Language and Social Influence in Small Conversational Groups~

University students, in groups of 3 or 4, discussed legal aspects of commercial surrogacy and aftenvards ranked the relative influence of each group member. As predicted, high-influence members spoke more words and had more successful turns during the conversation than low-influence members. The latter used a greater rate of intonation and intensifiers than the former. A closer examination of the results showed that turns were particularly important for high influence. Unexpectedly, tag questions and hedges did not result in low influence, probably due to the different usage of tag questions and to the nature of the conversation setting which, unlike one facing court witnesses, required tactful hedging in the exertion of influence. Language can mirror an existant social hierarchy. For example, the linguistic standards and preferences in schools, churches, and courts are those of society’s dominant groups (Mueller, 1973). The choice of pronouns, and of firstand last-name usages in conversations is governed, partly at least, by hierarchy (Brown & Ford, 1961; Brown & Gilman, 1960). Apart from this reflective role, language may also function as a means of social control (Fowler, Hodge, Kress & Trew, 1979; Lakoff, 1973). Presently, our concern is with the role of language in interpersonal influence. Social influence due to the use of language may be variously defined and studied. It may refer to induced changes in the behaviour (Blakar, 1979) or attitude (Jaspars, 1979) of message recipients. At the level of impression-formation, communicators who use different forms of language may be perceived by others as more or less powerful. Perceived powerfulness can be measured along such perceptual dimensions as dynamism, status, and competence. A comprehensive review (Bradac & Street, 1986) of the research in this tradition shows that most of the studies have cast the respondents in a listener or passive observer role rather than in the role of actual interaction participants. Taking a more interactive approach, we focus on small conversational groups to find out how the development of a social influence hierarchy among the group members may be related systematically to different forms of language used by group members during the conversation. For reasons to‘ be explained below, group members who occupy a low influence rank at the end of the conversation are expected to have used a 026 I -927XISh!03/020 I10 SU2.50,’O JOURNAL OF LANGUAGE AND SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY ’C 19% hl. E. Droohe 6: S. 11. Ng