Sociolinguistic Awareness of Spanish Speakers on the Mexican Border with Belize

Abstract

The border society of Chetumal is studied in order to know how the speakers of this linguistic community conceive their ways of speaking Spanish in different situational contexts (home or work), before different people (employers, friends or subordinates) and with it get to check the degree of linguistic awareness they possess; that is, if the social boundaries present in their speech exist and are recognized as such by all speakers. This study is based on just over 100 questionnaires applied to the same number of Spanish-speakers born in Chetumal in 2019, who were registered according to the traditional sociolinguistic factors of age, sex, and socio-cultural level, the latter calculated basically on the individual's education index. The conclusions reflect the linguistic reality of Spanish speakers on the southern border of Mexico in which Caribbean and English elements are palpable in the lexical sector of the language.