Syllable‐final /s/ as an index of language, gender, and ethnicity in a contact variety of Mexican Spanish

Dados Bibliográficos

ID7861341
AutoresCécile Welker (0000-0002-6650-0636, Department of Spanish Language and Literature University of Bern Bern Switzerland, autor correspondente)
Ano2024
Volume28
Fascículo1
Páginas26-45
Data de publicação2024-02-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoJournal of Sociolinguistics (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 1360-6441 • E-ISSN: 1467-9841
EditoraWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/josl.12629
OpenAlexW4384823555
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas3
Referências citadas25

This study of syllable‐final /s/ reduction in a 55‐speaker corpus of Spanish in Juchitán, México, a contact variety, uses both language contact and social processes to explain its results. Contact with the indigenous Isthmus Zapotec language leads to decreased rates of syllable‐final /s/ retention, creating a locally salient n +1‐order index between “Zapotecness” and /s/ reduction that influences the indexical field for syllable‐final /s/ reduction. Zapotec identity is associated with tradition and femininity. Therefore, in this new indexical field, syllable‐final /s/ reduction comes to directly index Zapotec language dominance and indirectly index both femininity and tradition. This leads feminine and elderly speakers to reduce /s/ more frequently than “less feminine” and young speakers, even though the opposite pattern is usually found in other varieties. The results show, therefore, that language contact can influence the indexical field typically linked to socially meaningful variation and thereby cause unexpected patterns of variation to emerge

Femininity · Indexicality · Language contact · Linguistics · Sociolinguistics · Sociology · Syllable · Variation (astronomy · Varieties of English · Variety (cybernetics · Computer Science · Gender Studies · Linguistic Variation and Morphology · Multilingual Education and Policy · Philosophy · Phonetics and Phonology Research · Psychology · Artificial Intelligence