1999/03/01 by Thomas Purnell, William Idsardi, John Baugh · 328 citations
paper · doi:10.1177/0261927x99018001002
published in Journal of Language and Social Psychology 18(1), 10-30 (SAGE Publications)
crossref issued 1999/03/01 · crossref published 1999/03/01 · crossref published-online 1999/03/01 · crossref published-print 1999/03/01 · crossref created 2007/03/10 · crossref deposited 2026/04/29 · crossref indexed 2026/08/05
The ability to discern the use of a nonstandard dialect is often enough information to also determine the speaker’s ethnicity, and speakers may consequently suffer discrimination based on their speech. This article, detailing four experiments, shows that housing discrimination based solely on telephone conversations occurs, dialect identification is possible using the word hello, and phonetic correlates of dialect can be discovered. In one experiment, a series of telephone surveys was conducted; housing was requested from the same landlord during a short time period using standard and nonstandard dialects. The results demonstrate that landlords discriminate against prospective tenants on the basis of the sound of their voice during telephone conversations. Another experiment was conducted with untrained participants to confirm this ability; listeners identified the dialects significantly better than chance. Phonetic analysis reveals that phonetic variables potentially distinguish the dialects.