case study: Linguistic Profiling and Dialect Perception

Linguistic profiling is discrimination based on auditory cues within a speaker’s dialect, coined by Dr. John Baugh as the auditory equivalent of racial profiling.
Dr. John Baugh demonstrated this through a study where apartment availability changed based on whether he used African American Vernacular English (AAVE), Chicano English, or Standard American English.
Dialect identification occurs via acoustic-phonetic measures, such as stop bursts and vowel formant transitions.

Emma Hebertson used a matched-guise technique involving $30$ participants ( $19$ males and $10$ females) in Utah.
The study utilized $12$ total recordings ( $8$ matched-guise, $4$ filler) of female speakers in their twenties.
Participants rated voices on a scale of $0$ to $5$ across seven qualities: confidence, education, trustworthiness, kindness, intelligence, physical attractiveness, and honesty.

Southern American English: Perceived as less intelligent and educated (rating of $3$ ) compared to Standard American English (rating of $4$ ), though viewed as kinder.
Chinese American English: Received lower ratings for education (including two ratings of $0$ ) and intelligence compared to the standard. They were perceived as less confident but kinder.
Mexican American English: This dialect was surprisingly perceived as slightly more intelligent than the standard, alongside higher ratings for honesty and trustworthiness, though it scored lower in confidence and attractiveness.
New England English: The only dialect rated as more physically attractive and confident than its standard counterpart; it was also rated as kinder.

Southern Hospitality: Perceptions of kindness reinforced the "Southern hospitality" and "sugary sweet" drawl stereotypes.
Asian Demureness: The Chinese American accent's higher tone and pauses—noted by Person #2—correlated with lower confidence and higher kindness ratings.
Regional Familiarity: The high intelligence rating for the Mexican American accent may be due to the participants' familiarity with bilingual speakers in Utah.
Media Influence: The kindness rating for New England English contradicted "cold/rude" stereotypes, possibly because participants' primary exposure is through media where such accents are often portrayed as villains.

Accent bias in schools limits educational opportunities for students of color (Chin, $2010$ ).
Dialects such as AAVE, Appalachian English, and Cockney English are frequently devalued as "simplified" or "incorrect."
Linguistic profiling affects legal outcomes, social connections, and housing opportunities as shown by the research of MacNeal et al. ( $2019$ ) and Baugh ( $2019$ ).