Dialect and Influences on the Academic Experiences of College Students

Datos Bibliográficos

ID9014178
AutoresStephany Brett Dunstan (autor de correspondencia), Audrey J Jaeger (0000-0002-4562-3274)
Año2015
Volumen86
Número5
Páginas777-803
Fecha de publicación2015-09-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaThe Journal of Higher Education (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0022-1546 • E-ISSN: 1538-4640
EditorialTaylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/00221546.2015.11777383
OpenAlexW4252016361
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas8
Referencias citadas21

The dialects that college students speak represent a type of diversity that can influence many elements of their experiences in college, including academic experiences. In this study, we examined the influence of speaking a stigmatized dialect on academic experiences for White and African American students (both male and female) from rural Southern Appalachia attending a large research institution in the urban South. This qualitative study was aided by quantitative sociolinguistic methods used to identify and describe students' speech patterns in order to better understand the influence that students perceived their dialect to have on academic experiences. Findings suggest that for more vernacular students, dialect can influence participation in class, degree of comfort in course, perceived academic challenges, and for some, their beliefs about whether or not others perceive them as intelligent or scholarly based on their speech. This study has implications for the consideration of language diversity in fostering welcoming academic environments and in the role of language discrimination and stereotype threat/stereotype management

Diversity (politics · Higher education · Institution · Linguistics · Social science · Sociology · Stereotype (UML · Vernacular · White (mutation · Communication in Education and Healthcare · Discourse Analysis in Language Studies · Multilingual Education and Policy · Psychology · Social Psychology