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Article published In:
Spanish in Context
Vol. 16:2 (2019) ► pp.173–193

Short-term accommodation as a function of addressee language proficiency

| University at Albany, SUNY

This paper examines patterns of phonetic accommodation as a function of addressee target language proficiency. Specifically, it analyzes short-term adjustments in the articulation of coda consonants /s/, /ɾ/, and /n/ in the speech of eight New York Dominican Spanish speakers during a series of conversations with different addressees – a native speaker and three nonnative Spanish speakers who have varying levels of Spanish proficiency. Results demonstrate that addressee native-speaker status and proficiency play a statistically significant role in both the degree and direction of phonetic accommodation exhibited by the native speaker informants. While the informants converge with both the most- and least-proficient addressees, they initially diverge from the mid-proficient addressee. The study finds that the native speaker informants use overtly-prestigious variants to attune to the academic Spanish of the most-proficient addressees and use covertly-prestigious, emblematic variants with both the mid-proficient and native speaker addressees to demonstrate outgroup and ingroup membership, respectively.

Keywords: Dominican Spanish, accommodation, Spanish in the US
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1Aim of study
  • 2.Background
    • 2.1Accommodation
    • 2.2Dominican Spanish
      • 2.2.1Final /s/
      • 2.2.2Final /ɾ/
      • 2.2.3Final /n/
    • 2.4Language ideology and covert prestige
  • 3.Methods
    • 3.1Participants
      • 3.1.1Informants
      • 3.1.2Addressees
    • 3.2Data collection
    • 3.3Data analysis
    • 3.4Research questions
  • 4.Results
    • 4.1Accommodation and addressee native/nonnative status
    • 4.2Accommodation and addressee Spanish proficiency
    • 4.3Prestige and markedness
    • 4.4Tracking short-term accommodation
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 27 August 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/sic.00033.cor
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