Frederick Williams

Speech characteristics and employability

This research explored relationships between employees’ speech characteristics within job interview situations and employers’ hiring decisions. Using semantic differential instruments, the researchers examined employer attitudes toward speech samples and relationships between these attitudes and employment decisions. Results revealed a stable three‐factor model describing employers’ perceptions of employees’ speech characteristics. This model, however, was only partially successful as a predictor of employment decisions.

Language attitudes: An analysis of teacher differences

Based upon a (Q‐type factor analysis, teachers were grouped according to their patterns of rating videotaped speech samples of Black, Anglo, and Mexican‐American children. As in prior research, ratings reflected global judgments of confidence‐eagerness and ethnicity‐nonstandardness. General corroboration xvas found among speech ratings, teachers’ stereotype ratings of different ethnic groups, and the teachers’ academic expectations of children representing such groups. Results held a number of implications regarding the linguistic attitudes of teachers.

Children's Attitudes Toward Small Computers: A Preliminary Study.

While it has been established that children have positive attitudes toward the use of computers when used in computer-assisted instruction, little is known about children’s attitudes toward small“home” or“personal” computers. Results of this study indicate that children have multidimensional attitudes toward small computers, their interaction with these computers, and ease of use.

Latitude of attitude in ratings of dialect variations

Linguistic attitudes toward dialect patterns were examined through methodological refinements in the use of the semantic differential. Subjects rated their stereotypes and the actual language of children on modified semantic differential scales designed to elicit latitudes of acceptance, rejection, and noncommitment as well as best estimate position. Results validated the two factor model of confidence‐eagerness and ethnicity‐nonstandardness. Three specific research questions regarding the modified technique are discussed.

Reliability and Factor Structure of the Guttentag and Bray Semantic Differential Test

Assessment of the Guttentag and Bray scales for measuring sex stereotypes raised serious questions about their reliability and validity. Results suggested oversimplification in prior assumptions of how boys and girls view sex-role characteristics.

Speech communication and colorless green ideas

Harman, Gilbert. (Ed.). ON NOAM CHOMSKY: CRITICAL ESSAYS. Garden City, New York: Anchor Books, 1974; paper:

Evaluating Carrascolendas: A Television Series for Mexican-American Children.

4.95.

Research methods and the new media

Readers with young children may have noticed the occasional Spanish language vignettes appearing from time to time on Sesame Street, the popular public television program for pre‐schoolers. The following article describes the development and audience impact of a program designed to reach a Spanish‐American audience in a Texas city. The study is presented primarily as a guide for other programmers desiring to evaluate audience effects of such content. This article is a summary of a longer report done under an Office of Education subcontract to the Center for Communication Research at the University of Texas. Dr. Williams is Director of the Center and professor in the school of communications, while Diana Natalicio is now an assistant professor of linguistics at the University of Texas at El Paso after having completed her doctorate in linguistics at the Austin campus in 1970.