Same versus opposite-sex accommodation in digital media speech

Abstract

This presentation focuses on the linguistic and social factors that motivate phonetic variation of the /tɾ/ cluster in Chilean Spanish, specifically producing the cluster as an alveo-palatal affricate [tʃ] (or with rhotic [tʃɾ]). The data consist of 1,596 tokens produced by 72 Santiago speakers in a corpus of digital radio recordings. Results from a mixed-effects logistic regression analysis confirm that several linguistic and social factors, including speakers’ sex and age, affect /tɾ/ cluster variation in this dataset. Using a speech accommodation analysis, the study allows for an examination of the effect that social traits of the direct addressee (co-host or in-studio guest) have on speakers’ variant choice and usage rates. Results from the two-population binomial tests on speaker-listener pairings reveal that the affricated variant [tʃ] is significantly affected by the age of the addressee. Moreover, opposite-sex pairs had a significantly higher [tʃ] production rate than same-sex pairs or solo hosts of either sex. Specific patterns by sex will be elaborated in this presentation.