First and last names perceived as indexical of race/ethnicity

[Woolard, Kathryn]

A different but possibly relevant approach:

Lieberson, Stanley. A Matter of Taste: How Names, Fashions, and Culture
Change (Yale University Press, 2000), uses first names as a way to uncover
the stunningly orderly mechanisms underlying changes in tastes and
fashions, as well as cultural changes more generally. The book is the
co-winner, Best Book in the Sociology of Culture, Culture Section (2001)
from the American Sociological Association, and the winner of the Mirra
Komarovsky Book Award, Eastern Sociological Š.



Kit Woolard

On 1/13/14 10:18 PM, "Joshua Raclaw" <Joshua.Raclaw at COLORADO.EDU> wrote:

>Hi all,
>
>I'm currently working with a group of social psychologists and
>sociolinguists on a project that requires us to doctor a group of grant
>applications, such that the reviewers of these grants perceive the grant
>author as belonging to particular racial categories (for now, being
>perceived as either white or black). The state of the art in social
>psychology for this kind of perceptual work seems to be a paper by
>Bertrand
>and Mullainathan (2004), which draw on both census data and experimental
>surveys to test whether individuals perceive different first (and last)
>names as indexing particular racial identities.
>
>I was curious whether anyone knew of any work in this area that had been
>conducted by sociolinguists and linguistic anthropologists, however.  One
>possible lead was a paper by Purnell, Idsardi, and Baugh (1999) on dialect
>and perceived ethnicity, which relied on the use of fictitious names in
>telephone surveys as part of its methodology,  though the authors did not
>address the potential for these names to also index racial identity.
>
>If anyone has any leads on work in this area, I'd appreciate hearing from
>you.
>
>Cheers,
>
>Josh
>
>
>--
>
>Joshua Raclaw, Ph.D.
>Postdoctoral Research Associate
>Center for Women's Health Research
>University of Wisconsin-Madison
>https://sites.google.com/a/colorado.edu/joshuaraclaw/