As part of a larger sociolinguistic study investigating the attitudes of Puerto Ricans on the island toward their own vernacular speech, the present research focused on the subjective reactions of 104 public high school teachers and students to spoken speech styles. The subjects' task was to: listen to a prerecorded tape, rate the voices on the tape, and assign a possible occupation to each speaker. The responses were analyzed using a matched-guise technique and semantic differential questionnaire. Findings revealed uniform attitudes toward Spanish speech styles, perceptions of speech styles of higher and lower prestige, and accurate assignment of higher prestige occupation to speech styles closer to standard speech and lower prestige occupations to substandard speakers. The subjects perceived the stylistic distance, or range of variation, to be narrower for lower class than for higher class speech, and showed awareness of the primary speech style dichotomy as urban vs. rural. Subjects disavowed certain styles in their own speech, and condemned the use of slang, responding more favorably to a controlled speech style closer to standard usage. (MSE)