POKEN language is an identifying feature of members of a national or cultural group and any listener's attitude toward members of a particular group should generalize to the language they use. From this viewpoint, evaluational reactions to a spoken language should be similar to those prompted by interaction with individuals who are perceived as members of the group that uses it, but because the use of the language is one aspect of behavior common to a variety of individuals, hearing the language is likely to arouse mainly generalized or stereotyped characteristics of the group. Thus, when one hears a radio broadcast of an international meeting and encounters passages of a foreign language, one's evaluational reactions to the communication are attributable, in part, to the language used and likely reflect generalized attitudinal reactions to the group that uses it.The purpose of the present investigation was to determine the significance spoken language has for listeners by analyzing their evaluational reactions to English and French. Since we were interested in reactions that are attributable primarily to the language itself, we attempted to minimize the effects of both the voice of the speaker and his message by employing bilingual speakers reading the same message in two languages. In view of previous studies (sec Licklider & Miller, 1951 which have shown that evaluations of personality based solely upon voice have little or no reliability, it was predicted that the differences in the favorableness of any S's, evaluations of the French and English guises of speakers would reflect his attitude toward members of his own and members of the other language group. The study was carried out with 5s living in Montreal, a community whose history centers largely in a French-English schism