Differing effects of speaker and listener characteristics on the social perception of two traditional Andalusian features undergoing dialect leveling

Abstract

This study examines the social evaluations of two traditional Andalusian features (ceceo, [ʃ]) compared to two supra-local Castilian features (distinción, [tʃ]) in order to examine the social motivation for ongoing dialect leveling in syllable-onset position in Andalusian Spanish. A matched-guise experiment found that the guises with distinción or [tʃ] features were evaluated as being of higher socioeconomic level and more urban compared to guises with ceceo or [ʃ]. These evaluations, however, varied by speaker gender and listener education per linguistic variable. The implications are two-fold: (i) these social evaluations demonstrate the social motivation for the current phonetic and phonological changes in the formation of an intermediate Andalusian variety; (ii) the influence of speaker and listener characteristics on the perception of linguistic variables is not monolithic, but may vary per linguistic variable.