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Hispanic Contact Linguistics: Theoretical, methodological and empirical perspectives
Edited by Luis A. Ortiz López, Rosa E. Guzzardo Tamargo and Melvin González-Rivera
[Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics 22] 2020
► pp. 263–282

Chapter 11
Real perception or perceptive accommodation?

The Dominirican ethnic-dialect continuum and sociolinguistic context

| Universidad de Puerto Rico
| Universidad de Puerto Rico

Dominicans in Puerto Rico have opted for closed spaces due to their social marginalization. Nonetheless, their interactions with Puerto Ricans has facilitated a Domini-Rican continuum. This research examines speech data, to compare dialect recognition and linguistic perceptions of Puerto Ricans toward the varieties in this continuum. During a verbal-guise task, 24 Puerto Ricans listened to five stimuli of the Domini-Rican continuum and answered items about extralinguistic variables: nationality, social class, educational level, intelligence and speech affability. Results support that linguistic production (i) allows individuals to distinguish dialects and (ii) facilitates the acceptance criteria of immigrants and their descendants. The data suggests that perceptions and attitudes are correlated with the characteristics of both stimuli and participants, mainly the perception of nationality.

Keywords: dialectal contact, migration, Dominican Spanish, Puerto Rico, linguistic perceptions and attitudes
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Migratory context: Dominicans in Puerto Rico
  • 3.Linguistic attitudes, perceptions and stereotypes
  • 4.The study
    • 4.1Participants
    • 4.2Participants of the stimulus: Verbal guise
    • 4.3Instruments and type of analysis
  • 5.Results and analysis
  • 6.Discussion and conclusions
  • Note
  • References
Published online: 14 February 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ihll.22.11ort
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