"Campaign Speeches and Racial Stereotypes: Perception of Political Candidates with African American Vernacular English Features"

My thesis research, completed in July 2019, involved racial stereotypes through linguistic cues in political campaign speeches. I worked with Dr. Janet McDonald of LSU's psychology department over the course of two semesters: Spring 2019 and Summer 2019. This research combines psychology, sociology, linguistics, and political science.

Abstract:

Regional and racially-stigmatized dialect features have been found to impair memory and lead to negative perception of the speaker. African American Vernacular English (AAVE) is a racially-stigmatized dialect with distinctive linguistic features that allow listeners to correctly identify an AAVE speaker as African American. Little research exists on the effect of these dialect features in politics. This study sought to determine whether or not AAVE features in campaign speeches affect perception and memory. Using 16 speeches with varying political stances and the presence or absence of AAVE phonological and/or morphosyntactic features, we examined participants’ memory for speech content and perception of the candidate. Specific memory was impaired by AAVE phonological features but not morphosyntactic features, while memory for general concepts was not impaired by any AAVE features. Candidates speaking with AAVE morphosyntactic features were ranked more negatively in political traits and were less likely to receive votes than when these features were not present. These findings suggest that AAVE-speaking political candidates are judged harshly for their speech features even when the content of the speech is the same as that of a Standard American English speaker.

My full thesis document is attached.