., language, gender, and race) are powerful cues guiding children’s social preferences. Within social categories of language, accents provide rich information about a speaker’s native/foreign background and may signal stereotypes (Kinzler & DeJesus, 2013). Although young children perceive varieties of speech, it remains unclear whether dialects are prioritized over other social categories such as race and gender. Here we investigated whether Mexican-American Spanish-English bilingual and Mexican Spanish monolingual children use Spanish varieties (Puerto Rican vs. Mexican) when making friendship choices for themselves, and whether they prioritize dialect over race and gender categories.

Method: Mexican-American Spanish-English bilinguals and Mexican Spanish monolinguals (N=103; ages=4-6) took part in the study. Children were presented with a Friendship Preference task, and asked to find a playmate in each trial (16 randomized trials). All trials consisted of children’s voice clips of either Puerto Rican or Mexican Spanish dialect. Children were randomly assigned to an item set, either one with images of Black/White children or a set with images of Brown/White children. We tallied whether the child opted for the Mexican dialect option during four conditions (Figure 1): Gender Match, in which the option with the Mexican dialect matched the gender of the participant and both options were of the same race. Gender Mismatch, in which the option with the Mexican dialect did not match the gender of the participant and both options were of the same race. Race Competition Gender-Match, in which the options matched the gender of the participant, were of different races, and race of the image linked to the Mexican dialect was counterbalanced. Race Competition Gender-Mismatch in which the options did not match the gender of the participant, were of different races, and race of the image linked to the Mexican dialect was counterbalanced.

Results. Both groups made similar choices (p= ns). Children were more likely to select a Mexican dialect choice during the Gender Match or when the options were of the same race and the Mexican dialect option was of the same gender as the child, and rejected Mexican dialect choices when the option was of the other gender (χ2=78.48, df=3, p<.001); see Figure 2. Children did not make use of dialect in their friendship choices when presented with speakers of different races, suggesting that they may give about the same weight to race and dialect variety during early childhood. Nevertheless, exploratory analysis (which will be discussed during the session) revealed that children were more likely to select a Mexican dialect when linked to an image of a Brown child.

Conclusion: Children made use of gender and (to a lesser extent) race/ethnicity in their friendship preferences. These results indicate boundary conditions on the use of dialect in social inferences, and raise important questions regarding when and why children make use of the dialects of non-native speakers (e.g., Kinzler, 2007, 2009) but not dialects of native speakers.

Authors

• Maria Mercedes Arredondo, University of Texas at Austin
  Presenting Author

• Marissa Vasquez Martinez, Universidad Autónoma del Estado de Morelos

• Susan A Gelman, University of Michigan - Ann Arbor