title: The effects of perceived status and linguistic diversity upon judgment of speaker attributes and message effectiveness.
abstract: It has been shown previosly that high linguistic diversity positively affects listeners' judgments of speaker attributes and message effectiveness. Diversity refers to the degree of lexical and syntactic redundancy in a message. In the present study it was predicted that listeners' initial perceptions of a speaker's status would influence their judgments of high- and low-diversity messages. Ss were 46 male and female undergraduates at The University of Iowa. Three competing predictions were offered, and the results supported a status-attribution explanation. A high-status speaker was rated especially negatively when he delivered a low-diversity message. High- and low-diversity messages did not differ in their evaluative consequences for a low-status speaker; in this case both message types produced ratings that fell between the relatively positive or negative ratings given to the high-status speaker.
mesh_terms: D003142:Communication; D005260:Female; D006608:Hierarchy, Social; D006801:Humans; D007389:Internal-External Control; D007600:Judgment; D008297:Male; D010465:Perception; D012930:Social Dominance; D014705:Verbal Behavior; D014825:Vocabulary