Voz masculina y voz femenina: su influencia en las evaluciones lingüísticas

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to study how Granadian speakers (men and women) evaluate the female and male voices of the eight major varieties of Spanish suggested by Moreno Fernández (2009). Matched-guise technique-based PRECAVES XXI survey (Cestero Mancera and Paredes García, 2015, 2018) was completed by 54 men and 54 women from the province of Granada. Each respondent listened to 16 voice stimuli belonging to the eight geographic varieties previously mentioned. Half of the respondents listened to the female voice and the other half to the male voice. Analysis shows that in the data obtained from speakers of a stigmatised Granadian variety, a pattern can be observed that points to a higher evaluation of the female voice in those varieties that could be considered innovative, while the opposite is true in conservative varieties of Spanish, where the male voice is more highly valued. Surprisingly, this tendency is almost identical for informants of both sexes. We can conclude that in our study only the voice heard has a significant influence and that the linguistic prestige of the different modalities of Spanish is indeed related to the voice of the speaker, male or female, in accordance with Trudgill’s findings (1972, 1983).