Ethnolinguistic contact: An interactive situated approach.

Abstract

The objectives of the present research were twofold. The main objective was to study the effects of different types of social situations (very intimate vs. very task-specific), language choices made by Anglophone interlocutors (French vs. English) and subjects' ethnolinguistic vitality (French vs. English) on the language spoken by Francophones and on their perception of the interaction. A secondary goal was to develop a taxonomy of social situations representative of the everyday lives of students to serve in a study of ethnolinguistic contact. In order to achieve these objectives three studies were conducted. In the first study a total of 4753 relationships, topics of conversation and activities constituting various interpersonal situations were provided by 484 subjects. The social situations were rank-ordered by 121 student/experimenters according to their level of intimacy and task specificity. The social situations collected could be grouped into six clusters representing six levels of intimacy and task specificity. On the basis of these clusters a taxonomy of social situations was elaborated. A second study was conducted to further validate the findings obtained in the first study and to select 8 social situations to serve as stimuli in the third study. Two hundred and forty-three students from introductory psychology classes rated 20 social situations on their degree of intimacy and task specificity. The twenty social situations used as stimuli were taken from the taxonomy presented in the first study. In a third and final study, Francophone subjects' language behavior was studied by having them read four short vignettes representing an interaction between a Francophone and an Anglophone. The subjects were instructed to identify with the Francophone interlocutor represented in the vignettes and to respond in writing to the Anglophone interlocutor in the language of their choice. Depending on the experimental condition the subjects were exposed to one of four possibilities: (1) four vignettes representing very intimate situations where the Anglophone interlocutor always responded in French, (2) four vignettes representing very intimate situations where the Anglophone interlocutor always responded in English, (3) four vignettes representing very task-specific situations where the Anglophone interlocutor always responded in French, and lastly (4) four vignettes representing very task-specific situations where the Anglophone interlocutor always responded in English. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)