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In:Recent Advances in the Study of Spanish Sociophonetic Perception
Edited by Whitney Chappell
[Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics 21] 2019
► pp. 125–152

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Chapter 4
Regional identity in Highland Ecuador

Social evaluation of intervocalic /s/ voicing

 | Saint Louis University
Published online: 28 November 2019
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/ihll.21.05gar
Of considerable interest to linguists recently is the variable voicing of intervocalic /s/, which has been attested in dialects as diverse as Ecuadorian (Chappell, 2011; García, 2015; among others) and Catalonian Spanish (Davidson, 2014; McKinnon, 2012), among others. While our knowledge of the production of this variable has advanced, the question remains of how /s/ voicing is evaluated socially (although see Chappell, 2016). This chapter details a matched-guise experiment comparing the evaluation of intervocalic [s] and [z] in one coastal and three highland Ecuadorian cities. The results show that this variable is a regional marker within the highlands, and that it is also associated with status, pleasantness, and age, but only for female speakers. In contrast to other studies on social meaning, it is only females’ use of intervocalic [z] that is socially-charged, whereas males’ use is not strongly associated with any of the social characteristics examined.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Literature review
    • 2.1Ecuadorian Spanish
    • 2.2Intervocalic /s/ voicing
    • 2.3Perception of /s/
  • 3.Methodology
    • 3.1Stimuli
    • 3.2Experiment design
    • 3.3Participants
    • 3.4Statistical analysis
  • 4.Results
    • 4.1Status factor
    • 4.2Pleasantness
    • 4.3Age
    • 4.4Masculinity/femininity
    • 4.5Regional origin
  • 5.Discussion and conclusion
    • 5.1Interaction of gender in social perception
    • 5.2Intervocalic /s/ voicing as a regional marker and potential change in progress
    • 5.3Conclusion
  • Acknowledgments
  • Notes
  • References
  • Appendix
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