Between dialect and standard

This paper offers a sociolinguistic analysis of the consonants (s) and (d) in the coda position in the city of Madrid, within the framework of the Project for the Sociolinguistic Study of Spanish from Spain and America (PRESEEA). The purpose is to illustrate how varieties of southern Castilian Spanish and those from the central and northern Peninsula converge and diverge, taking into consideration the social, political, and economic parameters that affect said processes. The diversity of patterns that coexist in the Madrid speech community reflects the city’s historic social complexity, the varied geographical origins of its migrant population, the interests that motivate each community of practice, as well as other circumstances that influence the direction of change. The analysis of (s) and (d) in coda illustrates the way in which the dynamics of variation and change in Madrid fluctuate between two poles: standardization and regionalization, the same two axes around which the community’s sociolinguistic patterns revolve.