Reviews and critiques the ethnic preference research that views minorities' own-group preference behavior as indicative of self-esteem and identity achievement. The assumption that own-group preference is ideal, normative, or healthy is called into question; and an alternative conceptualization is presented that considers age and maturity of the…

This paper argues that the ways of speaking characteristic of a given speech-community cannot be satisfactorily described or explained in purely behavioral terms, that they constitute a behavioral manifestation of a tacit system of cultural rules or scripts, and that to understand a society's ways of speaking, it is necessary to identify and…