Órale! Country-Specific Accents and Spanish Language Campaign Appeals in the US

• In Event: Can You Hear Me Now? Language Effects in Political Campaigns

Abstract

Public officials in the U.S. often rely on identity-based appeals to mobilize Latinxs (Barreto 2010). One such strategy involves using Spanish to signal their familiarity with Latinx culture and politics. Recent experimental research has shown the effectiveness of such efforts, independent of the content of the message (Flores and Coppock 2018; Zarate et al 2023). However, these inquiries predominantly focus on assessing the political rewards or costs when candidates choose to engage in Spanish and examining whether their effects depend on native-like proficiency. That is, they have not yet considered the moderating influence of other linguistic markers of in-group affiliation, such as national accents, which may simultaneously bring to the fore pan-ethnic and national heritage identities, potentially in tensions with each other. Drawing on conceptualizations of the “portfolio” of social identities people hold at once (Garcia-Rios et al 2018) we investigate how these sensitivities to language share attitudinal, and by extension, political expressions of Latinidad.

Previous studies show that the effectiveness of Spanish-language appeals stems from their function as either identity affirming (Flores and Coppock 2018) or a commitment signal to the Latino community (Zarate et al 2023). Additionally, existing surveys show how Latinos hold relatively strong attachments to their countries of origin. As a consequence, if culturally-specific messages are effective because they are identity affirming, then we should expect that messaging strategies that cue national heritage considerations may be even more effective, especially among high-identifiers. Given the structure of Latino panethnicity, however, there will also be Latinos for which the culturally specific messaging may cue an national heritage identity they do not hold. Building on emerging insights into the role of language in structuring attitudes (Perez and Tavits 2022), we argue that these appeals may raise the salience of considerations that highlight the differences between national origin groups within the panethnic category, both making these appeals less successful and weakening attachment to the panethnic identity.

To test these hypotheses, we field a pre-registered survey experiment of Latinos on Cloud Research, quota sampling self-identified Latinos of Mexican and Puerto Rican descent. Using an audio-based treatment, we manipulate the accent used by a hypothetical candidate for Mayor in a campaign ad to isolate the effect of different Spanish accents. Importantly, we employ an identity-points measure of identity strength to measure the relative strength of pan-ethnic and national heritage attachments (Lee 2008). Early pilot data (N=100) provides a couple of important exploratory insights. First, the identity points measure indicates that Latinos tend to have stronger attachments to their national heritage compared to the panethnic category, validating the importance of this research question. Consistent with existing work, these data further reveal that candidates for office are rewarded for bilingual engagement relative to their English-only efforts.

Overall, our paper helps advance our understanding of the link between identity and politics, the role language plays in activating that link, and the complexities of Latino panethnicity. This paper is among the first to explore the multiplicity of identities Latinos hold and how these different identities may manifest politically.

Authors

• Alejandro Flores, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

• Alejandro Frydman, Massachusetts Institute of Technology