Sociolinguistic Interviews Research Articles

The imperfect progressive in Puerto Rican Spanish: a case of language contact or grammaticalization?

Abstract The present study examines the use of the Spanish imperfect progressive in Puerto Rican Spanish to determine if this construction is influenced by English, or if it is responding to internal grammaticalization processes as defined as the process in which a lexical item acquires a grammatical function. 33 Puerto Ricans that lived in Puerto Rico completed a sociolinguistic interview and two retell tasks. The English influence hypothesis is discarded since the results indicate that the imperfect progressive is slowly grammaticalizing as a past imperfective, which explains why it can be used with all verbs classes and to express habitual events. Pre-existing work in the field proposes that progressive constructions can develop as imperfective markers. This finding supports the present progressive hypothesis which states that it grammaticalizes from a locative to a progressive expression, and later develops a habitual meaning. Finally, it is possible that some cases of language variation and change are due to grammaticalization processes, language contact, or language contact induced grammaticalization.

Family language policy in multilingual Filipino families in Italy

ABSTRACT Many heritage speakers in diaspora communities are multilingual individuals, often speaking two or more heritage languages alongside the societal majority language as well as another lingua franca (i.e. English). This paper examines the multilingual practices of 26 Filipino speakers in Italy (15 from the first generation and 11 second generation) in the framework of Family Language Policy. Four main findings emerge from the sociolinguistic interviews: (1) the multilingualism of the first generation is reduced in second generation, with Philippine regional languages seldom transmitted to children; this is reflected in a varied attitude toward these languages; (2) in parent–children interactions the mixing of Filipino and Italian prevails, thus, although Italian is present, Filipino is always maintained, confirming an overall positive attitude; (3) English is never selected as the only language of communication, but rather in combination with Italian or Filipino; (4) in the second generation, the exclusive use of Italian occurs with peers or younger interlocutors (e.g. siblings, partners, children). This study further contributes to our understanding of linguistic choices among multilingual migrants by allowing a comparison with other Filipino diasporic communities in Asia, North America and Australia.

When a New Pronoun Crosses the Border: The Spread of A Gente on the Brazilian-Uruguayan Frontier

This study shows that the incorporation of the first-person plural pronoun a gente has not only reached the southernmost tip of the Brazilian territory, but has crossed the border and entered Uruguayan Portuguese, or varieties of Portuguese spoken in northern Uruguay by Portuguese–Spanish bilinguals. This finding is based on the quantification of the a gente/nós variable in sociolinguistic interviews carried out in two border communities: Aceguá, Brazil, and Aceguá, Uruguay. The analysis of interviews recorded on each side of the border yielded a total of 1000 tokens that were submitted to a multivariate analysis. Following the premises of comparative sociolinguistics, we compared the distribution of the variable on both sides of the border and found that although Uruguayans used a gente less often than Brazilians, this innovation, preferred by young speakers, is incorporated in both dialects, following similar linguistic paths. These results show that Uruguayan Portuguese has incorporated the pronominal a gente in its grammar in a clear sign of convergence towards Brazilian Portuguese and divergence from Spanish, despite the coexistence with Spanish that categorically uses nosotros as the first-person plural pronoun and reserves the cognate la gente for its purely lexical meaning ‘the people’.

Examining the maintenance of dialect features in colloquial urban Armenian speech via variationist analysis of vowels in Gavaṛ, Armenia

This study examines the maintenance of previously described local dialect vowels in the regional city of Gavaṛ, Armenia. The dialect vowel system contains additional phonemic and allophonic distinctions not found in supralocal Armenian varieties. As such, adherence to this system was conceptualized through the presence or absence of various vowel mergers. F1 and F2 were measured from picture and word list data collected from sociolinguistic interviews with 31 participants. Mergers were assessed for each participant via Pillai scores and Euclidean distances between clusters of words where different vowels were predicted to appear based on previous descriptions of the dialect. Countering previous claims about dialect leveling in regional cities, some participants were found to maintain some aspects of the dialect vowel system. Fixed effects linear models assessed the effect of demographic predictors (self-reported gender, birth year, education level) on maintenance of dialect vowels. There was an effect of gender, such that men were found to maintain some dialect vowels to a greater degree than women. Participants’ commentary suggested that the most salient aspects of the dialect vowel system are the same ones in relation to which this demographic variation was uncovered, indicating a relationship between salience and maintenance of dialect vowels.

