This study analyzes the ideologies of linguistic authority of the members of the 2016–2017 Catalan government and social representatives judged at El procés trial. It explores their general language ideologies, whether their views on linguistic authority are traditional or post-naturalistic concerning Catalan and Spanish, 1 and the relevance of language choice in this politically loaded trial. The analysis reveals a prevalence of post-naturalistic conceptualizations of linguistic authority. Catalan is ideologized as a language of expression and identity, associated with post-naturalistic anonymity. Spanish is linked to anonymity for public communication but is also considered authentic by some Catalans. Language is central to the trial and the political conflict, with one of the defendants even citing it as a key factor for the Catalan independence movement.
To better understand how L2 learners navigate multilingual and/or multicultural contexts, this chapter examines the (co)construction of identity among L2 speakers when interacting among each other, in the target language, as members of the same L2 group, versus when interacting with native speakers of the target language. Using the variationist framework, we demonstrate how group membership with interlocutors, native-language speaking status, and situational context affect varying patterns of language play and how L2 learners construct a unique speaker identity that is autonomous from the norms of their own native language and from those of the target-language culture. We find that L2 identity construction is fluid, varying according to the situational and sociopragmatic context in which an L2 learner interacts.
As a result of the United States’ acquisition of Puerto Rico in 1898, there have been extensive economic and cultural exchanges between the two countries ( Orama-López, 2012 ), alongside decades of language disputes driven by political purposes ( Millán, 2012 ). This persistent linguistic contact situation has encouraged the study of code-switching (CS), a phenomenon widely examined from the perspective of its social determinants ( Myers-Scotton, 2002 ; Gardner-Chloros, 2009 ). There have been several sociolinguistic studies conducted in Puerto Rican diasporas in the United States over the past decades ( Torres, 1997 , 2002 ; Flores-Ferrán, 2014 ; etc.); nevertheless, CS has received relatively little attention within the island ( Dupey, 2012 ; Guzzardo et al., 2019 ; Acosta-Santiago, 2020 ). The present paper examines CS in Loíza, an isolated Afro-Hispanic community ( Rivera-Rideau, 2015 ) where English is increasing its presence. The focus is on the category of bilingual discourse markers (DMs) ( so/entonces, you know/tú sabes, like/como que, etc. ), which are ubiquitous in the colloquial speech of Puerto Ricans ( Flores-Ferrán, 2014 ). Data were collected in Loíza through semi-directed sociolinguistic interviews and analyzed within the framework of Variational Pragmatics ( Schneider & Barron, 2008 ) to examine patterns of variation in the use of DMs, as well as to determine the social variables that trigger CS. Findings show evidence of how English, after 127 years of presence on the island, is spreading even in rural communities such as Loíza. Nonetheless, Spanish remains overwhelmingly the language of life and everyday affairs among all members of Puerto Rican society ( Denton, 2014 ).
Pauses, fillers ( eh, um ) and false starts (e.g. recu — recuperación ) are often interpreted as ‘disfluency’ in monolingual and bilingual speech. Recent research on these elements (here called ‘flags’) increasingly recognizes their communicative functions, but few studies examine how sociolinguistic factors contribute to their use. This study investigates how social factors interact with flagging among Spanish-English bilinguals. Silent pauses, fillers and false starts in the monolingual discourse of 115 bilinguals are examined and results indicate that ethnonational affiliation is the main predictor of flagging. Results suggest that flagging elements may function as sociolinguistic indices for bilinguals and that bilinguals use flagging elements differently than in bilingual mixed speech and differently than monolinguals. Methodological implications and limitations of the study are discussed.
This study explores the role of the lexical identity of the governor in mood variation among Spanish-English bilinguals in Southern Arizona. Based on an analysis of sociolinguistic interviews from the Corpus del Español en el Sur de Arizona ( Carvalho, 2012- ), productivity measures indicate that subjunctive use is lexically routinized to some degree as it is affected by individual governing verbs. The analysis also reveals certain level of subjunctive productivity due to its dispersion across different contexts, evidenced by the high incidence of cases of hapax legomena. Comparisons with previous research ( LaCasse, 2018 ; Poplack et al., 2018 ; Torres Cacoullos et al., 2017 ) uncover similar patterns across Southern Arizona and other regions, pointing to clear continuities across monolingual and bilingual Spanish.
Spanish in the United States is a testament to language change from different dialects and cultures. Subject pronoun expression (SPE) remains a showcase variable in Spanish, and we still find nuances about SPE and its distribution across different communities. Here, I describe the results of a mixed-method approach to SPE in Colombian Spanish in Philadelphia. Colombian Spanish has a differential distribution of SPE, with higher overt usage in Coastal Spanish versus lower Andean Spanish rates. There is much to see and understand about the intergenerational transitioning on SPE and the bilingual cognitive adaptation that the diaspora entails for some speakers. The interaction among cognitive, social, and linguistic variables frames bilingualism in the United States as a multifaceted language experience.
