The Effect of Role Playing by the Culturally Disadvantaged on Attitudes toward Bidialectalism.

In an effort to motivate culturally different students to learn standard English while they remain proud of their dialect and retain it as their informal manner of speaking, 120 blacks at three grade levels role played from scripts the parts of employers, college admissions officers, and applicants. The scripts rewarded applicants who could and were proud of speaking two dialects, and penalized applicants who could speak only one dialect, even if that dialect was standard English. A control group of 120 blacks completed Ss for two three-dimensional designs, one featuring sex, grade level and role playing, the second featuring achievement, grade level and role playing. Criterion measures were (1) a semantic differential designed by this study to measure the attitudes of blacks toward bidialectalisms and (2) a series of Likert-like items testing a variety of attitudes. The semantic differential was partially successful in measuring the attitudes of blacks towar