Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-6bf8c574d5-nvqbz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-03-09T13:48:51.315Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

6 - From Social Psychology to Cognitive Sociolinguistics

The Self-Serving Bias and Interplay with Gender and Modesty in Language Use

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 December 2024

By
Willem B. Hollmann
Edited by
Eva Duran Eppler ,
Nikolas Gisborne  and
Andrew Rosta
Eva Duran Eppler
Affiliation:
Roehampton University, London
Nikolas Gisborne
Affiliation:
University of Edinburgh
Andrew Rosta
Affiliation:
University of Central Lancashire, Preston
Get access

Summary

The main aim of this paper is to show that the notion of the ’self-serving bias’, well established in social psychological research, may have an impact on the way in which speakers verbalise certain experiences. I hypothesise that this perceptual bias will interact with other factors; specifically, gender stereotypes (as defined by psychologists and linguists) and modesty (as defined in linguistic pragmatics). I present corpus evidence for the relevance of the self-serving bias and the complex interplay with gender stereotypes and modesty, based on variation between three different causative constructions (CAUSE, X MAKE Y happen, and X BRING about Y) as well as the use of the adverbs cleverly and stupidly. In both cases, my analysis focuses on the cooccurrence with personal pronoun subjects — specifically, differences in terms of person (first vs third) and gender (masculine vs feminine). The most general conclusion I draw is that cognitive (socio-)linguists may be able to formulate interesting new research questions based on concepts drawn from (social) psychology but that constructs developed within linguistics remain highly relevant as well.

Keywords

cognitive sociolinguisticsself-serving biasgender stereotypesmodestypolitenesscausative constructionssemantic prosodycollocationssocial psychologysocial cognition
Type
Chapter
Information
Word Grammar, Cognition and Dependency , pp. 144 - 162
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2025

