ERIC Number: EJ968454
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2012-Mar
Pages: 20
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0018-2133
EISSN: N/A
Assessing Language Attitudes through a Matched-Guise Experiment: The Case of Consonantal Deletion in Venezuelan Spanish
Diaz-Campos, Manuel; Killam, Jason
Hispania, v95 n1 p83-102 Mar 2012
This investigation contributes to the understanding of language attitudes toward consonantal deletion by examining its perception using a matched-guise experiment (Casesnoves and Sankoff 2004; Lambert, Hodgson, Gardner, and Fillenbaum 1960) with fifteen listeners. Two experiments were designed for testing language attitudes, one toward intervocalic /d/ deletion and one toward syllable-final /[alveolar flap]/ deletion. The findings of this research support the hypothesis according to which retention of syllable-final /[alveolar flap]/ is perceived as a prestigious variant in Venezuelan Spanish. However, our findings do not show a strong attitudinal evaluation in favor of /d/ retention. These results provide a contribution to the study of language attitudes using a perceptual task, a practice that is not very commonly used to assess a linguistic variable. The findings show that production studies present useful evidence, but may not necessarily reflect a speaker's evaluation of linguistic variants. (Contains 1 table and 10 figures.)
Descriptors: Evidence, Syllables, Language Attitudes, Language Variation, Foreign Countries, Language Research, Linguistic Theory, Spanish, Pronunciation, Speech Communication
American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese, Inc. 900 Ladd Road, Walled Lake, MI 48390. Tel: 248-960-2180; Fax: 248-960-9570; e-mail: AATSPoffice@aatsp.org; Web site: http://www.aatsp.org
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Venezuela
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A