DOCUMENT RESUMEED 132 843FL 008 242AUTHORRyan Ellen Bouchard Carranza - PDF document

1 DOCUMENT RESUMEED 132 843FL 008 242AUTHO
DOCUMENT RESUMEED 132 843FL 008 242AUTHORRyan, Ellen Bouchard; Carranza, Miguel A.TITLEAttitudes toward Accented English.PUB DATEJan 76NOTE9p.; Paper presented at the Conference on CollegeEnglish and the Mexican American (Pan AmericanUniversity, Edinburgh, Texas, January, 1976)EDRS PRICEMF-$0.83 -BC-$1.67 Plus Postage.DESCRIPTORS*English; interference (Language Learning); *LanguageAttitudes; Language Research; *Language Usage;*Language Variation; *Mexican Americans; NativeSpeakers; *Oral Communication; Phonology;Sociolinguistics; Spanish SpeakingIDENTIFIERS*AccentsABSTRACT.Among Mexican-Americans today, not only nativespeakers of Spanish but also many native speakers of English speakthe language with a notable influence from Spanish phonology. Thispaper reviews a series of studies concerning reactions of Anglos andMexican-Americans toward accented English. The unifying goal of these_investigations has been the identification of the major aspects ofmultidimensional attitudes toward standard and ethnic varieties ofEnglish.(Author)********************* **** *4*******************************Documents acquired by ERIC include many informal unpublished* materials not available from other sources. ERIC makes every effort ** to obtain the.best copy available. Nevertheless, items of marginal** reproducibility are often encountered and this affects the quality** of the microfiche and hardcomreproductions ERIC makes available** via the_ERIC Document Reproduction Service (EDRS). EDRS is not** responsible for the quality of the original document. Reproductions ** supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original.* *********** ********************************************************* ATTITUDES Tr.,WARD ACCENTED ENGLISH1Ellen Bouchard RyanDepartment of PsychologyUniversity of Notre DameandMiguel A. CarranzaDepartment of SociologyUniversity of Nebraska-LincolnU.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH,EDUCATION & WELFARENATIONA

2 L INSTITUTE OFEDUCATIONTHI5 DOCUMENT HAS
L INSTITUTE OFEDUCATIONTHI5 DOCUMENT HAS BEEN REPRO-DUCED EXACTLY AS RECEIVED PROMTHE PERSON OR ORGANIZATION ORIGIN-ATINE IT POINTS OF VIEW DR OPINIONSSTATED DO NOT NECESSARILY REPRE-SENT OFFICIAL NATIONAL INSTITUTE OFEDUCATION POSITION OR POLICYVarious ethnic groups have suffered from generalizations applied to themby the dominant society (e.g., 'Blacks have rhythm;"Jews are rich;'Italiansbelong to the Mafia;' etc.).A notable example is the stereotype of the speedhspoken by the Mexican American, a la "Frito Bandito", a fictional character who-peaks in a heavily accented dialect while pro -ting a food product.One needonly to look at the mass media to see how this stereotype has been perpetuated(Martinez, 1969).Although Mexican American English haS undoubtedly originatedhistorically from Spanish interference, it has mistakenly been taken for grantedthat all Mexican Americans who speak with an accent do so because of Spanishinterference.Among Mexican Americans today, not only native speakers of Spanishbut also many native speakers of English speak the language with a notable in-fluence from Spanish pho- lo-Due to the nuMber of speakersn monolingual speake-Ortego (1969) andMetcalf (1974) have argued for recognition of Mexican American English as adialect.As Arthur, Farrar, and Bradford (1974) have statedthe variety ofEnglish spoken by Mexican Americans raised in barrio areas may not represent anunsuccessful attempt of native Spanish speakers to produce English but rather thesuccessfUl attempt of native speaketo produce the dialect of English chacter-istic of their speech community.After investig ting Mexican American language1Paper presented to the Conferenceon College English and the Mexican_Pan American University EdinburghTexas, 1976. 2loyalty in Austin, Thoon (1974) concluded that a language shift was in progressng Mexican Americans in urban centers and that, consequently, the study ofMexican American English

