Chapter published in:
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. 207–226

Chapter 9
Español neutro and marketing in Latin American and U.S. audiovisual media

| The University of Alabama

This chapter has a descriptive and a theoretical aim. The descriptive aim involves elucidation of the term neutro in different contexts and analysis of phonetic/phonological features usually associated with the type of “neutral” Spanish as marketed by global media conglomerates. The theoretical aim is to link this Spanish “from nowhere” with issues of standardization and with globalization-related concepts such as anonymity, commodification, agency, and disembedding. Data come from publicly available interviews of dubbing professionals, coaching videos on “neutralization” of a local accent, and excerpts of TV show dubbings previously outsourced by Miami-based conglomerates, in tandem with Bogotá and Mexico DF, to other Latin American countries.

Keywords: neutral Spanish, global media conglomerates, dubbing, Miami, Latin America
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Phonetic variation in Latin America and the ideology of the standard
    • 2.1Phonetic variation
    • 2.2Speed and clarity of speech
    • 2.3Ideology of the standard: Correctness, authority and uniformity
  • 3.The three types of neutro
    • 3.1 Folk neutro
    • 3.2 Broadcast neutro
  • 4.The marketing neutro (MN)
    • 4.1Phonetic and phonological elements
      • 4.1.1Rate of speech
      • 4.1.2Non-Spanish phonotactics
      • 4.1.3Other sounds
  • 5.U.S. Latino and Latin American multimedia networks
    • 5.1The dubbing journey
    • 5.2Latino TV networks in the United States
      • 5.2.1Linguistic profile of each of Gomez’s circles and representative channels
  • 6.MN and globalization
  • 7.Further research directions
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 12 January 2021
https://doi.org/10.1075/ihll.32.09cip
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