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Attitudes Toward Black English and Code Switching

Spokane Mental Health

Alan M. Gross

University of Mississippi

Russell Kolts

Eastern Washington University

The purpose of the present investigation was to examine African American adults’ perceptions of those African Americans who use Black English (BE), Standard English (SE), or code switch (CS) between the two languages. African American male and female college students were exposed to an audiotaped man speaking in BE, SE, appropriate CS (SE in a formal setting and BE in an informal setting), or inappropriate CS (BE in a formal setting and SE in an informal setting). Participants were then asked to rate the speaker on a number of personality characteristics using the Revised Speech Dialect Attitudinal Scale (SDAS); participants also were asked about wanting to know or work with the speaker. Results indicated that participants rated the SE and appropriate CS model more favorably than either the BE or inappropriate CS model; they wanted to get to know the SE and appropriate CS speaker as opposed to the inappropriate CS speaker and would like to work with the SE and appropriate CS speaker as opposed to the BE or inappropriate CS speaker.

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