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Part of
Aspects of Latin American Spanish Dialectology: In honor of Terrell A. Morgan
Edited by Manuel Díaz-Campos and Sandro Sessarego
[Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics 32] 2021
► pp. 125–154

Chapter 6
Complex attitudes towards two sociolinguistic variables and their social meanings

Providing evidence from production and perception data in a speech community

| Universidad de Puerto Rico at Mayagüez
| Indiana University
| Indiana University

This study considers attitudes about variable production of coda /ɾ/ and syllable-initial /r/ in Puerto Rico. Two actors produced typical Puerto Rican allophonic variants of coda /ɾ/ and syllable-initial /r/. Indirect attitudes of sixteen urban speakers were measured through a matched-guise task, and direct attitudes were observed through an interview. For coda /ɾ/, the tap received the highest overall rating, while for syllable-initial /r/, the trill received higher ratings than the posterior /r/. In both cases, men gave higher ratings in comparison to women. The indexical field analysis showed that social meanings change according to the social context in which individuals interact, helping to explain why speakers use traditionally stigmatized forms, since they can also express positive social meanings.

Keywords: matched guise, elicitation task, Puerto Rico, identity, indexical fields, perception, production, posterior /r/, rhotic, social meaning
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Previous research on Puerto Rican rhotics
    • 2.1Previous research on the production of coda /ɾ/
    • 2.2Previous research on attitudes toward coda /ɾ/
    • 2.3Previous research on the production of /r/
    • 2.4Previous research on attitudes toward /r/
  • 3.Social meanings and indexical fields
  • 4.Justification and research questions
  • 5.Methodology
    • 5.1Matched guise task
    • 5.2Elicitation task
  • 6.Results
    • 6.1Description of variants for coda /ɾ/
    • 6.2Production results of coda /ɾ/
    • 6.3Results of the matched guise test for coda /ɾ/
    • 6.4Production of syllable-initial /r/
    • 6.5Results of the matched guise for /r/
    • 6.6Direct attitudes toward variants of coda /ɾ/ and syllable-initial /r/: An indexical field analysis
  • 7.Discussion and conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 12 January 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ihll.32.06del
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