Acoustics and ice hockey: The sociophonetic impact of Canadian English on American-Born players

My research utilizes sociophonetic analysis to document the linguistic identity construction process that is ongoing in the sport of ice hockey. I argue that American-born players are constructing a hockey-based identity influenced by Canadian English (CE) due to the historical Canadian dominance of the sport. This identity incorporates Canadian Raising, FACE and GOAT monophthongization, both commonly attributed to CE and largely unexplainable based on players’ regional dialects, and altered vowel production in hockey-specific terminology, most notably in the word hockey itself, unique to the hockey community. To document this variation, I analyze vowel formant values taken from sociolinguistic interviews with professional hockey players. I assess F1 and F2 values throughout vowel durations to establish if players are converging in production away from regional dialectal variants towards shared hockey-based variants. I argue these variants have gained indexical value linked to an emerging hockey-based identity that, although influenced by CE, is unique to the hockey community. In ongoing research, I aim to further document that this variation is most evident in hockey-specific terminology and that lexical diffusion occurs outwardly from these terms over time leading to players developing a more prevalent hockey-based identity as the sport gains more importance in their lives.

Revisiting the sociophonetics of sexuality in spontaneous speech

This study surveys sociophonetic variation in sibilant and vowel production for 44 Bay Area English speakers. I focus on (i) whether sexual orientation is an independent predictor, or interacts with gender, and (ii) what the patterning of bi + (bisexual, pansexual, queer, etc.) and non-binary speakers adds to previous claims (e.g., Gaudio 1994, Pierrehumbert 2004, Willis 2023). All participants completed a Map Task in pairs; 37 participated in a sociolinguistic interview. Recordings were auto-transcribed, forced-aligned, and hand-checked. For /s ʃ z ʒ/, tokens under 0.05 sec, in /str/ clusters, and/or adjacent to another sibilant were excluded. Before getting COG and skew, 0.02 sec were subtracted from token edges and voicing was Hann band-filtered. For all vowels and sibilants, mean and midpoint f0 were taken, and F1-F4 for vowels (using the median of values at midpoint plus six surrounding timepoints). Results show sexual orientation alone is not a robust predictor of /s/ frontedness. Both gender and sexuality interacted with duration for /s/ frontedness and vowel f0; gender and sexuality also interacted to influence /ʃ/ frontedness and /z/ devoicing, as well as vowel space shape. These results imply that, when bi + and non-binary identities are incorporated, the phonetic indexation of sexual identity is not easily generalizable within orientation labels, at least for informal speech.

Classification patterns in conversational English fricatives: Between- and within- speaker analyses

This study examines between- and within- speaker patterns in random forest classification models for fricatives in conversational English. Prior investigations on the categorization of fricatives have mostly focused on group-level analyses and careful speech. We use a corpus of sociolinguistic interview speech from Western Canadian English, which represents a more casual speech style, and we compare group-level results to the findings of classification models on individual speakers’ productions. The models use 23 different spectral, temporal, and amplitudinal measures to predict phonetic labels of the fricatives. Our results reveal that certain top-ranked predictors at the group level (e.g., spectral peak frequency, segment duration) are also important for fricative classification in the individual models. Other measures (e.g., midpoint kurtosis, RMS) show substantial variability in their relative prominence and play greater roles in individual- versus group-level modeling. We discuss the implications of these findings for our understanding of individual variation in connected speech and what the findings may imply about models of production and perception.

Denial from the other side: Experiences of racism as narrated by South Sudanese refugees in Australia

This paper discusses experiences of everyday racism as narrated by South Sudanese refugee-background informants living in Australia. The paper draws on accounts of verbal and physical attacks reported during a sociolinguistic interview about the refugee experience and adaptation to the Australian lifestyle. The study contributes to the exploration of features of refugee narratives, using the socio-interactional approach to narrative analysis. Selected stories about racism are explored using positioning theory, paying attention to the discursive strategies narrators use to position themselves in the interactional world of the interview setting as well as the story-world. Their narratives demonstrate that despite the harsh experiences of everyday racism, they position themselves as resilient and strong individuals. They do this by drawing on their refugee history and making references to harder times. However, the stories also reveal their mitigation strategies to soften the accounts and either downplay or deny racism. However, by sharing their stories and making explicit evaluative statements about social injustice, they mobilise their agency to make their story heard.

