In 1960, Lambert and his colleagues in Montreal studied the reactions of
French- and English-speaking students towards French and English speakers
(Lambert et al., 1960). English-speaking judges, predictably enough, rated
English speakers more favourably than French ones. The French judges'
reactions, however, were more intriguing. They too evaluated the English
speake~s more favourably than they did the French speakers; additionally,
they actually gave less favourable responses to the French speakers than did
the English judges. Lambert interpreted this as evidence of a "minority
group reaction": that is, members of a group seen as inferior in some ways to
another adopt the stereotyped views of the dominant group, downgrading
themselves in the process (see also Ammon, 1977). Moreover, as Ryan
(1981, p. 8) has argued: