EVALUATIONS AND STEREOTYPING OF ACCENTED SPEAKERS BY PREADOLESCENT CHILDREN

An experiment was carried out to examine the effect of language accent s on children's evaluations and stereotyping Forty 10-year-old and 40 12-year-old Australian children from monocultural and multicultural sc hools listened to the same passage read in English by boys with strong and mild Italo-Australian and Viet-Australian accents, and broad (i.e ., strong) and general (i.e., mild) Australian accents. lit addition, for half the children each accent was given its appropriate ethnic des ignation whereas the remaining children. listened to unlabeled accents . The children rated the accents on evaluative (status, solidarity) sc ales and on traits comprising the stereotype of each group. The findin gs indicated that their evaluations were influenced by accent ethnicit y and accent strength. In addition, the older but not the younger chil dren's evaluations were affected by accent identification and ethnic c ontact. The data also suggested that the accents evoked ethnic stereot ypes. The emerging complexity of the language attitude-stereotype rela tionship is discussed.