Prejudiced communication: A social psychological perspective examines prejudiced communication, through the lens of social psychology. Prejudiced communication provides a hint at how outgroup members are represented cognitively in the minds of individuals, as well as sociocognitively in the shared stereotypes of groups or entire cultures. Stereotypic and negative portrayals are evidenced in the major media (e.g., news, advertising, film, television), in casual conversations among ingroup members, through derogatory group labels, and by various linguistic devices. Prejudiced communication also betrays prejudice against lower social status groups, through discrimination against their accents, dialects, and nonverbal interaction patterns, as well as by talking down to them, maintaining terrritory and touching privileges, using hostile humor, and by continued legal tolerance of hate speech. How stereotypes and prejudice are perpetuated at interpersonal, intergroup, and cultural levels, though these various types of communication, is central to prejudiced communication.

Chapter 1 discusses the functions that prejudiced communication might have, including ego-defensive and social functions. Chapter 2 surveys psycholinguistic literatures on prejudice, focusing on the parallels between cognitive representation and verbal characterization (e.g., the linguistic intergroup bias). Chapter 3 examines how socially shared stereotypes form and are transmitted through interpersonal communication. In Chapter 4, prejudiced communication directed to outgroup members is considered, included secondary babytalk and performance feedback. Chapter 5 considers prejudice communication in nonverbal domains, first in prejudices against nonstandard accents and nonverbal behavior patterns, and second in how prejudices are expressed through nonverbal behavior. Moving beyond interpersonal communication, Chapter 6 focuses on how historically disadvantaged groups are portrayed in the news, including both descriptions and audio-visual representations. Chapter 7 discusses larger cultural factors that help perpetuate prejudice, such as hate speech, group-targeted humor, advertising, television, and film. Finally, Chapter 8 revisits several major themes of the volume, and discusses future directions for the study of prejudiced communication.

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