Implicit and explicit linguistic biases: The influence of social dominance orientation (SDO) upon hierarchical language attitudes

Research indicates that various social factors can predict language attitudes. However, although social dominance orientation (SDO), the individual’s preference for societal hierarchies, has been found to determine evaluations of a range of social groups and socially meaningful topics, its role in predicting more deeply embedded implicit attitudes in conjunction with more deliberative explicit attitudes towards specific language varieties and their speakers is currently unknown. The present research examined the effect of SDO upon English nationals’ (N = 306) explicit and implicit evaluations of phonological variants indexical of (i) Northern English speech and (ii) Southern English speech in England on competence (Study 1) and warmth (Study 2) dimensions. Regression analysis, controlling for demographic variables, demonstrated that high-SDO predicted negative explicit competence and warmth attitudes towards Northern English speech. Conversely, SDO did not determine self-report Southern English speech evaluations. Likewise, SDO did not predict implicit competence or warmth attitudes. The study findings are discussed in relation to the methodological and theoretical value for (socio)linguists of incorporating SDO measures into research investigating language attitudes at different levels of evaluational awareness.