This variationist-sociolinguistic study analyzes the clitic position of all Spanish clitics ( me, te, se, nos, lo, los, la, las, le, les ) in the spoken Spanish of 52 New York City (NYC) participants. We address the following question: what, if any, external and internal variables influence clitic placement in this cohort of NYC Spanish speakers? A multiple linear regression revealed that, of the eight external variables identified for this study (generation, national origin, region, age, sex, socioeconomic status (SES), Spanish skill, English skill), only SES influenced clitic placement: participants with a lower SES employed proclisis (e.g., te voy a llamar ‘I’m going to call you’) significantly more (79%) than did participants with a higher SES (70%). Regarding conditioning linguistic factors, of nine internal variables (clause type, tense, person, number, pronominality, grammatical mood, negation, clitic type, finite verb), four reached statistical significance for proclisis. A logistic regression ranked them thusly: pronominality, specifically non-reflexivity; person (2nd > 1st > 3rd); clitic type ( me, te, nos > se > lo/s, la/s, le/s ); and clause type (gerund > infinitive). In its broadest sense, this study contributes to research surrounding languages in contact and subordinate languages. Its narrower implications involve the study of Spanish in the U.S. as both an immigrant and heritage language.
This study employed naturalistic data to provide a descriptive overview of the patterns of reduction in the Spanish [ ir ( present ) a + infinitive ] construction (the default future marker). A durational analysis of N = 158 tokens of vamos (‘we go’) confirms faster rates of articulation across the [ vamos a ] construction when followed by an infinitival form than when followed by an allative complement. Results reveal that the phonological reduction of vamos a occurs regardless of the meaning it conveys (future, hortative, habitual). We suggest shorter durations may not reflect the meaning of futurity, but rather may be associated with those constructions in which vamos a has undergone a process of auxiliarization as it becomes part of the infinitival periphrastic form.
This study examines the development of the second-person singular pronouns ( usted, tú , and vos ) by adolescent learners of Spanish, both heritage- and second-language speakers, participating in a beginner-level Early College Program located on the East Coast of the United States. Learners received input and instruction on all three pronouns through a sociolinguistically informed pedagogical approach. The results of the written fill-in-the-blank task and the oral discourse completion task show increased usage of all three forms from the beginning to the end of the semester by both learner groups with variations by task type (oral vs. written). These findings suggest benefits of the pedagogical approach and the addition of vos in beginner-level Spanish courses for second and heritage language learners.
This paper compares the acquisition of subject pronoun expression in written Spanish by first-language (L1) speakers of English learning Spanish as a second language and L1 speakers of Chinese learning Spanish as a third language. A mixed-effects regression indicated that learners’ choices between null and overt forms are constrained by many of the factors that affect native (i.e., expert) Spanish speakers: switch reference, reflexivity, person/number, and verb type. Although both groups of speakers decreased their rates of overt pronouns over time, Chinese L1 speakers began to use significantly fewer pronouns after two quarters of Spanish study, but English L1 participants did not demonstrate significant drops until quarter 5. We also noted more individual variability in Chinese-speaking participants.
Here, I present the implementation of a dialectal classification system that uses voseo in X (formerly Twitter) posts to identify speakers of Colombian ( Paisa and Caleño ) and Argentine (Buenos Aires and La Plata) Spanish. Two datasets of over 18,000 posts were collected from recent X posts according to the geolocalization of the tweet. The data was used to train and evaluate a transformer-based machine learning classifier of South American voseo . Results show that the system is able to identify the voseo region with a high degree of accuracy (0.84 F1 and 0.88 AUC ROC — Area Under the Receiving Operating Characteristic Curve). A sociolinguistics analysis of each dataset gave further insights on the accuracy of the classifier, the status of voseo , and the discourse function of voseo and other second-person singular forms of address (2PS), particularly in the context of Colombian voseo . An examination of the lexical, syntactical, and grammatical properties of Colombian and Argentine voseo also offered more detailed information on the properties not considered by the model. The natural language processing (NLP) methods presented here aim to pave the way for innovative approaches with high potential in Spanish sociolinguistics research.
Several studies have shown the existence of different degrees of variation in the use of the voiceless interdental fricative phoneme in southern Spain. This includes seseo, distinción , and, less frequently, ceceo . However, in several communities the use of seseo or distinción is not categorical as the same speaker can make use of both pronunciations, even within the same sentence. The present study offers an analysis of the use of [θ] in the autonomous city of Melilla where two ethnolinguistic communities coexist: speakers of Peninsular origin and speakers of Amazigh (Berber) origin. The objective is to determine the distribution of [θ] according to ethnic origin and gender, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, to determine the role of word class, position in the word, grapheme, and word frequency in the appearance of [θ] or [s]. Data consist of sociolinguistic interviews with 10 speakers of Amazigh origin and 10 speakers of Peninsular Spanish origin. Altogether 3,660 occurrences were analyzed with a distribution of 78% of [θ] use and 17.1% of [s] use. The results show that the two most significant factors are extralinguistic: ethnicity and gender. Men of Amazigh origin used [θ] in 60.6% of cases while men of Peninsular origin produced [θ] in 80% of the cases. In turn, women of Peninsular origin used [θ] almost categorically (97.1%), similar to Amazigh women who also showed very high level of use of [θ] (92%). Linguistic factors did not show a considerable effect in this case, leading us to conclude that the alternation between the use of both variants is a socially conditioned phenomenon present in the speech of males in both ethnic groups.
