Chapter published in:
Recent Advances in the Study of Spanish Sociophonetic Perception
Edited by Whitney Chappell
[Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics 21] 2019
► pp. 16–38

The role of social cues in the perception of final vowel contrasts in Asturian Spanish

| Marquette University
Influenced by the minority language of the region, speakers of Asturian Spanish vary in their production of word-final back vowels in the masculine singular morpheme, with realizations that range from Spanish [o] (/pero/) to Asturian [u] (/peru/). Previous research has found that listeners’ social judgements of speakers are affected by whether [-o] or [-u] are used. This study explores how social cues about the speakers affect the listeners’ perception of these vowels. The results of a binary forced-choice identification task combined with sociolinguistic priming show that productions paired with visuals of urban status were more likely to be identified as Spanish /-o/, but only when listeners were in favor of Asturian attaining co-official status. The results contribute to our understanding of the role that explicit stigmatization and overt language attitudes have on phonetic representation.
Published online: 28 November 2019
https://doi.org/10.1075/ihll.21.02bar
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