Perceptions of regional origin and social attributes of phonetic variants used in Iberian Spanish

Sociodemographic information, such as a speaker’s regional origin, is intimately related to the judgments and social evaluations that listeners assign to that speaker. This association between linguistic form and social information can also lead to linguistic profiling, a harmful form of discriminat...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of linguistic geography 2023-10, Vol.11 (2), p.119-143
Main Authors: Henriksen, Nicholas, García-Amaya, Lorenzo, Fischer, Micha, Czapla, Jessica, Dakki, Natalie, Galvano, Amber, Khansa, Sarah, Maly, Ellie G., Phillips, Zoe, Premkumar, Vidhya, Topouzian, Stepan, Wiaduck, Thomas
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Folklore
Language
Language attitudes
Language change
Linguistics
Listening comprehension
Perceptions
Phonetics
Provinces
Regional dialects
Social factors
Sociolinguistics
Spanish language
Stereotypes
Urban areas
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Summary:Sociodemographic information, such as a speaker’s regional origin, is intimately related to the judgments and social evaluations that listeners assign to that speaker. This association between linguistic form and social information can also lead to linguistic profiling, a harmful form of discrimination. The present study examines the geographic classifications and social attitudes attributed to ten phonetic variants used within regional varieties of Iberian (i.e., European) Spanish. We are specifically interested in understanding listeners’ geographical classifications and language attitudes held toward Andalusian Spanish, which is a less privileged regional variety spoken in Spain’s southern region, as compared to north-central Peninsular Spanish (NCPS). The results of an online survey show that 165 listeners were fairly consistent when geographically classifying Andalusian-sounding stimuli as originating from the south of Spain. Importantly, the respondents also attributed less favorable social meaning to the Andalusian-sounding stimuli in comparison to the NCPS-sounding stimuli. We link the findings to broader themes in sociolinguistics, such as language-based discrimination, linguistic insecurity, and the social motivations of language change.
ISSN:2049-7547
2049-7547
DOI:10.1017/jlg.2023.6