Utilizing just over 10 hours of content from the online Enkontros de Alhad series, this study examines contemporary discourse in and about Haketia. This paper considers contact between Western and Eastern Judeo-Spanish as well the use of Arabic-originating lexicon in the former variety. A discursive analysis of data reveals the ways speakers of Haketia address one another (deference), engage with and react to other varieties of Judeo-Spanish (juxtaposition), memorialize places and times (nostalgia), internalize and promulgate ridicule (linguistic insecurity), negotiate linguistic difference (variation), and preserve language (purpose). Further, this study contributes to an increasing body of literature focused on the preservation and advancement of Judeo-Spanish by means of digital platforms, particularly since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
This study explored filled pauses in second language (L2) Spanish from a sociolinguistic perspective. Eighty-two L2 learners and seven native Spanish speakers were recorded during three brief monologic tasks. Filled pauses ( K = 2,707) were identified, labeled as lexical or phonological, and coded for several linguistic factors. Measurements for duration and formant values were taken from phonological filled pauses. The data underwent two stages of analysis: (1) examining the choice between phonological and lexical pauses and (2) analyses for each type. Results indicated an increase in lexical filled pauses and a shift in the vocalic quality of phonological filled pauses at higher learner proficiency levels. This research contributes new information to our overall understanding of L2 sociolinguistic variation and its development.
This study examines native and second-language (L2) learner perceptions of the regionally indexed Castilian Spanish /θ/ in learner speech. Native and L2 listeners evaluated how intelligent, kind, and nativelike L2 learners sounded in Spanish when they produced read speech with /θ/ and /s/. Significantly higher intelligence ratings were given to speech with /θ/, but only by native listeners from outside of North-Central Spain. In contrast, L2 listeners rated speech with /s/ as more intelligent and, in some cases, more nativelike than speech with /θ/, with some individual speaker variability occurring, especially when overall pronunciation scores were lower. These findings suggest that L2 learners may be perceived differently by native speaker and peer interlocutors when they adopt regional variants.
Research on bilingual lexical access has shown that switching languages often incurs a temporal cost. Such costs are subject to long-term (e.g., proficiency) and short-term factors (e.g., the ratio of each language in the interaction). The current study, employing a cued picture-naming task, explores the influence of short-term shifts in linguistic environment on lexical access. Second language (L2) learners were tested in two different linguistic environments — an L1-dominant environment (USA) and an L2-dominant (Spain) environment — immediately prior to leaving one linguistic environment and upon arrival in the second environment. Results show that naming latencies and switch costs were modulated by the linguistic environment, highlighting the influence of the linguistic environment and suggesting that L1 regulatory mechanisms impact language selection.
Avoidance behavior is under-investigated in research on the acquisition of variation, although it may contribute to variability. Learners, uncertain about infrequent or irregular combinations, may avoid a certain future-time variant as part of strategic competence. Sixty-one intermediate Spanish learners completed open-ended writing prompts and a form-avoidance questionnaire. Learners used less morphological future (MF) and more lexical and periphrastic futures later in course sequencing. MF was favored with distant temporality, lack of negation, and frequent, regular verbs. Thus, the regular pattern’s high type frequency was bolstered by forms of high token frequency. Similarly, learners reported avoiding MF due to concerns regarding accuracy, especially with irregulars. We provide novel data on strategic competence demonstrated through form avoidance based on infrequency and irregularity.
This work examines the attitudes and linguistic ideologies towards the Arabic of Ceuta, both among speakers of this language and among non-Arabic speakers. The analysis focuses on some attitudes that reflect the existence of a certain linguistic discrimination (glottophobia) towards Ceuta Arabic in the city. The empirical data used in this research have been collected through semi-directed interviews and an online questionnaire and are analyzed with the complementary use of qualitative and quantitative techniques. The analyzed data lead us to two conclusions: the linguistic hierarchy in Ceuta is maintained thanks to the beliefs and behavioral attitudes of all the city’s inhabitants, both Arabic speakers and non-Arabic speakers; and speakers’ overt beliefs and attitudes toward a linguistic variety contrast with their covert linguistic ideologies.
This chapter applies current methodological tools to provide new perspectives to a traditional topic, namely traces of Arabic in Peninsular Spanish. The purpose of this paper is to shed light on the rivalry between Arabisms and Romance-based words that leads to the eventual loss of Arabisms. This contribution helps to expand our understanding about the presence of Arabisms in the history of the Spanish language.