3 as well as Mexican American Spanish sho
as well as Mexican American Spanish should be emphasized.As the shift progresses, he believes that the language problems of urban childrenwill not be those of Spanish interfering with English, but of a nonstandard dialectof ThEglish conflicting with standard English.Lists of specific phonologicalfeatures of Mexican American English can be found in Ornstein (1971) and Metcalf (1974).Thirty years ago, Barker (1947) had observed that Mexican American bilingualsi- Tucson manifested a feeling of infe-iority with respect to their Mexican accentin speaking English.Both Barker and Krear (1971) report the common occurrence ofperents with limited English ability speaking only English with their children inorder that they grow up without an accent whidh would reduce their social and economdcopportunities.According to Tovar (1973), achievement-conscious Mexican Americanshave traditionally concentrated their efforts on erasing all traces of Spani h fromtheir English, believing it necessary to speak American (i.e., Eng? sh without thewrong taccent').In her opinion, the current influence of the Chicano movementforeshadows an improved self-image, whidh in turn shol1111 lead to more positiveattitudes toward Chicano ways of speaking English.The reasons of camaraderigroup identificationand brotherhood mentioned by Ramirez (1974) for appreciatingdistinctly American styles of Spanish ought to apply as well to distinctly MexicanAmerican styles of English.Noting the frequent association of inferior status with accented speech aswell as the apparent increase in acdeptance of ethnic speedh as a badge of ingrouployalty, Ryan and her associates have been studying the nature of accented Englishand attitudes toward it.In a previous investigationCarranza and Ryan (1975) had elaborated thetraditional evaluative reaction task (of., LasIbert 1967) to'allow multidimensionalinvestigation of attitudes toward Svanish andpinglish.The resulta for

4 64 bilingual3 Anglo American and Mexican
64 bilingual3 Anglo American and Mexican American adolescents indicated for both groups a defini epreference for English in a school context and a slight preference for Spanish inthe home context.In the first accentedness study, Ryan and Carranza (1975) againsought evidence for multidimen ional language attitudes.Sixty-three Mexl.canAmerican, Black, and Anglo female high school students in Chicago were asked torate the personalities of male speakere of standard English and Mexican Americanaccented English in two contexts (home and schoolith two sets of rating scales(status-stressing and solidarity-st_._ing).Although the standard Englishspeakers received more positive ratings in every case, the differences were signficantly greater in the school context than in the home context and on status-stressing scales than on solidarity-stressing scales.Anglo students rated accentedspeakers significantly lower on status scales than did either Black or MexicanAmerican students.Th Ithis study indicates that student r ters take intoaccount the appropriateness of the speech style for the situation as well as differ-entiating between types of rating acales in their evaluations of speakers fromdifferent ethnic groups.Given that differential stereotypes are asabciated with standard En "Lishand with heavily accented English, Ryan and her associate- wanted to know whetherreactions to varying degrees of accentedness would be categorical or graduallyshifting.In a Texas dissertation concerning Black English, Bai d (1969) hadfound that, although the number of nonstandard features included in his speechsamples increased gradually, a minimum amount of nonstandardness vas sufficientto elicit the complete stereotype of a black.person.Apparently, the languagemerely served to identify the speaker's ethnic membership.Before attempting to assess the change in attitude associated withdegrees of accentedness, it was necessary to investigate th

5 e ability of non-linguists to detect var
e ability of non-linguists to detect variations in accentedness.Brennan, Ryan, and Dawson (1975)established that naive (non-linguistically trained ) college students could reliably4 4rate the amount of accentedness in the Englishspeech of Spanish-English bilingual_and, furthermore, that their ratings correlatedsignificantly with the number ofnonstandard pronunciation featurea.In a second study with the same speech samples,RyanCarranza, and Moffie (Apress ) confirmed the reliabilityof accentednessratings.The results of the Ryan et al. (in press ) study alsoindicated that collegestudents can make rather fine discriminationsamong varying degrees of aocentednessin rating a speaker's personal attributes andspeech characteristics.More specifi-,cally, gradual increases in perceived accentednesswere associated with in reasinglynegative reactions to the speaker for thisgroup of Anglo students.Expecting greater variability in reactions to accentedEnglish among MexicanAmericans, bran, Carranza, and Moffie (1975) asked MexicanAmerican students froma bilingual high school in a midwesterncity to rate nine MexicanA- rican speakers(chosen to represent a range of accentedness )-reading a 50- ord passage.Theratings of the 38 students born in Mexico differed substantiallyfrom those of the19 native-born student.Whereas the foreign students -howed a high level ofagreement on accentedness ratingsthe native-born students did not.The foreign-rn raters tended to view speaker8 more favorably as their accentedness increased.Although the attitudes scores of the native-born studentsare difficult to interpretbecause of lack of agreement concerning degree of accentedness,the trend wasclearly in the opposite direction with more faVorable reactions tothe leastaccented speakers.The upgrading of accented English by the foreign-born studentswhile in direct contrast to most studies concerning nonstandardlanguage varieties-is supported by Dworkin

