Sounding “Different”: The Role of Sociolinguistic Cues in Evaluating Job Candidates

Abstract

An increasingly diverse labor pool has increased the likelihood that HR recruiters will encounter job seekers who speak with different dialects. Prior studies have investigated the effects of applicant dialect on employment selection outcomes. In this article, we merge this research with stereotyping, “modern racism,” and sociolinguistics literatures to formulate propositions surrounding two questions of interest: (1) Do prospective employers categorize job applicants using sociolinguistic cues? and (2) If so, what impact does this categorization have on evaluations of applicant employability? We believe this research can provide significant insights into HR practice as discriminatory behaviors change and adapt to fit social norms, particularly in employee recruitment and selection contexts. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Making Black Lives Matter in academia: A Black feminist call for collective action against anti‐blackness in the academy

“…Editors must acknowledge that they and reviewers might critique work on certain topics, such as racism, more harshly than other topics or more closely scrutinize submissions from or presumed to be from Black authors. For one of us, a submission on “Sounding Black,” exploring the effects of being identifiable as Black through one's speech on the phone, had to become “Sounding Different” (Cocchiara, Bell, & Casper, 2016) to get through the editorial process. The research findings in a submitted paper by another one of us was repeatedly questioned by an editor because they made the White respondents “look bad.” Yet, scholarship using completely White samples, undergraduate students, or sports teams is commonly published and used to make inferences about other populations and to define norms.…”

The assessment of individual moral goodness

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Can Higher Education Institutions Adapt to Students´ Preferences? A Case Study at the Czech State University

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