LINGUIST List 19.53
Tue Jan 08 2008
Diss: Phonology/Socioling: Valentin-Marquez: 'Doing Being Boricua: ...'
Editor for this issue: Luiza Newlin Lukowicz
<luizalinguistlist.org>
1. Wilfredo
Valentin-Marquez,
Doing Being Boricua: perceptions of national identity and the sociolinguistic distribution of liquid variables in Puerto Rican Spanish
Message 1: Doing Being Boricua: perceptions of national identity and the sociolinguistic distribution of liquid variables in Puerto Rican Spanish
Date: 21-Dec-2007
From: Wilfredo Valentin-Marquez <wvalentiumich.edu>
Subject: Doing Being Boricua: perceptions of national identity and the sociolinguistic distribution of liquid variables in Puerto Rican Spanish
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Institution: University of Michigan
Program: Linguistics & Romance Languages and Literatures
Dissertation Status: Completed
Degree Date: 2007
Author: Wilfredo Valentin-Marquez
Dissertation Title: Doing Being Boricua: perceptions of national identity and the sociolinguistic distribution of liquid variables in Puerto Rican Spanish
Linguistic Field(s):
Phonology
Sociolinguistics
Subject Language(s): Spanish (spa)
Dissertation Director:
Lesley Milroy
Teresa Satterfield
Dissertation Abstract:
This dissertation examines patterns of phonological variation in two PuertoRican (PR) communities with different kinds of language contact situations.It compares a community where Puerto Rican Spanish (PRS) is the onlylanguage spoken by most of the population (Cabo Rojo, Puerto Rico) with acommunity where PRS is a minority language (Grand Rapids, Michigan). Idescribe the sociolinguistic distribution of (rr), (r), and (l)—, focusing ontheir stigmatized realizations: velarization ([x]), lateralization ([l]), andrhotacization ([ɾ]), respectively.
Besides the contributions of linguistic context, life stage and gender, Iexplore whether the degree of integration into the PR community of the 22informants on the Island and the 20 participants on the mainland offersexplanatory insight to differences between the communities in terms of thevariables' distribution. I consider the speakers' perceptions of nationalidentity—based on the meanings and uses of the word boricua, typicallyassociated with core Puerto Ricanness—and I explore whether thosejudgements relate to the use of [x], [l] and [ɾ] in the two communities.
The general distribution of (rr) was very similar in the two populations, andthat was also the case for (l), but the samples contrasted in the distributionof (r). Although the main realizations of (rr) and (r) were stronglyconditioned by linguistic environments in the two communities, differenceswere found in their social conditioning. Variable (l) did not showmeaningful sociolinguistic variability in either location.
As regards (rr) and (r), the following patterns emerged in bothcommunities: women favored the prescribed variants ([r] and [ɾ]); middle-age speakers favored the stigmatized realizations; men favored [ɾ], theinnovative variant of (rr); and women and adolescents favored [ɹ̝], the non-prescribed, non-stigmatized variant of (r).
Differences in the level of integration into the PR community did notinfluence the sociolinguistic distribution of (rr), but had an effect on thedistribution of (r). Also, speakers related [x] and [l] to the linguisticprojection of core Puerto Ricanness, and I associate the preference of adifferent variant to describe typical boricua speech in each location withdifferences in the demographic composition of the communities.
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