Language reclamation in the family

Oppressive policies have led to a devaluation of Indigenous cultural and linguistic practices, which in turn have contributed to disruption of language transmission in the family. In this article, I take a longitudinal perspective by first discussing the role of the family in language shift and then exploring how people who have learned Sámi (an Indigenous language in Norway) in the educational system decide to speak Sámi when they become parents. I draw on data from sociolinguistic interviews, fieldwork, interviews in the media, blogs and my own background from a coastal Sámi family. The goal of this article is to explore the motivations and experiences of Sámi parents who decide to speak Sámi with their children and to discuss how some of the challenges faced by these parents may be the result of silences brought about by our colonial past, in this case the domination of Norwegian. Language reclamation is a form of decolonization because agency resides with the speakers and because this may contribute to disrupting colonial heritage and heal hurts from the past.

Acoustic Correlates of Subtypes of Irony in Chilean Spanish

Utterances containing verbal irony display prosodic particularities that distinguish them from non-ironic speech. While some prosodic features of irony have been identified in Spanish, previous studies have not accounted for different subtypes, nor have they examined this phenomenon in Chilean Spanish despite the unique intonation patterns in this dialect. This study examined the acoustic and prosodic correlates of five subtypes of irony (jocularity, rhetorical questions, understatements, hyperbole, and sarcasm) spontaneously occurring in the casual speech of sociolinguistic interviews with fifteen Chilean women. We segmented 3907 syllable nuclei from 197 spontaneously occurring instances of irony and compared the syllables within the ironic utterances to those in the pre-ironic utterances, along seven acoustic and prosodic variables: pitch range, duration, F0, F1, F2, H1*–H2*, and HNR. The results showed that the speakers favored jocularity and did not produce sarcasm or understatements, and that jocularity, hyperbole, and rhetorical questions significantly differed from the baseline utterances along a variety of acoustic and prosodic measures. We argue that these cues contributed to marking the ironic utterances as salient, allowing these women to talk about difficult real-life events with a touch of humor. Our study provides additional evidence for the connection between prosody and pragmatics in Chilean Spanish and lays the groundwork for further examination of irony and prosody in this and other Spanish dialects.

Gettin’ sociolinguistic data remotely: comparing vernacularity during online remote versus in-person sociolinguistic interviews

Abstract The following paper examines the use of the stable sociolinguistic variable (-ing) across two different interview modalities: “classic” in-person sociolinguistic interviews and identical interviews conducted remotely over online video chat. The goal of this research was to test whether a change in modality results in style-shifting, as quantified by different rates of formal/standard [-ɪŋ] versus informal/non-standard [-ɪn]. Results show that when the internal linguistic constraints governing (-ing) variation are taken into account, there is not a significant difference between modalities, suggesting both modalities are equally formal (or informal). This suggests that remote online video chats are a viable method for collecting sociolinguistic data.

Аляскинский русский язык: история экспедиций в бывшую заморскую колонию России

The article describes the history of studying Alaskan Russian (AR), a language that emerged from interactions between Russian furtraders and the aboriginal population during the Russian colonization of Alaska. In the late 18th century, AR became the native language of mixed-race persons who were officially referred to as “creoles” in the 19th century. AR was actively used in Alaska until the mid-20th century. Currently, several advanced-age individuals retain linguistic competence in AR. Since 1997, the authors have organized six field trips to the places of the historical existence of AR. The article follows the chronology of these trips, explaining their goals and findings. Interdisciplinary studies allowed the authors to compile a dictionary of the Ninilchik variety of AR, describe its phonetic and grammatical features, and collect corpora of audio and video recordings and sociolinguistic interviews to explore various linguistic practices. These corpora include over 90 hours of recordings from over 30 consultants from 12 locations in Alaska. Over 100 additional interviews were found in the repositories of other projects on the oral history of Alaska. Furthermore, several archival documents were discovered revealing the written mode of AR, previously only known as a spoken language. The anthropological research conducted in the Kodiak archipelago started the systematic historical study of the Russian language in Alaska, including its role, place, significance, practices, and functioning in the life of Russian fur-traders and their descendants throughout the colonization of Alaska until the present time, taking into account its interactions with native languages and English.

