Department of Psychology, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois 60637, USA; email:
Annu Rev Psychol. 2021 Jan 4;72:241-264. doi: 10.1146/annurev-psych-010418-103034.
Social groups are a pervasive feature of human life. One factor that is often understudied in the literature on person perception and social categorization is language. Yet, someone's language (and accent) provides a tremendous amount of social information to a listener. Disciplines across the social and behavioral sciences-ranging from linguistics to anthropology to economics-have exposed the social significance of language. Less social psychological research has historically focused on language as a vehicle for social grouping. Yet, new approaches in psychology are reversing this trend. This article first reviews evidence, primarily from psycholinguistics, documenting how speech provides social information. Next it turns to developmental psychology, showing how young humans begin to see others' language as conveying social group information. It then explores how the tendency to see language as a social cue has vast implications for people's psychological processes (e.g., psychological essentialism and trust) and also for society, including education and the law.
社会群体是人类生活中普遍存在的特征。在关于人际感知和社会分类的文献中，有一个经常被研究忽视的因素，那就是语言。然而，一个人的语言（和口音）会向听者提供大量的社会信息。社会科学和行为科学的各个学科——从语言学、人类学到经济学——都揭示了语言的社会意义。历史上，较少的社会心理学研究将语言作为社会群体的一种手段。然而，心理学中的新方法正在扭转这一趋势。本文首先回顾了主要来自心理语言学的证据，这些证据记录了言语如何提供社会信息。接下来，它转向发展心理学，展示了年幼的人类如何开始将他人的语言视为传达社会群体信息的方式。然后，它探讨了将语言视为社会线索的倾向对人们的心理过程（例如心理本质主义和信任）以及社会（包括教育和法律）产生的广泛影响。
