Vocal Indicators of Status: Effects of Caste and Language

Abstract

Male students in a university in South India were placed in dyads in which both members were either Upper Caste or Scheduled Caste, or one was Upper Caste and the other was Scheduled Caste. In each of the 27 dyads, the students carried on two unstructured conversations, 10 minutes in English and 10 minutes in Telugu, in a counterbalanced order across dyads. The conversations were recorded and converted into objective codes (e.g., turn, vocalisation, pause) using the group AVTA system of Dabbs and Swiedler (1983). Students' conversations, self-ratings, and the ratings of their partners appeared to be affected by both their own status and the status of their partners. Two independent bilingual judges, who were not aware of the condition, rated Upper Caste speakers in mixed-caste dyads more dominant in English but not in Telugu conversation. However, vocal measures indicated that Upper Caste students were able to control the conversations through silence, as well as through talking.

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Dabbs, J.M. JR. and Ruback, R.B. (1987). Dimensions of group process: Amount and structure of vocal interaction. In L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 20) (pp. 123-169). New York: Academic Press.

Dabbs, J.M. , JR. and Swiedler, T.C. (1983). Group AVTA: A microcomputer system for group voice chronography. Behavior Research Methods and Instrumentation, 15, 79-84.

Edwards, J.R. (1979). Judgements and confidence in reactions to disadvantaged speech. In H. Giles and R.N. St. Clair (Eds.), Language and social psychology (pp. 22-44). Baltimore: University Park Press.

Feldstein, S. and Welkowitz, J. (1987). A chronography of conversation: In defence of an objective approach. In A.W. Siegman and S. Feldstein (Eds.), Nonverbal behavior and communication (2nd ed.) (pp. 435-499) Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Giles, H. (1970). Evaluative reactions to accents. Educational Review, 22, 211-227.

Ickes, W. (1984). Compositions in black and white: Determinants of interaction in interracial dyads. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 47, 330-341.

Kenny, D.A. (1988). The analysis of data from two-person relationships . In S. Duch (Ed.), Handbook of personal relationships: Theory, research and interventions (pp. 57-77). London : Wiley.

Kraemer, H.C. and Jacklin, C.N. (1979). Statistical analysis of dyadic social behavior . Psychological Bulletin, 86, 217-224.

Lambert, W.E. (1967). The social psychology of bilingualism. Journal of Social Issues, 23, 91-109.

10.

Leffler, A. , Gillespie, D.L. and Conaty, J.C. (1982). The effects of status differentiation on nonverbal behavior. Social Psychology Quarterly, 45, 153-161.

11.

Mendoza, J.L. and Graziano, W.G. (1982). The statistical analysis of dyadic social behavior: A multivariate approach. Psychological Bulletin, 92, 532-540.

12.

Patterson, M.L. (1983). Nonverbal behavior: A functional perspective. New York: Springer-Verlag.

13.

Rao, V.K. (1984). Educational pursuit, caste background and psychological characteristics of students: A comparative study. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Andhra University.

14.

Ridgeway, C.L. , Bercer, J. and Smith, L. (1985). Nonverbal cues and status: An expectation states approach. American Journal of Sociology, 90, 955-978.

15.

Ruback, R.B. and DABBS, J.M. JR. (1988). Group vocal patterns and leadership in India: Effects of task, language, and sex of subjects. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 19, 446-464.

16.

Sebastian, R.J. and Ryan, E.B. (1985). Speech cues and social evaluation: Markers of ethnicity, social class, and age. In H. Giles and R.N. St. Clair (Eds.), Recent advances in language, communication, and social psychology (pp. 112-143). London: Erlbaum.

17.

Shrout, P.E. and Fleiss, J.L. (1979). Intraclass correlations: Uses in assessing rater reliability. Psychological Bulletin, 86, 420-428.

18.

R. Barry Ruback is Associate Professor of Psychology at the Georgia State University, Georgia, USA.

19.

V. Kalpana Rao is a Lecturer in the Department of Psychology, Andhra University, Waltair, India.