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In:Stability and Divergence in Language Contact: Factors and Mechanisms
Edited by Kurt Braunmüller, Steffen Höder and Karoline Kühl
[Studies in Language Variation 16] 2014
► pp. 207–238

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Dialect stability and divergence in southern Spain

Social and personal motivations

ORCiD logo with link | Universidad de Málaga
ORCiD logo with link | Universidad de Málaga
Published online: 26 November 2014
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/silv.16.10vil
The aim of this paper is to show how social stratification and small-scale variables such as social network and social history, interact in explaining why lowprestige dialect use persists in spite of the current urban middle-class trends of convergence towards either the national or the regional standard varieties (Villena-Ponsoda 2005). Even though Andalusian urban varieties show strong and relatively recent trends of convergence towards the national standard, and reveal patterns of phonemic merger reversion and reallocation (Villena & Vida 2004), rural and ‘rurban’ varieties maintain and even tend to reinforce vernacular dialect features that are leading to the formation of minority non-standard highly stigmatised inventories (Villena Ponsoda 2008).
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