Interability Communication

This investigation is a first empirical attempt, using an intergroup perspective, to socially evaluate patronizing speech in encounters involving people with and without disabilities. Respondents read a vignette involving a person with a disability being either patronized or not being patronized and then made attributions and evaluations about the conversational interactants. As predicted, results revealed that recipients and third party interactants of patronizing speech were rated as feeling less supported and less comfortable than when involved in a nonpatronizing encounter. In addition, the patronizer was rated as more incompetent, insensitive, and unsocial in the former than in the latter condition. These and many other findings were interpreted within a framework that included social identity, intergroup contact, and communication accommodation theories.