6 (1965) where foreign-born MexicanAmerica
(1965) where foreign-born MexicanAmericans were found to_seas a positive self-image in contrast to the negative self-image held by thenative-born.In a current study, Ryan and Sebastian (in progress )are manipulating thesocial class associated with speakers of -ccented and standard Englishin an5 5attempt to minimize the downgrading of accented speakers.It_is hypothesized thatlisteners assume speakers of standard English to be middle-class and accentedspeakers to be lowe- class.If an accented speaker is presented as:middle-class,then his accent may not lead to an unfavorable impression.Indeed, accented speechmay enhance oneimage in some cases (e.g., professor of Spanieh literature orvisiting South A- rican dignitary),in the last study to be described (Carranza, 1976), the multidimensional natureof language preferences and attitudes toward accentedness received continuedattention.Note that sane differences had already been found beesed on context(school vs. ho e ) and on rating scalestatus vs. solidarity).Three sebgroupsof Mexican American parents (native-born, foreign-born :ith more than 15 years U.S.,residence, and more recently arrived foreign-born individuals) were interviewedconcerning their views of English, Spanish, and accentedness.The multidimensio-_-_ 1 language preference scale used items reflecting fourdimensions:affective, communicative, integrative, and ins trumental.Resultsfor Spanish vs. English indicated a clear distinction among two dimens oaffective-communicative, and integrative-instrumental.Only the affective andcommunicative score- were related to language domi_ nce arid family language.significant language preference differences among the three sUbgroups were observed:1) foreign-born individuals showed a strong communicative preference fo_ Spanishwhile native-born individuals were more neutral. 2) despite their consistent communicative preference for Spanish, the foreign-born persons withlo

7 ng-termresi-dence saw almost no instrume
ng-termresi-dence saw almost no instrumental value for Spanish while recently arrived personsalthough strongly preferring English for instrumental reasons, were somewhat lessabsolute in their view.The attitude toward accentedness measure utilized eight items reflecting fourdimensions:general evaluative, i4tegrativey instiumental, and comfOrt.Althoughheresults were not as pronounced as the language preference dimensions, they do6 6seem tn indicate a differentiation ang dime _ions.Factor analysis revealed thattwo factorsgeneral evaluative-instrumental and integrative, best represented theaccentedness items.The itema whidn represented the comfort dimension did not seemto load highly on either of the two factors.Also, there was a tendency for theparents to have a more favorable attitude toward accentedness on the integrativedimension than on the general evalu.3tive and instrumental dimensions.A comparison of the dimensions of langtmge preference and accentedness, aswell as their overall measures reve, led that the two measures did not coincide.This lends support to the idea that both may represent distinct and identifiableaspects of the language attitude framework.Based on these results, it would seemthat the language preference measure, which represented a choice 'bet een' lan-guages (English-Spanish)occupies a different position in a language attitudestructure than the attitude toward accentedness measure, which represented a choiceof varieties 'within' a language (standard English-Mexican Americanaccented EnglishThis study seems to highlight the value of further explorations of thecriticalfacets of language preference and accentedness.Just as there are different motiva-tions for preferring one language over .another, so also are there differentmotiva-tions for having a favorable or unfavorable attitude toward accentedness.The relevance of Mexican American accented speech has largely beenignoredby educators and

