Evaluative reactions of adolescents toward speakers of standard English and Mexican American accented English

63 Mexican-American, Black, and Anglo adolescent females rated the personalities of male speakers of standard English and Mexican-American accented English on 15 bipolar adjective scales. To demonstrate that the functional separation of speech styles would be reflected in these evaluative reactions, 2 speech contexts (home and school) and 2 sets of rating scales (status stressing and solidarity stressing) were employed. Although standard English speakers received more favorable ratings in every case, the differences were significantly greater in the school context than in the home context and for status ratings than for solidarity ratings. Contrary to expectations, Mexican-Americans did not prefer accented English in the home context or on solidarity scales. (30 ref)