Social Evaluations of Asian American English in Workplace Contexts

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School of Arts & Sciences::Department of Linguistics::University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics
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Linguistics
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Linguistics
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2025
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Kim, Lauren
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Despite the large number of Asian Americans residing within the United States, linguistic discrimination against speakers of Asian American English (AsAmE) remains understudied. The present study seeks to determine the extent to which “sounding white” is correlated with positive social evaluations of Asian American speakers within a job interview context. Given that listeners are capable of distinguishing between white and Asian American speakers based on voice alone, I predict that white speakers will be more favorably evaluated by listeners, while Asian American speakers rated as relatively more white-sounding will also be positively judged. Participants showed evaluative sensitivity to differences between Asian American speakers. White men were rated as more extroverted than Asian American men, while Asian American women were perceived as more extroverted than white women, but less ambitious and professional. Asian American men were rated more negatively the whiter they sound, while Asian American women were rated more positively. These results speak to the ways in which speaker gender, as well as competency versus warmth dimensions, can impact listener judgments of Asian American individuals.

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2025
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