8 researchers alike.This paper has attempt
researchers alike.This paper has attempted to ill -imateissues pertaining to Mexican American accented 5pet.ch.The importance of discoveringmore about this particular language variety dan be seen by thefact that manyMexican American college students are faced with the Choice of continuing torak their accented English, to shift to the standard variety, or to useboth,each in its apprnpriate context.The decision they make can have a tremendouseffect on their academic success and future careers.FUrther researdh wouldcohtribute to a better understanding of the implications of thesealternatives.7 REFERENCES7Arthur, B., FarrarD.& Bradford, G.Eraluationa1 reactions of college studentsto dialect differences in the English of Mexican Americana.Language and Speech,1974, 17, 255-70.Baird, S. J.Employment interview speech:a social dialect study in Austin, Texas.Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Texas, 1969.Barker, G.C.Social functions of language in a Mexican-American conmiunity, ActaAmericana, 1947, 5, 185-202.Brennan, E., Ryan, E.B., & Dawson, W.Scaling apparent accentedness by magnitudeestimation and sensory modality 'matching.Journal of Psycho1inguisttc Research,1975, 4, 27-36.Carranza, M.A.Language attitudes and other cultural attitudes of Mexican Americanparents:some sociolinguistic implications.Unpublished doctoral dissertation,University of Notre Dame, 1976.Carranza, M.A.& Ryan, E.B.Evaluative reactions of bilingual Anglo and MexicanAmerican adolescents toward speakers of English and Spanish.InternationalJournal of the Sociology of Lsngua, 1975, No. 6, 83-104.Dworkin, A.G.Stereotypes and self-images held by native-born and foreign-bornMexican Americans.Sociology and Social Research, 1965, 12, 214-24.Krear, S.The role of the mother tongue at home and at school in the developmentof bilingualism.In N.N. Wagner and M.J. Haug (EdChicanos--Social_and Psychological Perspectives,.St. Louis:C.V. Mosby, 1971.

9 PP. 229-231.Laert, W.E.A social psycholo
PP. 229-231.Laert, W.E.A social psychology of bilingualism.Journal of Social Iseues, 1967,109.Martinez, T.Advertisingand racism:the case of the Mexican American.El Grito,1969, 33-13.Metcalf. A.A.The study (or non-study ) of Ca1ifrnia chicano English.InternationalJournal of the Sociology of language, 1974, No. 2,535B.8 Ornstein, 1.Language varieties along the U.S.exican border.In G. Perrenand J. Trim Eds.)Application! of Linguistios.CaMbridgeEnglandCambridgeUniversity Press, 1971. Pp. 349-362.Ortego, P.Some cultural implications of a Mexican-American border dialect ofAmerican English.Studies in Linguiptics, 1969, 21, 77-84.rez, K.G.Socio-cultural aspects of the Chicano dialect,In G.D. Bills (Southwest Area Li: uisties.San Diego:Institute for Cu tSan Diego State University, 1974. Pp. 79-84.Ryan E.B & Carranza, M.A.Evaluative reactions _f adolescents toward speakersofstandard English and Mexican American accented English.Journal of Person-ality and Social Psychology, :,L975, 31_, 855-8630kran, E.B., CarranzaM.A., & Moffie, R,W.Reactions toward varying degrees ofaccentedness in the speech of Spanish-English bilinguals.Language and Speech,in press.Ryan, E.B., Carranza, M.A., & Moffie, R.W.Mexican American reactions to accentedEnglish.In J.W. Berry -n- W4J. LonnerA'ilied Cros!-Cultural Psych-ology-Selected Papers from the Second International Conference for Cross---Gultural Psychology.Amsterdam:Swets and Zeitlinger, B.V., 1975. pp.174-178.E.B.& Sebastian, R.J.Social factors influencing evaluative reactions towardaccented and standard EnglishlDepartment of Psychology, University of NotreDame, in progresThompsonMexican American language loyalty and the validity of the 1970 census.International Journal of the Sociology of Laneage, 1974, No. 2.I.The changing attitude of LaRaza toward the Chicano idiom.In B. Hof erand J. Ornstein (Eds.)Sociolinguistics in the Southwest.San Antonio:Trinity University, 1973.Pp. 63-74.al Pl