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abbink, K. & Harris, D. (2019). In-group favouritism and out-group discrimination in naturally occurring groups. PLoS ONE 14(9):e0221616. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0221616 [accessed 28 April 2021].CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Abele, A. E., Cuddy, A. J. C., Judd, C. M. & Yzerbyt, V. Y. (2008). Fundamental dimensions of social judgment. European Journal of Social Psychology, 38, 1063–5.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Aston, G. & Burnard, L. (1998). The BNC handbook: exploring the British National Corpus with SARA. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar
Campbell, W. K., Sedikides, C., Reeder, G. D. & Elliot, A. J. (2000). Among friends? An examination of friendship and the self-serving bias. British Journal of Social Psychology, 39, 229–39.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Coleman, M. D. (2011). Emotion and the self-serving bias. Current Psychology, 30, 345–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Croft, W. (2009). Toward a social cognitive linguistics. In Evans, V. & Pourcel, S., eds., New directions in cognitive linguistics. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp. 395–420.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Croft, W. (2022). Morphosyntax: Constructions of the world’s languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eckert, P. & McConnell-Ginet, S. (2013). Language and gender. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fiedler, K. & Freytag, P. (2009). Attribution theories wired into linguistic theories. In Pishwa, H., ed., Language and social cognition: expression of the social mind. Berlin, New York: Mouton de Gruyter, pp. 349–70.Google Scholar
Fishman, J. A. (1991). Putting the ‘socio’ back into the sociolinguistic enterprise. International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 92, 127–38.Google Scholar
Forsyth, D. R. (2008). Self-serving bias. In Darity, W. A., ed., International encyclopedia of the social sciences. Volume 7. 2nd ed. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, p. 429.Google Scholar
Hastorf, A. & Cantril, H. (1954). They saw a game: a case study. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 49, 129–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hentschel, T., Heilman, M. E. & Peus, C. V. (2019). The multiple dimensions of gender stereotypes: a current look at men’s and women’s characterizations of others and themselves. Frontiers in Psychology, 10, 11.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hirnstein, M., Andrews, L. C. & Hausmann, M. (2014). Gender-stereotyping and cognitive sex differences in mixed- and same-sex groups. Archives of Sexual Behavior 2014, 1663–73.Google Scholar
Hollmann, W. B. (2017). Cognitive sociolinguistics. In Dancygier, B., ed., The Cambridge handbook of cognitive linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 533–48.Google Scholar
Hudson, R. (2007). Language networks. The new Word Grammar. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hudson, R. (2018). Pied-piping in cognition. Journal of Linguistics, 54, 85–138.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kahalon, R., Shnabel, N. & Becker, J. C. (2018). Positive stereotypes, negative outcomes: reminders of the positive components of complementary gender stereotypes impair performance in counter-stereotypical tasks. British Journal of Social Psychology, 57, 482–502.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Koller, V. (2009). Corporate self-presentation and self-centredness: a case for cognitive and critical discourse analysis. In Pishwa, H., ed., Language and social cognition: Expression of the social mind. Berlin, New York: Mouton de Gruyter, pp. 267–87.Google Scholar
Lammers, J. & Burgmer, P. (2019). Power increases the self-serving bias in the attribution of collective successes and failures. European Journal of Social Psychology, 49, 1087–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Langacker, R. W. (1987). Foundations of cognitive grammar. Volume 1. Theoretical prerequisites. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Langacker, R. W. (2005). Construction Grammars: Cognitive, radical, and less so. In Ruiz de Mendoza Ibáñez, F. J. & Cervel, M. S. Peña, eds., Cognitive linguistics: Internal dynamics and interdisciplinary interaction. Berlin, New York: Mouton de Gruyter, pp. 101–59.Google Scholar
Leech, G. (1983). Principles of pragmatics. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Leech, G. (2014). The pragmatics of politeness. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Louw, B. (1993). Irony in the text or insincerity in the writer? The diagnostic potential of semantic prosodies. In Baker, M., Francis, G. & Tognini-Bonelli, E., eds., Text and technology: in honour of John Sinclair. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp. 157–76.Google Scholar
Maass, A. (1999). Linguistic Intergroup Bias: Stereotype perpetuation through language. In Zanna, M. P., ed., Advances in experimental social psychology, Volume 31. San Diego, CA: Academic Press, pp. 79–121.Google Scholar
Maass, A., Salvi, D., Arcuri, L. & Semin, G. R. (1989). Language use in intergroup contexts: The Linguistic Intergroup Bias. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 57, 981–93.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Menegatti, M. & Rubini, M. (2017). Gender bias and sexism in language. In Nussbaum, Jon, ed., Oxford encyclopedia of communication, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228613.013.470 [accessed 28 April 2021].Google Scholar
Mezulis, A. H., Abramson, L. Y., Hyde, J. S. & Hankin, B. L. (2004). Is there a universal positivity bias in attributions? A meta-analytic review of individual, developmental, and cultural differences in the Self-Serving Attributional Bias. Psychological Bulletin, 130(5), 711–47. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.130.5.711.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Min, I, Cortina, K. S. & Miller, K. F. (2016). Modesty bias and the attitude-achievement paradox across nations: A reanalysis of TIMSS. Learning and Individual Differences, 51, 359–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Molenberghs, P. (2013). The neuroscience of in-group bias. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, 37, 1530–6.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Nisbet, T. (2005). Benefactives in English: Evidence against argumenthood. Reading Working Papers in Linguistics, 8, 51–67.Google Scholar
O’Barr, W. M. & Atkins, B. K. (1980). ‘Women’s language’ or ‘powerless language’? In McConnell-Ginet, S., Borker, R. A. & Furman, N., eds., Women and language in literature and society. New York: Praeger, pp. 93–110.Google Scholar
Panjwani, S. (2019). Underestimation in self-assessment. American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education, 83, 906.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Park, B., Smith, J. A. & Correll, J. (2008). ‘Having it all’ or ‘doing it all’? Perceived trait attributes and behavioral obligations as a function of workload, parenthood, and gender. European Journal of Social Psychology, 38, 1156–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pishwa, Hanna, ed. (2009). Language and social cognition: Expression of the social mind. Berlin, New York: Mouton de Gruyter.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ross, J. R. (1967). Constraints on variables in syntax. Unpublished PhD dissertation, Cambridge, MA, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.Google Scholar
Scheepers, D., Spears, R., Doosje, B. & Manstead, A. S. R. (2006). Diversity in in-group bias: Structural factors, situational features and social functions. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 90, 944–60.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sedikides, C., Campbell, W. K., Reeder, G. D. & Elliot, A. J. (1998). The self-serving bias in relational context. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74, 378–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shibamato-Smith, J. S. & Chand, V. (2013). Linguistic anthropology. In Bayley, R., Cameron, R. & Lucas, C., eds., The Oxford handbook of sociolinguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 31–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sinha, C. (1999). Grounding, mapping, and acts of meaning. In Janssen, T. & Redeker, G., eds., Cognitive linguistics: foundations, scope and methodology. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, pp. 223–55.Google Scholar
Stubbs, M. (1995). Collocations and semantic profiles: On the cause of the trouble with quantitative studies. Functions of Language, 2, 23–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stubbs, M. (1996). Text and corpus analysis. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Talbot, M. (2003). Gender stereotypes: reproduction and challenge. In Holmes, J. & Meyerhoff, M., eds., The handbook of language and gender. Maiden, MA: Blackwell, pp. 468–86.Google Scholar
van Hugten, J. & van Witteloostuijn, A. (2018). The foreign language effect on the self-serving bias: A field experiment in the high school classroom. PLoS ONE 13, e0192143.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vandello, J. A. & Bosson, J. K. (2013). Hard won and easily lost: A review and synthesis of theory and research on precarious manhood. Psychology of Men & Masculinity, 14, 101–13.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Verhagen, A. (2005). Constructions of intersubjectivity: Discourse, syntax and cognition. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Xiao, R. & McEnery, T. (2006). Collocation, semantic prosody, and near synonymy: A cross-linguistic perspective. Applied Linguistics, 27, 103–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×