О МЕСТЕ И РОЛИ ЛОКАЛИЗМОВ В СИСТЕМЕ НАЦИОНАЛЬНОГО ЯЗЫКА

The study of linguistic units operating as part of the national language within the framework of the regional usage is determined by the need to identify the features of heterogeneous variants and their place in the system of the national language, their relationship and interaction with the literary norm. The purpose of this article is to investigate the content of the linguistic term “localism” and distinguish it from other concepts used to denote territorially marked vocabulary. The article attempts to clarify the content of the linguistic term “localism” using examples from the Russian and Spanish languages, which occupies a central place in foreign linguistic regionalism. The theoretical basis of the study relies on the ideas of linguistic relativism and sociolinguistic determinism, according to which linguistic phenomena are studied taking into account variability as a fundamental property of language and in close relationship between language and social context. The methodological base is formed by general scientific methods, includingThe study of linguistic units operating as part of the national language within the framework of the regional usage is determined by the need to identify the features of heterogeneous variants and their place in the system of the national language, their relationship and interaction with the literary norm. The purpose of this article is to investigate the content of the linguistic term “localism” and distinguish it from other concepts used to denote territorially marked vocabulary. The article attempts to clarify the content of the linguistic term “localism” using examples from the Russian and Spanish languages, which occupies a central place in foreign linguistic regionalism. The theoretical basis of the study relies on the ideas of linguistic relativism and sociolinguistic determinism, according to which linguistic phenomena are studied taking into account variability as a fundamental property of language and in close relationship between language and social context. The methodological base is formed by general scientific methods, includingtheoretical analysis and synthesis of linguistic literature on the problem of regional vocabulary, as well as comparative analysis of terms denoting territorially marked language units. In the practical part of the study, the sociolinguistic interview method was used. General characteristics of localisms in Russian and Spanish are revealed. The conclusion about a stricter regulation of the use of localisms in the Spanish language is substantiated.

Empirical linguistics: A cautious obituary

The present paper is intended as a contribution to an ancient controversy about the nature of linguistic research. Dionysius Thrax, the author of the first extant European grammar, claimed that the study of language is “empirical”. We argue that linguistics, as long as it strives for empirical adequacy, must be essentially data-oriented, reflecting what may be called sociolinguistically valid collective intuitions. Using data from the Hungarian National Sociolinguistic Survey and the Budapest Sociolinguistic Interview project, we show the empirical inadequacy of two structural grammars of Hungarian published in 1998. In contrast to their titles (namely: “a grammar of Hungarian”), these structural grammars describe Codified Standard Hungarian (CSH), hence, in some cases, they ignore the grammaticality judgments of more than half of the native speakers of Hungarian in Hungary. It is also shown that studying people’s actual speech leads to important linguistic discoveries, e.g. the final -n of the inessive case-ending of CSH -ban, -ben ‘in (location)’ is pronounced in only one-third of instances in normal Hungarian speech.

The Sociolinguistic Interview Genre and Its Chronotopic Dimensions

The Sociolinguistic Interview Genre and Its Chronotopic Dimensions

Multifunctionality of discourse marker portanto in Braga’s speech

"Multifunctionality of discourse marker portanto in Braga’s Speech. This paper explores the multifunctionality and usage patterns of the discourse marker portanto in Braga’s speech. Our main goal is to propose a revised description of portanto, while acknowledging the validity of previous research on the topic. The investigation focused on the co-occurrence of functions associated with portanto, emphasizing its pivotal role in speech construction. The frequency distribution of portanto usage was found to be consistent with earlier studies, affirming its most prevalent application as a filler (marker). Our study also highlighted that an excessive use of discourse markers can create the illusion of coherence, rather than genuinely ensuring it, especially in contexts characterized by frequent pauses, verbal hesitations, and syntactic interruptions. Furthermore, this research examined the influence of discourse genre on portanto’s usage patterns. Notably, the two predominant uses observed in Braga’s speech were linked to specific aspects of sociolinguistic interviews, particularly the recollection of life stories and features of spontaneous speech. The findings enrich our understanding of this discourse marker's multifaceted role in facilitating coherent communication and its significance in various speech contexts. Keywords: Braga’s speech, colloquial register, discourse markers, European Portuguese, multifunctionality."

