Max Nathaneal Morius
Pronouns: he/him
Research Mentor(s): Nicholas Henriksen
Co-Presenter:
Research Mentor School/College/Department: Romance Languages and Literatures / LSA
Presentation Date: April 20
Presentation Type: Oral5
Session: Session 6 – 4:40pm – 5:30 pm
Room: Breakout room 1
Authors: Max Nathaneal Morius, Nicholas Henriksen, Lorenzo Garcia-Amaya
Presenter: 6
Abstract
Socio-demographic information, such as a speaker’s regional origin, is intimately related to the judgments, social evaluations and pre-conceived notions that listeners assign to that speaker, intentionally or unconsciously. This study examines the geographic classifications and social attitudes attributed to ten phonetic variants used across regional varieties of Iberian (i.e., European) Spanish. We are specifically interested in understanding listeners’ geographical classifications and language attitudes held towards Andalusian Spanish, spoken in Spain’s southernmost autonomous community, which is a less privileged regional variety 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 connect these findings to broader themes in sociolinguistics, such as language-based discrimination, linguistic insecurity, and the social motivations of language change.
Arts and Humanities
