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Culture Marker Versus Authority Marker

How Do Language Attitudes Affect Political Trust

Bibliographic Data

ID6337604
AuthorsYue Hu (0000-0002-2829-3971, Tsinghua University, corresponding author)
Year2020
Volume41
Issue4
Pages699-716
Publication date2020-08-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenuePolitical Psychology (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0162-895X • E-ISSN: 1467-9221
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/pops.12646
OpenAlexW2998794217
LanguageEN
Citations received12
References cited52

Is public trust in government representatives (i.e., bureaucrats, police, public servants) affected by the language they use? The conventional theory holds that, in a multilingual society, people favor government representatives who speak the listeners' dialects because it indicates a shared cultural identity, that is, the “culture‐marker” effect. This article offers an alternative mechanism in which people's attitudes can be affected by the government designating the official language as a marker of political authority. Listeners will then project their respect for the political authority to the government representatives who speak this marker language. This mechanism is named an “authority marker” effect. Using a set of adjusted matched‐guise experiments in China, this study examines the culture‐marker and authority‐marker effects. The results support the authority‐marker effect by showing that listeners have significantly more trust in the bureaucrats who speak the official language than in those who speak the dialects of the listeners. The study also finds that this is a unique effect for speakers when they represent the government. Without that political identity, listeners will still respond more positively to speakers of their own dialects

Affect (linguistics · Government (linguistics · Identity (music · Linguistics · Political science · Politics · Public opinion · Sociology · Communication · Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies · Law · Linguistic Variation and Morphology · Multilingual Education and Policy · Psychology · Social Psychology

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Unique citing works12
Citations per year3
Citation span2022 - 2026 (5)
Citation velocitycurrent
Highly citedNo
Citation typesNeutral: 12
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