Thinking outside the guttural box: fresh perspectives on vowel lowering in Qeltu

This study revisits the process of vowel lowering in the Arabic dialect known as Qeltu, which is spoken in parts of northern Iraq and neighboring Syria and Turkey. It aims to uncover hitherto unreported patterns of vowel lowering and re-examines a frequently held axiom that attributes a categorical impact of specific linguistic units on the behavior of this phonological process (e.g. Al-Ani, 1970; Thelwall, 1990; Rose, 1996). The analysis of spoken data from 30 speakers considers various linguistic and social constraints that may or may not influence the process of vowel lowering. The data was collected through sociolinguistic interviews (Tagliamonte, 2006). It is generally acknowledged that the main allophones of Iraqi Arabic [i], [iː], [uː] (Al-Khalesi, 2006) are respectively realized as [a], [ɛː], and [ɔː] in Qeltu (Jastrow, 1994 & 2006). This is especially noticeable when these vowels are adjacent to guttural sounds, as exemplified in the words: /miʃhuːr/ famous, /sˤtˤuːħ/ roof and /daqiːq/ flour, which are pronounced as [maʃhɔːr], [sˤtˤɔ:ħ] and [daqɛ:q], respectively (Jastrow, 1994; Muhammad, 2018). Results indicate that the relationship between guttural sounds and the lowering of vowels in Qeltu cannot be solely predicted by their proximity to each other, and that additional social factors are involved in determining this phenomenon.

Investigating (in)coherence in Tyneside English(es): sociophonetic variation spectrums of face, goat, price and mouth in the DECTE corpus

The present study investigates the co-occurrence of face, goat, price and mouth vocalic variants in the Tyneside Linguistic Survey (TLS, Strang, 1968). The analysis is based on the original fine-grained transcriptions of the TLS sociolinguistic interviews across a sample of 44 predominantly working-class speakers (men/women, older, middle-aged and teenagers). Multiple Factorial Analysis and cluster analysis were combined to identify sub-groupings in the variety based on the entirety of the transcriptions (consonants, stressed and reduced vowels), and to investigate coherence across these vocalic variants. The results point towards major gender and class effects with four clusters of speakers characterised by varying degrees of accentedness. Overall, lower-status women and slightly higher-status women distinguish themselves through distinct variant choices. Differences amongst men of either status can best be measured through the extent to which they use the traditional variants.

Ethnic Rootedness and Social Affiliations at the Interface with Linguistic Performativity: Evidence from Americans of Southwest Asian or North African Descent

This study explores the relationship between linguistic behaviors of Americans of Southwest Asian or North African descent (SWANA Americans) and their ethnic rootedness, religion, and locality. SWANA Americans are an understudied community in the field of sociolinguistics but could be highly visible in society. SWANA Americans have historically and legally been classified as white in the US despite the social perception that they are not white. The linguistic analysis in the present paper will reflect the social discrepancies between the top-down perspective of assigning all SWANA Americans a statistical race category versus the bottom-up perspective of examining the social implications of this community’s nuanced internal composition differences. Labovian Sociolinguistic Interviews were conducted with 54 SWANA Americans in the Upper Midwest and Southern California, and an ethnic rootedness metric was designed to measure individual speakers’ ethnic rootedness. The results show that higher ethnic rootedness, being a Muslim (in the more careful speech style), and being from Dearborn, MI, are significant predictors of higher rates of “reracializing” indexically bleached ethnically affiliated lexicon (words such as Ali, Muslim, Iraq, Mohammad, etc.) in the speakers’ English speech.

Manx speakers, language, and identity

Manx, the Goidelic language of the Isle of Man, has no extant traditional native speakers. However, thanks to the efforts of language activists and others involved in language revival, there exists a community of around 2200 people who claim competence in the language (Isle of Man Government 2021), of which a smaller portion will have advanced competence in Manx. All members of the Manx speaker community could be described as ‘new speakers’, having acquired this revitalized minority language primarily through means other than first language transmission in the home (O’Rourke, Pujolar, and Ramallo 2015: 1). The members of the Manx new speaker community, despite many having acquired “a socially and communicatively consequential level of competence” (Jaffe 2015: 25) in the traditional language of the Isle of Man, vary in terms of their national, ethnic, and linguistic backgrounds. Postmodern approaches to sociolinguistics challenge the assumption of a straightforward link between identity, especially national identity, and linguistic practice. The complexity of the elationship between language and identity is especially evident in cases of multilingual minority language communities – such as the extant Celtic-speaking communities. The present paper explores the relationship between identity and language use among Manx new speakers. It discusses the following specific question: How do new speakers of Manx understand and identify with ‘Manxness’? The paper uses a corpus of sociolinguistic interview and ethnographic observation data gathered from fieldwork among the Manx new speaker community as part of the author’s PhD thesis. The researcher, a Manx new speaker herself, spent six months gathering data, both through traditional sociolinguistic methods, such as interviews and questionnaires, and through ethnographic methods, namely participant observation in various contexts. The analysis of this novel spoken corpus offers a much-needed view into identity and language use in a 21st-century Celtic language community that lacks extant native speakers.